Picture Perfect

Honey, I'm ho-ome! Ha. Yes. Finally updated. Aren't you pleased? My theory about Kaiba and Joey is this: they're totally dysfunctional. That's about it, hence this chapter. More mushiness to come. ...I think...

Chapter Five.

"Katsuya! You and Seto Kaiba, eh?"

Jounouchi promptly sprayed coffee all over his agent.

She grimaced and pushed a button on her desk, shouting, "Tissue!" to her secretary.

Meanwhile, her favourite photographer was staring at her with a strange expression on his face - somewhat like a Red Eyes Black Dragon had just sprouted out the top of her head.

And then propositioned him.

"...What did you just say?" he asked, in a strangled voice.

Her secretary, a plain but friendly girl whose name Jou could never remember - Marsha? Maria? Mary? Something like that - rushed in with a box of tissues for her boss.

"Thanks, Margo," Anna said, and cleaned herself off, carefully. The secretary rushed back out again. Probably on her way to... File... Something... "Are you happy now, Katsuya? I'm going to have to go home and change at lunchtime."

"...What?"

Anna sighed. "Oh, Jou. I swear, sometimes it's like you're tuned into an entirely different station. I said: You and Kaiba, huh?"

Jounouchi, meanwhile, was wondering if this was what it was like to have a stroke. His limbs felt tingly. His mouth was gaping wildly, not quite making the right connection to his brain. As Anna tried to straighten up her clothes, he took a completely automated sip from his styrofoam coffee cup - then a moment later leapt out of his chair shouting, "I don't know what you're talking about!"

Anna grimaced as she avoided a second spray of coffee. "A bit late to play coy, Jounouchi." The attractive blonde, in her mid-thirties, looked rather... vexed at his reaction. "And too early in the day to attempt to bullshit me, you'll have to get up earlier than - " she hit a remote and a cabinet across the room opened, a television switching on - "THAT for that one."

No, that hadn't been a stroke. This was. Jou fell back into his chair as he watched himself, on the E! channel, rushing out of Kaiba's apartment building.

Without his shirt on.

"Oh, hello little pixies," Jou murmured, staring at the space above his head.

"Snap out of it, you idiot!" Anna hit him across the back of his head with a stack of papers. "Look at the press we're getting!"

Jounouchi tried to focus. The large wad that had appeared Anna's hand appeared to be a mountain of requests from the media. His head began to throb harder.

"This is wonderful! Do you know how hard it is for a photographer to get his name known? And even then generally only your weird artsy members of the tofu-dessert-and-smudged-eyeliner club actually KNOW who you are. We're talking Instant. Fame." Anna sat back in her chair, a pleasant smile on her face.

"THIS IS NOT WONDERFUL!" Jou shouted, suddenly.

Anna blinked. "Of course it is."

"No, it is not!" Some coffee sloshed out of the tiny hole in the lid of his cup. He set it down on her desk. "Every person I know is gonna see that! It might give YOU some kind of media-induced orgasm, but I can think of a few people who are NOT gonna be so impressed!"

Anna scowled, "Now hold on a minute, here..."

Jou's cellphone suddenly started vibrating in the pocket of his leather jacket. He jumped. Then pulled it out, and looked at it suspiciously.

Anna leaned forward across the desk. "Ooh, if it's a tabloid, you'd better - "

"It's not a tabloid!" he snapped. He stood up again and flicked open the phone. "Whaddya want, Ma?"

Anna blinked.

"NO I CANNOT GET YOU A DATE WITH SETO!" He snapped his phone shut again, cursing. "Figures the first time I hear from her in a year is because - " Unfortunately, he didn't even have time to start his long, intended string of expletives before the once-innocuous silver cell rang again.

"Okay, if THAT'S a reporter - "

"IT'S NOT!" Jou yelled, and stamped his foot petulantly.

Anna just huffed and sat back.

"...Hello?"

"Is this Katsuya Jounouchi?"

"It's my phone, isn't it?"

"Er... Yes."

"So..."

"So it IS definitely you, Mr Jounouchi?"

"Yes it's bloody well me!" Jou turned his back on Anna, who was looking at him quizzically.

"Right. Sorry, I was told to be certain."

"And I'm speaking to...?" He tapped his foot impatiently.

"...Right. This is Mr Tanaka, Seto Kaiba's personal secretary."

For a moment, Jounouchi could have sworn he saw a pixie wink at him from over in the corner. Hangover plus insanity equals bad. Very bad. "...Ah ...Yes?"

"Mr Kaiba would like me to arrange to return your belongings to you."

"What?" It was NOT a good morning.

"He said you... left some personal affects at your... meeting." Tanaka sounded decidedly uncomfortable.

"Oh, so I forgot something other than to put on my shirt when I left?"

The man at the other end of the phone choked. "He - mentioned - a bracelet?"

Joey stared down at his left wrist. "Oh, fucker!"

"Excuse me!"

Ha. Now who's having a stroke? "Not you. Not him, either."

"Mr Jounouchi, can I please arrange..."

"No, you damn well cannot arrange! Nothing personal, Tanaka, but tell Kaiba if he wants to contact me he can do it him-fucking-self!"

Jou snapped his phone shut for the second time. The worst part of which was that he was sure he'd need to do it again many times before the end of the day.

"You said Kaiba!" Anna shrieked. "It's true!"

Jounouchi threw himself across the desk and clamped a hand over her mouth. "You. Are too loud. Understand?"

Anna nodded, rolling her eyes.

"When I take my hand away, I am going to leave this office. And you are not going to say anything else, capiche?"

Jou removed his hand.

"But Katsuya, the publicit- "

He dove back across the desk. "NO! I don't want to hear it! I don't want anyone else to hear it FROM you! Press conferences are not my problem! We can leave that entirely to rich and important CEOs!"

Margo wondered why, a few seconds later, the cute photographer who was sleeping with Seto Kaiba went running past her shouting, "Tell Anna I'll take that shoot next week if it's still open!" She sighed and pushed up her glasses, before she made a note of it. Honestly, wasn't that what this morning's meeting had been to discuss, anyway?

"Nii-sama? I was in a calculus class!" Mokuba paced up and down in front of a set of lockers in the halls of Domino High.

"You can thank me later," his brother replied dryly through the earpiece of Mokuba's cellphone, knowing the younger Kaiba ordinarily avoided his math like plague - or like his girlfriend Rebecca when she wanted him to go to a musical.

"Nothing's wrong then?"

"Oh, you know, just our reputations, and my LIFE."

Mokuba laughed. "Quit being melodramatic. Isn't it bad enough that every girl in school is in tears?"

"Watch out; they'll be latching onto you next."

"Yeah, that'll be terrible." Mokuba's eyes took on a glassy appearance.

"...Mokuba?"

Meanwhile, inside Mokuba's perverted teenage boy head:

A buxom brunnette batted her eyelashes at Mokuba in the queue at the cafeteria. "Oh, please let me carry that for you, Mr Kaiba."

"Well, I..." Mokuba protested chivalrously, as she swooped down to claim his tray.

"Please, call me Honey."

There was a tap on his shoulder. "Oh, Mr Mokuba! My name is Candy," a voluptuous blonde replied, "And I think you deserve an extra serving of dessert. Here, won't you take my chocolate mousse?"

A raven-haired beauty, who declared her name was Hanako, joined them on the way to an empty lunchtable, and then - Smack! A container of mousse hit Candy in the face. She gasped. "Hanako, how could you? That mousse was meant for Mokuba!" Candy seized Hanako's mousse and hurled it at her - but Hanako ducked and it hit Honey in the forehead.

"Girls, girls... Let's not fight. There's plenty of Mokuba to go around!" Mokuba leaned over and licked some mousse off Candy's cheek. The well-developed brunette next to her leaned forward and swiped their lunch trays off the table.

"Oh, Mokuba! Make love to us here and now!"

"MOKUBA KAIBA!"

"What!" Mokuba shouted, and looked around the desserted - um, deserted - hallway. "Oh. You're still there?" he said to his phone.

"Yes, I'm still here! You know, I have a full schedule Mokuba, and I called you for help but if you're just going to - "

"Help with what?" Mokuba leaned against a set of lockers.

There was an awkward silence on the telephone.

"...I need to get rid of Jounouchi's jewellery and he's insisting I call him, personally."

"So? Call."

"Mokuba, you know - "

"What, you've forgotten how to use your telephone? Don't panic, Nii-sama, but... You're using it now! Wow! Problem solved!"

"When did you become such a smartass?" his brother's voice muttered. "Look, I don't want to see him again."

"Seto, I can't believe you called me out of class for this. You must be in love. I'm going back to my maths, and I don't want to hear about this again until I get home." Mokuba stuck his tongue out to his telephone, and pressed the big red disconnect button on his keypad.

He strolled back into his class, which was by now freely working on the exercises the teacher had set.

"Mokuba! Will you eat lunch with us today, we need your help for the drama committee?"

"Of course I will, Hanako!"

"Meet me for dinner."

"Get bent."

"Seven o clock, and you'd better be there, Jounouchi. I don't take it well when people break appointments."

Jounouchi sighed and rested his head on his steering wheel. He looked around the parking garage of the GQ building warily, the location of his afternoon shoot. Reporters could be lurking... Anywhere...

"Why?"

"If you want your crap back, this is when you're going to get it."

"You could've put it in the post."

There was a silence.

"You could've pushed it under your bed and forgotten about it."

"Dinner, seven o clock, L'escalier."

"Gee Seto, a romantic dinner together? Won't that create a BUZZ?" Jou said sarcastically.

"I think the damage has been done already, don't you?"

"Ha." That was one way of putting it. "Fine, I'll be there."

Jounouchi's phone went dead. He resisted the urge to throw it out the window, drive over it, reverse over it, and then drive back over it again. And he didn't have time to change for dinner, either.

"This is a four star restaurant."

"Oh, I'm not good enough for five?"

"Why is there a coffee stain on your shirt? Or is that supposed to be some kind... Of fashion statement?"

Kaiba's eyes stared coldy at Jou from where he sat, a corner table in the dimly-lit, expensive restaurant. Jounouchi sighed in response and grabbed a chair, spinning it around to straddle it at the table.

"Spoken by the guy who owned a flared, white leather trenchcoat."

"Don't you have ANY manners?"

"Well, Seto dearest, my shirt is stained because of Kaiba Club Fan-Member one-oh-four-two-eight-six-three, who was standing in front of me in the line at Starbucks this afternoon."

Kaiba's face remained impassive.

"The sauce stain is from before that, when member three-five-two-nine-eight-oh-one was queueing behind me to get a hotdog at lunch," Jounouchi supplied helpfully.

Kaiba's eyebrow twitched. Jou merely picked up the menu and started to browse it carelessly.

"When did you start calling me by my first name, anyway?" A classic glare.

"I don't know; around about when you were throwing stuff and yelling at me to get out of your apartment?"

"Oh. Yes."

Jounouchi sighed audibly.

"What?" Kaiba snapped.

Jounouchi opened his mouth to respond, but the waitress arrived to ask if they'd like any beverages before their meal. Unfortunately, she got as far as, "Good evening gentlemen, may I get you..." before her eyes widened to roughly the size of Yugi's and she continued, "...'re Seto Kaiba and you're..." at which point, she burst into tears and fled the table.

Jounouchi laughed. Seto, before his Stare The Bastards Down mechanism had time to kick in, tried to hide his face with a menu in a most undignified fashion. The other patrons stared.

"Can I have my bracelets back please?" Joey asked politely.

For a moment, Seto's face seemed to wriggle out of the cool exterior he usually displayed. He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a small package, wrapped in tissue paper. Then he dropped it on the table. It tinkled slightly.

Jounouchi picked it up, and his chair made a scraping sound across the floor as he stood. "I guess that's it then, Kaiba. Nice knowin' ya. Unless," Jou cracked a grin, "You wanna go make out in the limo."

Honey-brown eyes widened as Kaiba hesitated perceptibly.

"I was joking."

"Thanks for giving them back to me."

Kaiba made an acknowledging sound in the back of his throat.

"They are important, you know. They were Serenity's and - ow!" Jounouchi complained, in the dark. "Something's digging into me. You know, maybe your car isn't the - "

"You imbecile," Kaiba interrupted. "Of course something's digging into you. Now shut up." He went back to biting Jounouchi's neck.

"...Oh." Joey said quietly, and then decided to put his mouth to better use by sticking his tongue down Kaiba's throat.