17: Diversionary Tactics
This chapter is rated E.
If you don't like bottom!Kaiba, consider skipping the smutty bits.
Aila Jyrkiäinen was thrashing Fellini. It was the only way to describe such a one-sided battle.
Kaiba and Jounouchi watched the battle from the fighters' box, joined by Iori, Reiji, and Nielsen after they finished their earlier match. The three teenage boys were already becoming fast friends just after Iori and Reiji bested Nielsen in the previous round.
In the beginning, Wing Gundam Fenice had the upper hand. It had wiped out all of the Qubeley's clear funnels— a feat that no one had managed up to this point. Kaiba was almost disappointed when the Qubeley crash-landed in the snow. She had been off since the beginning of the match, demonstrating none of the power or mobility that had been her signature throughout the rest of the competition.
At least until some switch inside her head flipped mid-battle.
She toyed with the Wing Gundam Fenice, cutting it down piece by piece. Given how the markings on her Gunpla glowed with a devilish light, the picture would have been completed by some cruel laughter. But like some mindless killing machine, she never made a squeak as Fellini ranted and raved, fighting back with only one arm and leg remaining. It was a foolish endeavor considering how outmatched he was. And yet...
"Damn it!" Reiji roared and stormed out the viewers' box, followed by the two other boys.
A gasp rippled through the crowd as the Qubeley thrust its lance straight through Fenice's torso. Kaiba knitted his eyebrows in confusion when the Wing Gundam Fenice grabbed onto the lance with its one remaining arm and thrust the weapon deeper through. What would that accomplish?
The inside of Fellini's cockpit turned red.
"Shit, he's going to self-destruct!" Jounouchi exclaimed.
Months ago, Kaiba would have backed a final play like this. If you couldn't win, deny your opponent their victory; ensure that they went down in flames through whatever means necessary. Show yourself no more mercy than you would for your enemies. Gozaburo practiced this salt-the-earth philosophy in business. In the rare instances where he was unsuccessful in the takeover of another company, he'd sacrifice another subsidiary or two to wipe the blight from the market.
It was retribution and a warning to others that the Kaiba Corporation would not stand for any opposition.
But Ricardo Fellini was no Kaiba Gozaburo. Watching Fellini hover on the precipice of self-destruction now helped Kaiba realize something for the first time. Like a child throwing a tantrum because someone took away their toy, this was the mentality of a man who couldn't accept loss.
"You coward!" Kirara's strong voice resonated through the arena without the aid of a microphone. The self-proclaimed "Gunpla Idol" and the tournament's image character marched purposely toward Fellini on stage. "You're so full of yourself. Blow yourself up along with your opponent? You must be kidding! What are you fighting for? To win, right? Even if you lose today, win tomorrow! If not tomorrow, the day after tomorrow! Together with your Fenice!"
Fellini's hand fell away from his console. He remained frozen, but Kaiba could tell that the words were sinking in as his shoulders slumped. The lights inside the cockpit returned to blue, and the overhead monitors faded to black and then to an announcement about his concession.
"We wish to inform the audience that Ricardo Fellini has conceded the match. Aila Jyrkiäinen is the winner," the announcer declared.
"Oh my god, I thought I was going to have a heart attack," Jounouchi sighed and sagged against Kaiba in relief, but it was short-lived. He snapped upright in his seat and asked, "What is she doing?"
The Qubeley pulled its lance back and kicked the impaled Gunpla to the ground. It loomed for a moment, its markings still shining with a malevolent light, before readjusting its grip on its weapon and stabbing the tip into the prone Fenice. Over and over again, the Qubeley pounded its defeated opponent like a demon— like a possessed beast without pity or quarter.
Kaiba's blood boiled. At this rate, the Wing Gundam Fenice was likely to be damaged beyond repair. Fellini had already surrendered, and she had her victory. She was going to the next round of the tournament. So why? What satisfaction could she derive from continuing her assault?
Gozaburo's sneering face surfaced suddenly from Kaiba's memory. It's not enough to defeat your opponents, one must obliterate them so they had no chance of a comeback— crush them like the insects they were.
Balling his fists, Kaiba rose to his feet and moved toward the exit. "Jounouchi!"
But Jounouchi already had his phone pressed to one ear, shouting at whomever was at the other end of the line to shut down the battle computer. Their eyes met and they nodded to each other, before racing off toward the stage. Kaiba needed to put a stop to this. He would not allow Gozaburo's poison to taint this tournament any longer.
His ways were not Gozaburo's— not anymore.
-x-x-x-
The look of hatred and betrayal on Reiji's face dogged Kaiba's every step all the way back to the hotel. "I'll never forgive you," he'd snarled with venom. Equally difficult to forget was Aila Jyrkiäinen's stricken expression when she was unmasked to reveal Reiji's silver-haired friend. Their situation hit too close to home. That had been Jounouchi and him less than 48 hours ago.
"Hey, Kawaguchi, wait up," Jounouchi huffed as he caught up outside of Kaiba's room.
He wrenched the door open and dragged Jounouchi inside as well. Jounouchi was probably expecting a door in the face instead, because he lost his balance over the threshold, crashed into Kaiba, and knocked both of them down to the carpet. Kaiba landed on his back with a pained grunt, while Jounouchi fell flat against his chest.
Jounouchi groaned and sat up, straddling Kaiba's hips. "You okay?"
Kaiba stared up at his builder, his heart pounding a loud and steady beat in his ears. Gozaburo had not taken Jounouchi away, and Kaiba had not driven him away. Jounouchi was here, and that was all that mattered.
Jounouchi's eyebrows creased with worry. "Talk to me, Kaiba. Did you hit your head on the way down?"
His only response was to grab Jounouchi's tie and pull him down. At first, their lips barely touched, sharing the same inhale and exhale of breath. When Jounouchi's eyes softened, Kaiba transferred his hands into his blond hair and arched up to kiss him. Jounouchi sank into the touch, using his hands on both side of Kaiba's head to brace his weight.
The feel of Jounouchi's lips and his solid weight washed over Kaiba. It grounded him in the here and now, chasing away the ghosts of what-almost-was. Slowly and surely, the need to seek reassurance in Jounouchi's presence was displaced by the longing for more.
In the beginning, Jounouchi only gave dainty, closed-mouthed kisses, as if he was afraid that Kaiba might break. Kaiba rolled his eyes and squeezed the back of Jounouchi's neck. When Jounouchi gasped at the sudden pressure, Kaiba pressed his advantage and thrust his tongue into the wet mouth. Jounouchi's groan rippled as a pleasant rumble through Kaiba's body and down his spine. They kissed long and slow, learning and savoring each other's taste and stoking their mutual desire ever higher. Jounouchi panted, his stirring erection trapped against Kaiba's abdomen. Kaiba smirked and jerked his hips, letting Jounouchi feel his arousal.
"Maybe we should move over to the bed," he nipped at the corner of Jounouchi's mouth, causing his eyes to darken with lust.
Jounouchi nodded dumbly before scrambling off of him and over to the nearest bed. He cursed as he struggled with his sneakers' lace while Kaiba toed off his loafers. Kaiba smothered a laugh as Jounouchi hopped up and down on one feet, wrenched off the remaining shoe, and fell back into the mattress with a yelp. He pushed back his hair with one hand, gulping as Kaiba crawled on top of him.
He opened his mouth to say something, but Kaiba was far more interested in other activities than talking. He crushed their lips together, intent on resuming his mission to learn every crevice and cranny of Jounouchi's hot mouth. But as their kisses grew more frenzied and passionate, his sunglasses started to get in the way. Kaiba growled and pulled back, ripping the sunglasses off and tossing them over his shoulder. They hit the wall with a thud. Jounouchi uttered a low "fuck" before biting his lips and staring up with the dazed look of someone who had been hit over the head. Kaiba answered with a feral grin and loosen his cravat instead.
"Shit, I thought we were going to take this slow. Are we really doing this?" Jounouchi asked, before looking like he instantly regretted the question. Kaiba might even call the reaction adorable.
He pulled the fabric loose from his shirt collar and let it fall to the bed. He raised one imperious eyebrow and said, "We can stop if you'd rather." He swung one leg off the bed and eased back.
One of Jounouchi's hands caught his hip and held fast. "Don't you dare."
Kaiba smirked, shrugging off the Meijin's long black coat and stripping off his gloves. Jounouchi's wide eyes lingered on his newly exposed hands. Before Kaiba could stop him, the builder caught one hand and pressed a smile and a firm kiss to the palm.
The unexpectedly tender gesture caused his heart to skip a beat. To cover his own discomfort, he rubbed Jounouchi's covered crotch, enjoying the breath shuddering through body pinned beneath. "Do you have some kind of hand fetish, Jounouchi?" he teased.
Jounouchi smiled cockily and flirted back, "What can I say? I'm a builder. Is there some other part I should be paying attention to?"
In one swift motion, Kaiba grabbed Jounouchi's hair with one hand, yanked his head back for another searing kiss, and undid Jounouchi's fly with the other. He stroked his tongue over Jounouchi's and ran the tip across his palate. Jounouchi tasted like salvation, and Kaiba could worship at its altar for the rest of his life. Hands now shaking with anticipation, his fingers fumbled with the pant's button. He was ready to tear the fabric apart with his bare hands when the obnoxious button finally gave way.
When they broke for air again, Jounouchi laughed, deep and heady, even as Kaiba wiggled one hand under his boxer's waistband to grasp his straining cock.
"Up," Kaiba ordered and yanked the pants down as soon as Jounouchi inched his hips off the mattress.
"God, you're going to be a bossy motherfucker even in bed, aren't you?"
Kaiba chose not to dignify him with an answer, instead sliding down and swallowing the length of Jounouchi's erection. The reaction was instantaneous— Jounouchi bucked with a fevered moan. Kaiba eased back along the shaft to catch his breath, but Jounouchi wove his fingers into his hair and pulled him closer. Kaiba breathed slowly through his nose, reveling in the scent of Jounouchi's arousal. His head swam, too full of new discoveries about Jounouchi and too empty of any other concern save for the man squirming beneath him. When Jounouchi finally whined in need, Kaiba flattened his tongue and dragged it back and forth across the underside of the shaft.
"Dammit, Seto—"
He rewarded the use of his given name with a hard suck and a firm tug on his balls, causing Jounouchi to cry out hoarsely.
Above him, Jounouchi couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Shit, I'm not ever going to be able to look at your lips and not see them wrapped around my cock like this. You have no idea what you look like right now."
Kaiba had a few guesses: flushed and debauched probably chief among them. He kept working— sucking, licking, and massaging— until his jaw, throat, and cheeks began to ache. Every time his cock hit the back of his throat, hunger stabbed deep in his belly. Through his bangs, he watched Jounouchi's sweaty face, almost agonized by the pleasure, and a fierce sense of pride swept through him. He would the only one to reduce Jounouchi to this gibbering mess. He wasn't surprised that Jounouchi couldn't keep quiet during sex any more than he could at any other given time. Fuck, in fact, he preferred it this way. With each praise that spilled from Jounouchi's swollen lips, the tension in his groin coil tighter and hotter. He moaned around the flesh between his lips and reached down to touch himself. He had never been so hard before in his life.
"Fuck, Seto, I'm could come just from watching you. Oh my god, you should see how your ass is wiggling around like—"
Jounouchi jerked erratically, fingers tightening in his hair until roots started separating from the scalp. No, not yet! Kaiba wasn't ready to let him come, even if he desperately wanted to taste Jounouchi. There would be other opportunities for that, but today, he had other plans. Ripping his head out of Jounouchi's grasp, he gripped the base of Jounouchi's cock to stave off his orgasm. Kaiba's lungs burned as he struggled to catch his breath again. Each exhale caused Jounouchi's erection to twitch, a pearl of pre-cum balanced precariously on the head.
"Why the fuck did you stop?! I swear to God if you're messing with me." Jounouchi cried hysterically, bringing both hands up to cover his flushed face. His burning eyes peeked out between his fingers, smoldering with a promise that electrified every nerve ending in Kaiba's body.
Kaiba ripped off his uniform jacket and shirt, before starting on his pants. Climbing out of the bed, he swiftly undid his pants and dropped both it and his underwear to the floor. Jounouchi gave a strangled gasp and his hands fell to his side, fisting in the bedsheets.
"No, Jounouchi, I'm going to ride you," he purred. "Now strip."
Jounouchi was naked in seconds, delayed only when his feet got tangled in his pant legs. A part of Kaiba wondered if he could motivate Jounouchi to work as quickly in other contexts, but the train of thought was cut short by Jounouchi's strong arms dragging him back into bed. The next several moments were lost in a haze of skin and sweat as they tried to touch and suck on every bare inch of flesh. Kaiba hissed as Jounouchi bit down particularly hard on the cord of his neck. Almost as an apology, Jounouchi laved his tongue over the sore spot.
Kaiba wrenched his head away and muttered darkly, "Careful. You're lucky that my uniform has a high collar." He fingered the tender spot that was bound to bruise as brilliantly as the other marks now littering his torso.
Jounouchi grinned mischievously, and Kaiba resisted the urge to cuff his ears like a misbehaving pet. Deciding he had enough foreplay, Kaiba reached for the bottle of lotion on the nightstand. It wasn't ideal, but it would do in a pinch. Judging by the angry red of both their erections, neither of them was going to last long.
Jounouchi caught his wrist and tossed bottle aside. He shook his head. "Get the conditioner from the bathroom. It's more slippery. I don't wanna hurt you."
"I'm fine." A little pain had never bothered Kaiba. The one good thing to come out of his upbringing was that he'd developed a higher than average pain tolerance.
"Okay, then one of us has to get dressed and go buy some actual lube," Jounouchi released him and folded his arms over his chest. "We can play rock-paper-scissor for it."
Kaiba gawked at him. "You can't be serious."
Jounouchi cast his gaze toward the ceiling and said nothing more.
Kaiba growled. Fine, he could see that Jounouchi wasn't going to budge on the issue. He stormed into the bathroom and retrieved the two bottles of complimentary hair conditioner set on the sink. Returning to bed, Kaiba chucked both bottles at his head.
Jounouchi caught them both with a shit-eating grin. "C'mon," he patted the mattress.
Kaiba glared, but a pointed look at his engorged penis convinced him to climb back into bed. "Have you ever...?" he trailed off as his bravado finally wavered.
Jounouchi nodded and squeezed a generous dollop from the bottle. He drew Kaiba in for another deep yet tender kiss. He trailed one hand down the contour of Kaiba's spine, petting each vertebrae, as the other smeared gel over his entrance. Soon, the room was filled with the heady smell of cedar and amber. He wondered if his lust was finally driving him crazy with olfactory hallucinations until he realized it must be the conditioner. Kaiba shuddered every time fingers brushed over him without pushing in, but he refused to beg.
He refused to beg.
"Hurry the fuck up," he snapped as his patience reached its limit, which was apparently what Jounouchi had been waiting for.
Kaiba hissed sharply as Jounouchi's slippery finger finally penetrated the ring of tight muscle. Breathing through both his mouth and nose, he forced his body to relax around the intrusion. He used the rest of the bottle of conditioner to coat Jounouchi's shaft, letting the feel of his eager flesh distract him from the second finger slowly working its way into him. This was taking too long, and Kaiba had made his concession to Jounouchi's "sensibility" by getting the conditioner. He wanted more, and he was tired of waiting. They danced around each other for months. This was the only inevitable outcome between them.
He leaned forward, tightened his grip, and whispered against Jounouchi's ear. "Your cock may be up my ass, but don't forget that I'm fucking you, Jounouchi." He bit his earlobe for emphasis.
"Fuck!" Jounouchi's whole arm shook as he pumped his fingers deep into Kaiba.
Kaiba laughed, easing himself off Jounouchi's fingers and lining the head of his cock with his entrance. Even if he was the one on the receiving end, he enjoyed being in control too much to relinquish it just yet. Jounouchi's hands moved forward to hold Kaiba's hips, as hot as brands on Kaiba's skin. Jounouchi's eyes were so dark and wild.
Baring his teeth, Kaiba commanded, "Say it."
His thundering heart threatened to pound out of his rib cage.
"Please, Seto," Jounouchi pled breathlessly. "Fuck me."
Groaning, Kaiba threw his head back and impaled himself on Jounouchi's cock. The combination of pain and pleasure sent an electric shock racing up his spine, forcing the air from his lungs until he was dizzy and panting. He gave himself a moment to adjust, enjoying the way Jounouchi's girth stretched him. He sucked a matching bruise high on Jounouchi's neck, momentarily calming the hot and dark possessive streak coursing through his veins. Jounouchi looked like the very picture of control on the verge of shattering— eyes screwed shut and chest heaving with every body-shaking breath while he molded a set of matching hand-prints on Kaiba's waist.
"Open your eyes or I won't move," he said harshly.
Jounouchi's eyes snapped open on command. Kaiba rewarded his compliance with a rise and fall of his hips, wringing a strangled gasp from Jounouchi. Jounouchi rose to meet him on the third thrust. On the fourth, Jounouchi wiggled into a seated position for better leverage, driving his cock so deep that he choked with need. To hell with drawing this out, there would be more opportunities for that later. Kaiba tugged on his jutting erection, urged ever closer to the edge by Jounouchi's frenzied chant of "Seto, fuck, you're so tight." Jounouchi's calloused hand rubbing on his glans and the first drag across his prostate finally broke the dam.
Kaiba went rigid— his mouth falling open in a silent cry as he came over their intertwined hands and Jounouchi's stomach.
Jounouchi pulled him close for a biting kiss before emptying himself after two more shallow thrusts. Kaiba moaned, feeling his insides grow slicker with every twitch of Jounouchi's cock. He collapsed onto Jounouchi's broad chest, letting the other man soothe his frayed nerves with gentle caresses and lazy kisses.
No one would ever take Jounouchi Katsuya away from him.
-x-x-x-
"Are you sure you're okay?" Jounouchi asked for the fifth time.
"I'm sure. If you ask me once more—" Kaiba's tirade died, cut off by a gentle nudge of Jounouchi's fingers and a firm press of his lips. After Jounouchi pulled away, he growled, "You were doing that on purpose."
Jounouchi, already redressed in his work uniform after a shower, shrugged. "Maybe a little bit. I mean, I'm kinda worried. But considering how quickly you went back to your normal, snarly self, I'm not that worried."
"Good, then go already. Or you'll be late for your meeting with Bakura." Using one hand to keep the towel secured around his waist, he turned Jounouchi around with the other and pushed him toward the door.
"Yeah, yeah," Jounouchi rolled his eyes and started on lacing up his sneakers.
Satisfied with the response, Kaiba turned away and considered his creased uniform discarded on the floor. Jounouchi might be able to get away with the rumpled look, but Kaiba needed to look his best in the battle arena. He would ask hotel services to deliver him a fresh one for tomorrow. Sighing, he bent over to retrieve the Meijin overcoat. But as he was able to grasp the dark fabric, a firm grip tugged on his upper arm and pulled him back into standing position.
Kaiba pivoted to scold Jounouchi, who grinned and walked him back into the writing desk. When Kaiba hit the edge of the table, he tried to look over his shoulder to check on his laptop. But Jounouchi's hands though, one planted around his neck and the other cradling the small of his back, held him firmly in place.
"I'll see you later tonight?" Jounouchi asked, a little heated and more than a touch throaty.
He nodded.
Jounouchi kissed him again— long and sweetly. He responded, aching but refusing to tremble. Maybe he trembled a little…
After Jounouchi left, Kaiba dressed and deliberated on his next move. His current situation was not a status quo to be maintained or tolerated. He needed to break Gozaburo's hold: over him, over the tournament, and over PPSE. But challenging his father, and Noa by extension, was no trivial task.
Involving Jounouchi would only place him in the line of fire. Kaiba couldn't let that happen, not after how far his father went to eliminate the last Meijin. Jounouchi would be mad— no, make that furious. But Kaiba would do best to not disappoint him. He could learn to be brave and good like Jounouchi. This was his fight— his war to win.