(SetoxJounouchi, PG, angsty)
It wasn't what either of them needed.
Deep inside they knew that, they both did, but they didn't want to admit that. There was a reason they both had a reputation for being unbelievably stubborn.
None of their friends noticed how close they had gotten to destroying themselves. How could they? They had been too relieved that they weren't after each other's throats anymore, and Anzu had picked up the habit of mentioning how cute they were together and how well they worked together.
She always had been a bit blind in relationships (She was still in love with an oblivious Yami no Yuugi, after all.) But no one could blame her, really.
They had all been blind, and they had all hoped that it would work, even though the two had hated each other in the past.
Hey, love conquers all, right?
It was a funny story, almost, how they got together.
Mai, who had just found out (to her disappointment) that Jounouchi was gay, had invited everyone out on a group date and carefully nudged the two of them together.
By the end of the night, it had worked. The night ended in a kiss amid cheers, seeming to prove the attraction that Mai supposedly saw between them. (Whether or not she was right was never proven.) Seto glared at them murderously until they stopped cheering, and they snuck off to give the two of them some privacy.
For the first while, it went well. Seto and Jounouchi went on dates every two weeks, Seto always paid (insisted to, actually, and Jounouchi didn't complain) and each night ended with a kiss or two. It was very calm.
But that calm got both Seto and Jounouchi worried. Was it supposed to be this calm? This easy? It couldn't be, not with the bad blood and the hate between them that they both remembered but didn't bring up. But they didn't say what was worrying them.
Love would conquer all, right?
Seto, especially, was worried. He didn't know what he was doing (a situation he didn't like in the least) and his cynical nature was yelling at him that all he was setting himself for was pain. He thought that this relationship was making him happy, but that was the issue. He didn't know how to be happy, and he was confused.
Seto Kaiba does not react well to being confused.
For a while, even, he holed himself up in his lab, trying to understand what he was feeling, to take it out and analyze it. He hadn't yet learned that you can't dissect love.
His date with Jounouchi got cancelled that week, claiming he was too busy. Jounouchi didn't say anything, but was angry anyway.
When Seto came out, he was still confused and irritable. But he was usually irritable, even with Jounouchi, so no one noticed.
Jounouchi was worried as well. His mind told him that this relationship was just a fake, a show to get the others off their backs. He wanted to have hope, but it was hard. And it was harder because Seto didn't seem to actually care (which might have been true – or perhaps Seto did care and merely didn't know how to show it. No one ever knew, perhaps not even Seto himself). But he always remembered Yuugi telling him that it might take a while. This was Seto he was with. He'll come around.
Love conquers all.
And everyone had been so happy that they had gotten together. Mai was ecstatic that her plan had worked, and the whole group was glad that the two had found love. Shizuka had been so glad that her older brother had found someone that, upon seeing Seto for the first time, she ran up to him and hugged him. This made Seto back away quickly and ask who exactly was hugging him as he drew his gun. Jounouchi only laughed and told him that she was his sister, at which Seto put his gun away. He still pushed her off, though.
Mokuba was the same for Seto. He had known, even if Seto was too stubborn to admit it, that his brother needed love in his life. But he was a little worried. He wasn't sure that his brother could work through the hate, through the past between him and Jounouchi. But still, it would work, wouldn't it?
After all, love conquers all, doesn't it?
But, then the fights started.
They were really nothing much. Where to go to dinner, how to plan the weekend. A more stable and experienced couple probably wouldn't even term them 'fights' – discussions maybe. But still, they saw it as a bad sign, something to be worried about. They didn't know better.
Of course, they didn't tell the others that they were beginning to argue, and how much they were worried. They would just get worried over nothing. Because it was nothing, wasn't it? They were both too stubborn and self-reliant to ask for help, and it would get better, wouldn't it?
But it didn't.
The arguments got worse, until even Mokuba noticed. He overheard one of the worse ones, and asked what had happened. Seto didn't answer, only looked away guiltily. He hated that he had worried his brother, but he didn't know what to do.
Jounouchi was only slightly more open. He said that they had gotten in a fight, but nothing about why they had. Mokuba was more worried, but he said nothing. His brother would work it out, right?
They were in love, right? And doesn't love conquer all?
Even though they were both getting tired of the fights, of the lying and saying they were all right, and of each other. Love and hate may be separated by a thin line, but the line for these two was not that thin, and thicker than most assumed. They hated each other, and such a strong emotion is not given up easily, not for them.
It got to the point that they avoided each other if they could. They still went on dates, but they were silent during them. It hurt, but neither of them was surprised at that.
Because that was right, wasn't it? Love was supposed to be painful, was supposed to hurt. That's what always happened, wasn't it?
Seto thought so. He was cynical enough to think that love was pain. Everyone who had ever said they loved him had hurt him, even Mokuba (though in that case it was him hurting himself for his brother's sake), so why should he have expected different?
Jounouchi wasn't so sure. His love for his sister had never hurt, had it? She had never hurt him. And Yuugi loved everyone, and he didn't hurt, did he? Love and pain weren't invariably connected, were they? But he still had this little voice that told him that he should just wait, and he would see...
Their friends never really found out about their fights. They guessed, mostly, that something had gone wrong, even though neither of them ever talked about it. Seto never went near them unless forced, which, actually, was one of the reasons that the fights between them had gotten worse.
Jounouchi had expected Seto to accept his friends with him. He hadn't imagined that it could be any other way, since they were so important to him. Seto still couldn't stand them, and couldn't understand why Jounouchi wanted to be around them at all. He was annoyed at Jounouchi's attempts to 'make him a part of the group'.
It was in this rare fact that Seto was wiser than Jounouchi. He knew that he and Jounouchi could have separate lives, and they didn't have to share the same friends. But that was only his subconscious, and his mind only noticed his dislike for Yuugi and the others.
But neither brought this up but once. And the fight they had over that discouraged them from ever bringing it up again.
It had been long and fierce. Seto had said that he still didn't like Yuugi, and it went down from there. It was one of the worst fights that they had ever had, and it was the few times they ever truly spoken freely with each other. They didn't often, but here they did.
And they fought, fought like they were still enemies, which maybe they were. The mansion had shaken with the force of it, all through the night. Neither of them got any sleep that night, even after they had stopped fighting, which wasn't until an early hour of the morning. Jounouchi went back to his dad's house, which he almost never did (he hated the place, and the person in it) but it was preferable to Kaiba mansion and the company of his boyfriend.
When they both came to school in the morning, they were tired, angry, and still not talking to each other. At first, everyone assumed it was nothing. (Honda at first teased Jounouchi about having a 'busy night', but stopped when Jounouchi glared at him) And when they finally asked, they didn't get any answers, and they didn't press. They would work it out, wouldn't they?
Doesn't love conquer all?
Perhaps, it would have been better if they had pressed. Then it would have been brought out, dealt with and they could move on, instead of letting it fester.
But fester it did, and the arguments only got worse.
After three months of constant arguing, they broke up.
No one understood why. They all asked, even pressed, but they got no answers. Mai was devastated. Jounouchi never told them anything more than "It wasn't working." He certainly didn't tell them about the last fight he and Seto had, the one that had finally come to blows.
It was another about Yuugi, and Seto's dislike of him. It had gone much like the last one had, but then Jounouchi made the mistake that would drive the last nail into the relationship's coffin.
He had brought up Death-T, and how Yuugi was kinder than most for forgiving him. Which may have been true, but still, it was something that would have been better left in the past. Seto had worked hard at forgetting what he had done, and for Jounouchi to bring it up was the last thing he could stand. Seto said that Yuugi was a fool for forgiving so easily, and especially in the name of friendship, something that had so often bitten him.
He said that bond of friendship couldn't been too strong, if it hadn't been enough to prevent him from being mind-controlled.
That was a time Jounouchi had tried hard to forget. For Seto to remind him of it, and insult Yuugi, his closest friend, at once, was too much. And Jounouchi had always been more impulsive than Seto.
That was when the blows fell. Though, really, it was only one blow. Jounouchi punched Seto once, but after that there was nothing.
That was the final nail. This relationship had been fighting its own coffin, living even in the grave, but this was it.
That one blow ended it. It scared Jounouchi to no end that he had punched his now-former boyfriend. He wasn't scared of what Seto would do (He could handle that) but what he had done.
He had sworn a long time ago that never would he hurt someone he cared about in anger. Never would he become like his father. Never.
But he had. He had loved Seto (Hadn't he?) but he still hurt him. He was scared of himself.
Seto wasn't scared, but he was angry. Jounouchi had proven that he was what Seto had thought of him as all along. Just an enemy that had been pretending to be a friend, a lover. Just another opponent. He had looked up at Jounouchi, still on the ground, and said two words.
"Get out."
Jounouchi didn't need to be told twice. He left, and the relationship between the two of them was over. They didn't need to say that it was. They both knew.
But neither of them told anyone about that.
When they had thought about what had happened between them, they realized that, maybe, they hadn't been all they had thought they were. Maybe they hadn't been in love, maybe they had been fools. (Seto was more inclined towards the latter.)
As has already been said, no one understood. But that didn't matter to them. They had gone back to what they were, and somehow, it was a relief. They weren't lying anymore. They didn't have to act like they were lovers when they didn't feel anything and were only acting like they were for the sake of others. Love is always painful when it is only a lie, but it is such a relief when the lie ends.
Eventually, the questions stopped, and everyone moved on. Mai never played matchmaker again, and Jounouchi and Seto moved back to their previous hate.
It hadn't been what either of them needed, anyway.
AN:
Forgive the wait. It's been a hard three months. (I had exams, lost all of my saved files (though thank God we've been able to get most of them back) and we had to put one of my dogs down) And I've worked very hard on this one. I like it, even though I'm sure someone is going to flame me for it.