Jonouchi shifted around a little as he woke up. His neck felt sore and cramped. He tried to find a way to move discreetly, and it should have been easy to do considering how big Kaiba's bed was but Jonouchi found himself pressed against Kaiba's back as he came to. Although Jonouchi had gone to bed at a reasonable time the night before, Kaiba had stayed up. Jonouchi had gone to bed some time before Kaiba had returned. They'd parted ways after Jonouchi had attempted to give a massage, after which Kaiba had skipped off to his office and disappeared for the rest of the night.

Jonouchi hadn't been offended. Disappointed maybe, but not offended. He understood that he couldn't demand Kaiba's attention every minute of the night, and sometimes he was required to entertain himself. It wasn't like the mansion lacked entertainment, Jonouchi knew there was a library as well as a theater room in the place but he lacked the concentration necessary to read for pleasure and didn't want to risk getting lost by wandering around the house alone.

He did what he always did when bored. Jonouchi messed around on his phone until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.

Now blinking them open, he was immediately thankful that the curtains were still closed from the night before. He could feel Kaiba beginning to move before a phone alarm began to ring loudly on Kaiba's side of the bed. Sitting up, Jonouchi looked down to watch the back of Kaiba's form as he reached out and immediately snatched his mobile device from his bedside table and silenced it. Then he fell back on the mattress, putting a hand through his messy brown hair before letting out an audible groan.

"Good morning," Jonouchi greeted.

He grazed his fingers over Kaiba's messy locks before flicking one strand that refused to lay flat.

"You look so attractive this morning."

He was mostly being facetious. Kaiba wasn't a morning person at all and nobody looked great immediately after waking up. Jonouchi found it amusing, watching Kaiba half-heartedly go through his entire beauty regime in the morning. He was so sluggish and grumpy until he had his daily ritual of personal grooming and caffeination.

"Don't tease me," grumbled Kaiba in response.

He sat up in the bed, trying to fix his hair and wipe the sleep from his eyes before stumbling towards the bathroom. Jonouchi snickered as his eyes followed Kaiba. It wasn't often that he got to see him when he wasn't fully put together and awake.

"I'm taking a shower," said Kaiba before shutting the door, "Feel free to order something if you're hungry."

"I was planning on it anyway," Jonouchi smirked.

Kaiba was going to be in there for at least an hour, if past experience was anything to go by.

Jonouchi could get up and use some other bathroom if he wanted to bathe, or wander down to the kitchens to find food if he couldn't be patient and wait. There were a number of options but Jonouchi took the most boringest one, staying in bed and messing with his phone as he listened to the water run in the background.

He had no right to complain about how long Kaiba took anyway, since it wasn't his house. Besides, he appreciated Kaiba's extensive efforts to look good. Clearly devoting so much time to grooming was working out for him.

Jonouchi's hunger got the best of him though, and he ended up ordering food. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, he was wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and he had no desire to get dressed even if that meant eating in his underwear. There was no point in getting dressed before he had a chance to shower.

He was contemplating bringing up what had been bothering him for the last few days, ever since he and Kaiba started having penetrative sex together. Jonouchi still felt hesitant to ask though. What if Kaiba got offended by the question? Jonouchi still felt afraid of the answer he might get, much as he tried to convince himself that everything was probably fine.

It was hard to brush away that small feeling of doubt, because even if Kaiba cared about him and wanted to be with him, that didn't mean he wanted to be with him. Not the way Jonouchi wanted to be with him, and the idea that maybe Kaiba wasn't as serious about them as Jonouchi was continued to plague his thoughts as he sat on the bed and stewed.

He couldn't just keep on doing what he was doing while assuming Kaiba's feelings were mutual. The question couldn't wait forever. May as well pull that bandaid off, for better or worse. Jonouchi told himself he had nothing to worry about.

"Something on your mind?"

Jonouchi jumped from the interruption. Kaiba had either been very quick for once (and eerily quiet to boot) or more time had passed than Jonouchi realized. Kaiba was adjusting the cuffs on his shirt while Jonouchi averted his eyes. What was his problem? He shouldn't be so afraid to ask such a simple question. Was he really this insecure?

"I can tell that you want to say something, Jonouchi," said Kaiba, "You've never been afraid of speaking your mind before. And quite loudly too, if my memory serves me correctly."

Normally Kaiba saying something like that would have elicited a quick response from Jonouchi, as he usually felt obligated to say something equally snarky in response, but he wasn't playing along this time. Instead, he fidgeted, avoiding eye contact as Kaiba gazed at him with his piercing eyes. Jonouchi wanted to speak, but now that he was in the moment, he couldn't make himself say anything.

Forcing himself to clear his throat, Jonouchi took a deep breath.

"I was just wondering," he began, glancing up at Kaiba briefly, "We are dating now, right? Maybe it's a dumb question, but you never did tell me just what exactly is going on between us..."

He shifted uncomfortably, feeling like a moron for asking in the first place. He was probably just being paranoid.

"I know I'm probably being stupid, but I'd like some kind of acknowledgement..."

Turning his face, Kaiba stared at Jonouchi for a few seconds, appearing unsure of how to respond. When Jonouchi continued to just stare at him, Kaiba began to appear uneasy. Then he sighed before adjusting his clothes one last time, leaning against the wall with folded hands.

"I didn't think you cared about that sort of thing anymore."

He looked up at Jonouchi questioningly.

"Why does this need an explanation? I thought you were happy with what's been going on between us."

"Well, yeah," Jonouchi blinked, watching Kaiba hesitantly, "But you said before that you weren't interested in a relationship, and never really said anything to the contrary."

Jonouchi felt his chest tightening. He had an ominous feeling about where the conversation was heading. Kaiba was being evasive, which Jonouchi knew wasn't a good sign. Jonouchi hadn't even been confrontational in asking him about it.

"Kaiba," he continued, "I just want to know where we stand. I thought that by now you would have felt differently about dating."

Kaiba averted his eyes, sinking against the wall before appearing to sigh.

"I like what we have," Kaiba stated calmly, "And I don't want to risk it by adding more complications to it. I have enough things on my plate right now without this too."

"Complications?" Jonouchi asked, incredulous.

He stood up, feeling suddenly tense and overly excited all at the same time.

"What the hell do you mean by 'complications'? You're telling me that you were planning to play at being boyfriends so you could just ditch me when you didn't feel like it anymore?"

"No, where did you get an idea like that from?" Kaiba replied, his voice noticeably strained, as if he was trying not to sound offended by Jonouchi's accusation. "I didn't think being all official would matter. You were 'dating' Kitamura, and that had been a disaster. It shouldn't matter what we call this... Just because I don't call you my 'boyfriend' doesn't mean I don't care."

Jonouchi stared at Kaiba for a few seconds before briskly collecting his clothes, starting with his pants.

"But you weren't planning to make any kind of commitment to me at all, is that it? You were going to just go along with what we were doing indefinitely?" continued Jonouchi as he struggled to get his clothes on. "What the fuck is your problem? Did you think it would be okay to treat me like this if you weren't actually that serious? Probably easier for you so you can just tell me to piss off with a clear conscience once you find someone else better to fuck..."

"I'd never do that, Jonouchi." Kaiba argued, his face grimacing. "And I haven't looked at anyone else while we've been together.. Don't sit there trying to villainize me like I've been planning to abandon you when I was under the impression that everything between us was fine. I told you I wasn't looking for a relationship when we first started fooling around, and even though my feelings have changed much since then... I'm not ready for what you're asking for. You don't get to be nasty to me now when you got exactly what I said I was willing to give to you."

"You know exactly what you're doing, Kaiba," Jonouchi accused, "I can't believe this. You can say whatever you want about not being 'ready' for a relationship, but I know it's all horseshit. The only thing you're not ready for is acting like a decent human being that actually feels some emotion every once in a while instead of pretending to be one..."

Jonouchi had finished putting on his clothes. He wanted to continue arguing with Kaiba, hoping to change his mind, but he also wanted to leave. Leave and hide in his apartment. Go in bed and never get out again. Do anything but feel what he was feeling in that moment, his eyes burning as he felt tears threatening to fall down his face. He refused to cry in front of Kaiba, he wasn't going to do that. Jonouchi wiped his face with both his hands, failing to hide the extent of his upset.

"You know what's even worse than you being completely frozen to me?" Jonouchi asked in a tone that was almost hysterical. "The fact that I made this mistake twice. You knew I was in love with you, and you didn't care enough to stop this from happening. How could you do that? What right do you have to take all the benefits of me being in love with you when you know you aren't willing to share them back?

"You never take any responsibility for how shitty you make people feel, and all I can think about is just how fucking disappointed I am in you. Kaiba, you can fool yourself into thinking you're not responsible for anything if you want to, but I'm not going to deal with this anymore."

"That's not fair!" Kaiba started, but Jonouchi was no longer attempting to listen to him.

Grabbing his phone and keys, Jonouchi shoved them both down his back pockets before glancing at the door out of the bedroom. Kaiba stood only a few feet away from it, picking up his briefcase before glancing back Jonouchi's way.

"I'm not going to hang around here any longer while you insult me in my own house," Kaiba muttered, opening the door to leave, "I'll see you later."

"Like hellyou will!" Jonouchi yelled at his back, but the door was already shut before he'd finished.

As per usual, Kaiba was going to go his merry way to leave Jonouchi to deal with his hurt feelings alone.

For a few moments, Jonouchi paced furiously back and forth around the room, tugging at his hair as he fumed. He tried to control the rapid beating of his heart in his chest but there was nothing much he could do about that. Then the rage started to subside, and the absence of that fiery anger left his heart aching and his eyes stinging when tears tempted to fall from them again. He tried taking deep breaths, blocking out his thoughts momentarily in an attempt to calm himself; failing that, he left the room as quickly as possible. If he was going to have a breakdown, he sure as hell wasn't going to do it in Kaiba's bedroom.

Kaiba was already gone by the time a cab arrived. Waiting for it had given Jonouchi plenty of time to feel even worse, to the point that he knew a breakdown would be inevitable. He just hoped he'd manage to get hidden inside Honda's apartment before it hit.

Thinking about everything only made it worse, and the cab ride gave him plenty of time to think. He switched between hopelessly blaming Kaiba, and then himself, feeling like the situation was almost too surreal. He couldn't decide if he was more in disbelief about Kaiba's withdrawal, or the fact that he'd allowed himself to be upset by it.

The latter was honestly more distressing. No matter how much blame he could place on Kaiba, the fact remained that he'd tossed himself into a situation to be used. Again. This time emotionally more than physically.

When Jonouchi got to Honda's place, he practically threw the fare at the cab driver and ran up the stairs to the apartment, knocking urgently on the door so his friend would let him in. The moment it opened, Jonouchi pushed right past Honda and locked himself into the bathroom. Honda seemed aware quickly of the fact that Jonouchi wasn't just going in there because nature called, because he immediately went to the bathroom door and started knocking on it. Jonouchi had just curled up in a corner of the room next to the toilet and ignored Honda's pleading. He couldn't handle having company, much less Honda's. The inevitable reaction to hearing about what had happened was something Jonouchi didn't want to experience yet.

For a few seconds, he just sat in the corner trembling, squeezing his eyes shut and breathing as quietly as possible. As if it would keep him from being noticed by Honda, who was still outside the door. Eventually though, Jonouchi couldn't keep waiting for his friend to leave and he broke down.

It wasn't a very dignified breakdown, either. He sobbed harder than ever before, to the degree that he couldn't control it and it actually hurt his chest just trying to breathe. His face was slick from the abundance of tears and snot streaming down his face, and Jonouchi was also getting drool on the knees of his pants, which he was using to muffle the noise.

It didn't improve with time. He just kept crying, unable to stop even when his mind finally cleared and his sides were in pain from trembling. The tears eventually started to trickle away, but his breathing didn't normalize for quite some time. After a good while, he was sitting quietly, sniffling and shaking occasionally from the chill, feeling exhausted and numb. He was sure Honda must have gone on his way by then, probably deciding he should just leave him to it. Jonouchi continued to sit silently in the dark bathroom for a good five minutes, unmotivated to move even for the sake of collapsing into bed.

He almost jumped when Honda's voice cut through the silence. Jonouchi hadn't heard any footsteps, which meant Honda had snuck up on him, or he'd never left to begin with. Would he have really waited outside the door that whole time?

"Jonouchi?" Honda called, his voice clear but softer than usual.

Maybe he was afraid of triggering another bout of ugly crying.

"What happened?"

Opening his mouth to speak, Jonouchi ended up saying nothing. He had no motivation to speak, for once, but he also didn't want to deal with being rejected if he was forced to tell Honda the truth. When he didn't answer for a while, he heard the door knob creek. Honda must have hoped Jonouchi would have forgotten to lock it. As if.

"Will you let me in?"

"No," Jonouchi replied, his voice hoarse.

He heard Honda mutter something like 'stubborn as usual', and then heard him walking away. Jonouchi felt a brief flash of guilt and a deep sense of abandonment despite wanting to be left alone. The feeling didn't last very long. He heard Honda approaching the door again, and then fiddling with the lock until it clicked.

Honda opened the door, letting the lamplight from the living room stream in as he looked down at him.

"You look terrible," he stated rather bluntly.

Jonouchi just groaned and tried to hide his face by resting his forehead on his knees. Honda sighed.

"Come on, Jonouchi. You aren't going to feel any better if you don't talk about it. I know how you are."

"Piss off."

"Maybe I would if you weren't using the only place to shit as a hiding spot," Honda snorted, sitting beside Jonouchi on the floor when it became obvious that he wasn't moving anytime soon. "I'm your friend. I'm not going to just ignore you when you're obviously having some kind of crisis."

Jonouchi didn't reply. Honda really had no idea what kind of story he was delving into, and he didn't want to reveal it to him. That would just be a shitty way to top off the day... Then again, why not go for gold if he was going to have a miserable time anyway?

"I'm an idiot, Honda," Jonouchi lamented before sniffling again.

He heard Honda snort beside him.

"I've always known that. What happened that was bad enough to turn you into a bawling mess? I haven't seen you like this since middle school."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Yes you do. Did your girlfriend dump you?" Honda queried, deciding to grasp for a solution rather than waiting for Jonouchi to provide one.

Jonouchi simply sighed, and then decided he didn't care enough to lie.

"I never had a girlfriend in the first place," he admitted, and before Honda could ask, he continued, "I came here from Kaiba's place."

"Kaiba?" Honda sounded confused, but then his face got strained like it usually did before the confrontation started.

He always was the first to stop Jonouchi from taking any violent actions against Kaiba, but that didn't mean he wasn't in agreement about disliking him due to personality.

"What did he do? Why did you lie about seeing a girl? You could have just told me..."

"Because-" Jonouchi tried to explain, but ended up cutting himself off.

He lost his nerve. Now he didn't feel like trying again.

"Because why?" Honda pressed, sounding more concerned than anything.

Jonouchi didn't know what to tell him. If he didn't say something soon, Honda would only get more worked up, and Jonouchi knew from experience that he'd definitely go after someone if he thought Jonouchi was being treated poorly.

"Because every time I said I was with a girl, I was actually with him, Honda," Jonouchi stated quietly, trying to beat around the bush as if it would save him from getting hurt somehow.

Honda was silent, and Jonouchi had a feeling he'd put things together, but it didn't stop him from asking futile questions.

"Why would you do that?"

Jonouchi gave up and sighed, curling up a little more tightly to his knees for support. He felt too nervous, and he couldn't see Honda's face, but he could imagine his expression of utter shock.

"Jonouchi, what-" he began before cutting off and spluttering momentarily as he searched for words.

Jonouchi couldn't exactly blame him for being shocked. Honda had always assumed he was straight and Jonouchi had never corrected him.

"Why would you- What did you do?"

"I was trying to get him to be with me," Jonouchi spilled, finally realizing that there was no reason to keep his mouth shut anymore and not caring enough to hold back his words, "I'm such a fucking idiot. I knew better, and I let myself get caught up in him anyway, and of course he was a complete dick as usual-"

"Just stop."

Honda grabbed Jonouchi's shoulders and stared at him. Jonouchi looked at his face, but his head was silhouetted by the light behind him.

"What are you talking about? What the fuck did Kaiba do to you?"

He sounded so confused. There might have been a little anger mixed in there, but mostly Honda seemed flustered and bewildered. Jonouchi realized that his reaction could be considerably worse than that, but he still wasn't looking forward to explaining.

"Kaiba didn't do anything to me," Jonouchi began before his anger flared up in indignation at the statement.

"Ugh," he groaned again, leaning against the wall and feeling choked up as his thoughts came over him.

Was it even possible that he could cry any more than he already had?

"He didn't have to. I just went along with what I wanted when I knew he didn't care as much as I did."

He could hear Honda trying to form sentences, but he was apparently too stunned. Jonouchi resisted the urge to break down again. He didn't want to do it while someone was staring right at him, and he'd embarrassed himself enough for one day.

"Jonouchi," Honda spoke slowly, as if he was trying to carefully choose his words, "I have no idea what's going on, but I can see you're pretty broken up about this..."

He sighed, then gave Jonouchi's shoulders a squeeze. Jonouchi stared at him passively. He'd honestly expected a far worse reaction on Honda's part-upset at the very least, and possibly anger. For the moment, though, he seemed more like he felt bad for him. Which, in turn, made Jonouchi feel horrible for underestimating him.

"Look, if you'll stop hiding and come to the kitchen, I'll make you some ramen and you can tell me what exactly happened, okay?"

Jonouchi hesitated before nodding and letting Honda help him to his feet. Much as he was reluctant to explain the whole story, he couldn't turn down some food to improve his mood. He sat quietly at the table while Honda prepared, and ate quickly when he was presented with a bowl. He hadn't had any breakfast, and the warm, seasoned broth made him feel a little better. Not well by any means, but not in the depths of despair.

Jonouchi did attempt to tell Honda an abridged version of what had been happening between him and Kaiba for the past several months. He left Kitamura out entirely, unwilling to divulge into that and figuring Honda didn't need any more nasty surprises just yet. He also skimmed over the details of his most recent sexual activity with Kaiba. It wasn't as if Honda couldn't assume what had happened a couple days before.

By the time Jonouchi had finished explaining, he felt even more exhausted and depressed. Honda looked as if his entire perception of reality had been shattered, but he didn't say much of anything about it. Jonouchi was surprised by him. He was expecting some kind of berating, or at least uncomfortable questions, but none of that happened. Honda simply tried to make him feel better and said they could always talk more about it later. It looked to Jonouchi like he wanted to talk more about it immediately, but could tell he was too upset to talk anymore.

Jonouchi ended up going to Honda's roommate's bed. No longer hungry and not a complete wreck anymore, he went to bed since he wasn't in any state to discuss his sexuality in detail. The day was already pretty disastrous without that conversation.

As he tried getting comfortable, Honda leaned against the doorframe, probably checking to make sure he was all right.

Jonouchi thought about what had happened, this time without tears. He was still upset, but his eyes were dried out and they stung too much. Jonouchi was far too exhausted to fall back into hysterics, and no matter how broken-hearted he felt, he made himself stay calm.

Kaiba made his choice. There wasn't anything Jonouchi could do about it, and if Kaiba didn't think he was worth the effort of committing to, there wasn't anything Jonouchi could have done to change his mind.

Was he even worth getting this upset over, if he wasn't going to honor their relationship? Jonouchi was sick of feeling used, and throwing a blanket over his head, he quietly sighed before shutting his eyes and trying to fall asleep.