Disclaimer: I do not own Yugioh.
Title: Endearment and Enmity
Rating: T-M depending on chapter, M overall
Summary: When you're literally married to the person you despise.
Warnings: Homosexual relationships, vulgar words and adult situations.
Author's Note: I don't know why I wrote this.
Chapter 20: One star
"So… do you dye your hair?" Katsuya asked out of the blue; Kaiba glanced over to his husband with a strange look. They were sitting on one of the benches in the back garden of Kaiba Corp, having decided to have lunch together.
"Why would you think I dye my hair? Do I have white hairs already?" Kaiba inquired, placing his chopsticks back inside of his bento box.
"Isn't your hair color green?"
"..." Kaiba gave him a long, hard look "When has my hair ever been green?"
"Remember? Back when you first started attending Domino High? Mokuba had green in his hair back then too." Katsuya tried to explain; Kaiba merely rolled his eyes.
"You need to get your memory checked one day." Kaiba stated, much to the chagrin of the blond. Katsuya had many endearing traits, but it was his seemingly false memories about a much more violent reality that really weirded Kaiba out sometimes. Not enough to make him question reality himself, but enough to make him wonder if either of them had underlying brain damage they were unaware of.
"And back then you tried to kill us several times, too." Katsuya 'reminded' him, and threw his brown paper lunch bag into the nearby trashcan.
"I did?" Kaiba would admit to kidnapping Yugi's grandfather once, but other than that he couldn't think of actively trying to hurt any of them. Well, there was Battle City, but most of the danger from that tournament was the result of Malik and his evil halfs doing.
"Death T, Mokuba tried to poison me once, and then there was Chopman..." Katsuya listed off with his fingers.
"... I don't think any of that stuff happened." Kaiba blinked incredulously.
"I think you forgot, I mean, after the Pharaoh mindcrushed you, you were in a coma for months."
Kaiba knitted his eyebrows together; this was getting interesting in a very strange way. "I did not go into a coma, I left to a safehouse instead of attending Duelist Kingdom." He reminded him.
"Huh." Was all Katsuya said.
Kaiba checked his watch "Anyways, your lunch break is almost over, do you want me to drop you off?"
Katsuya laughed softly as he stood up, cracking his neck with a loud pop. "It's only a block away, I'm fine walking."
"I can walk you there if you-" Kaiba stopped mid-sentence when Katsuya whirled around and kissed between his eyes with a loud smack, making the CEO uncharacteristically dumbstruck.
"You're pretty cute when you're flirting. I'll be fine though, you just get back to work okay?"
"Uh, sure." Kaiba replied, a bit dumbly for him, and stood up.
"I'll see you after work, okay?"
"Alright." Kaiba nodded to his husband as he walked out of the garden. Sighing, Kaiba reached up and brushed his own hair back. The past few weeks had been… pleasant. More pleasant than he thought it would have been. After confessing to Katsuya his own strange feelings, his husband explained to him that his feelings weren't as sudden as he thought they were; Kaiba was apparently Demisexual.
The blond had explained that his understandings of sexuality were archaic, and that it was more of a spectrum than the previously understood broad definition of straight, gay, and bi. While Kaiba could only form romantic feelings for other men, his being attracted to any sort of man fell back on whether he had an emotional connection or not. Up until recently, he and Katsuya held a grudging respect at best for each other, but in the almost year they had been together they had grown closer, allowing for an emotional connection to be established.
Social justice related issues were something Kaiba didn't have the greatest understanding of, all of his knowledge were related to practical and tangible subjects like Technology, Business, and Accounting. Not that he'd ever admit to ignorance about anything.
He checked his watch again and saw he still had a few free minutes left, which was perfect; he had a plan that needed more attention before coming into fruition.
Stoney was a lot of things. Some things admirable, some things not.
Knowledgeable on Japan in any way was not one of those things. He had a shaky grasp on even common phrases in the Japanese language; a barrier was to be expected, but he never seemed to be able to make the sounds right, and don't even get him started on the written language. No amount of briefings was going to help him in that regard.
Didn't stop him from enjoying what was off-post, though. Most soldiers indulged in alcohol, the local food, and the local women (or men), but Stoney… he really just liked taking the scenery in. Going on hikes, runs, and tours, general window shopping, and sightseeing, those were the types of activities he enjoyed doing when overseas. Too many soldiers took for granted the ability to just be outside the United States.
Although, the fact that they weren't allowed to drive was still annoying. He was still in the process of obtaining a Japanese drivers license, but it required many hours of classes of not just the Japanese traffic laws, but of Army Policy regarding driving Internationally.
So he was stuck using Uber.
It had a much smaller presence in Japan compared to the US, but he needed someone who could drive him back on post, and with the sheer amount of soldiers who did Uber in their spare hours he couldn't pass it up for a taxi.
"Jackson Stonewall?" He heard in a heavy Japanese accent; he turned to see a hand from a vehicle beckoning him. He frowned; a limo? He checked to make sure he hadn't ordered an UberX. No, he had ordered a compact car.
"Can you… confirm your name?" He asked, a common safety tactic when using rideshares was to ask the driver to confirm their own name first.
"Isono." The voice spoke, and the hand went back inside. Shrugging, he opened the door and slid inside.
"Hello." He heard, before a false wall divider suddenly retracted into the walls of the limo, revealing a much bigger cab; at the seat across him was another man he didn't quite recognize.
"What the- who-"
"You don't have to worry." The other man assured, he was speaking English but it was heavily Japanese accented. Stoney stared at him, wondering why he was so familiar. He was tall which was obvious even when sitting, maybe only about an inch or so beneath him, blue eyes-
"Kaiba?" Stoney asked, confounded; he could never understand the written first name, but almost everyone in Japan, even visitors, was familiar with the name Kaiba.
He nodded, his blue eyes glinting almost maliciously "You're an old friend of Katsuya Jonouchi aren't you?"
Stoney's heart skipped a beat; and he groaned aloud "I should have never confronted him if he was going to send-"
"No, don't worry, I'm not here to intimidate or threaten you." Kaiba promised, folding his slender hands over his lap "I just need to know a few things."
"...Like what…?" Stoney inquired.
"Your relationship… It was a little more than friendly, wasn't it?"
Stoney decided from that point to never date a Japanese man ever again.
And to leave whoever 'Isono' was a 1-star review.
"You've been much happier than usual, Kaiba-sama." Ito said to her superior as they did their walk through of the inpatient wing of the clinic.
"Have I?" Jonouchi asked, hands in his scrub bottom pockets; he thought about his behavior within the workplace, and he hadn't changed anything, he was always courteous to patients and his coworkers.
"When you started working here… you weren't happy." Ito explained "I thought it was because you were just adjusting, but it went on for months and months. For a while, I thought that you just didn't like working here."
"Oh come on Yuna," he tried to excuse, distracting her with the use of her given name "you know I love all of my nurses and patients."
"I'm not saying you don't. What I am saying though, is that all nurses are taught at least basic psychology and mental illness." She wasn't being baited today "And you showed classic anxiety and depression related symptoms. I don't know what went on, and I know that you will never talk about or admit it, but I just want you to know… I'm glad you're feeling better, these days."
For a moment, Jonouchi just looked at the ground. He stopped in his tracks; she stopped with him, looking up at him expectantly. He closed his eyes, and chuckled lowly "I can't get anything past you, can I?" It wasn't a full admission, but it was enough.
"Of course, Kaiba-sama." She bowed slightly before walking back to her station. Jonouchi watched her leave before walking back to his own office. Had he really been that obvious? Or did they just notice because they were professional health care providers?
He had always been the type of person who was open with his emotions… until he married Seto Kaiba under threat of crippling student loan debt. Then he had to hide how unhappy he was in his situation. Now… now he supposed he wasn't unhappy with it anymore.
"You need to stop sneaking in here." He remarked as he entered his office and, as expected, Seto was seated at one of the chairs. "Or at least improve the security of this building."
"The security of this clinic is top of the line," Seto dismissed "I have special access to all of my facilities."
"You can't access patient files, can you? Confidentiality is a big thing."
"Legally, I do not. I could hack if I wanted to, but that's not me."
"Right." Jonouchi cackled, sitting down at his desk, "I only have a few minutes left for this shift, do you want to go straight home or do you actually want to do anything first?"
"I need you to clear your schedule next weekend."
"...Why?" He looked up from his laptop.
"Don't you know what Saturday is?" Seto asked, looking over at him.
The completely blank stare he received was all the answer he needed.
Kaiba sighed heavily, and pinched between his eyes "It will be our anniversary."
To be continued…
Authors note: Looks like Stoney had been… stonewalled. Wonder what that was about.
Yes, their first anniversary will be soon! If you remember, when this story started they had been married for six months already, everything that happened so far has taken exactly six months. Although that also means that as this point, Seto and Katsuya are both 26.
Right now, their (actual) relationship is in the dating stage, a little bit past puppy love. Kaiba is close to the honeymoon phase and Jonouchi is trailing a little bit behind him, but not too far. Katsuya has been in relationships before, so all of the lovey-dovey feelings and high of being in a relationship doesn't affect him as strongly as Kaiba, to whom this is all completely new.