19: Because you told me that my weakness is my strength

Chapter is rated M; some smut in the last scene.

Planning a break-in was more difficult than Kaiba expected. Perhaps he should apologize to Jounouchi for mocking him for failing to burglar Adam's home all those years ago. He laid on his hotel bed, mentally mapping out the corridors of the auxiliary building that housed Technical Sciences. Noa had sent him detailed schematics of the corporate headquarters; which only meant Gozaburo had other moles lying in wait at PPSE.

Kaiba's own PPSE credentials opened doors everywhere else on company grounds except for where he needed to go. For Technical Sciences, he would need administrator-level access. Baker was present at the stadium babysitting Mashita at the tournament. Getting close enough to swipe her company badge was the greatest obstacle though, and both her proximity to Mashita and her die-hard professionalism made her a poor candidate. She was likely to notice a missing badge before he had the chance to clone and return it.

As Chief Engineer, Adam's company badge would also work. But like Baker, he was too smart and too cautious now to lose track of it. Kaiba hadn't seen Adams since that day he found out the third Meijin still lived, but he knew for a fact that the engineer had been lurking around the tournament since day one. If he was to approach Adams in person, it would rouse not only his but also Yuuki Tatsuya's suspicions. All of which was likely to come back to him in the form of an irate Jounouchi.

With a pang of regret, Kaiba decided that Yuugi would have to do.

-x-x-x-

Jounouchi pressed a palm to Kaiba's cool forehead. "Are you sick?" he asked half-joking and half-disbelieving.

He'd spent most of the morning tuning the Legilis. To his surprise, Kaiba had been the one to track him down in the workshop and convince him to take a break. It was a strange reversal in their usual roles.

Kaiba rolled his eyes and brushed his hand away. He wore a pinched expression that was the Kaiba version of pouting. "I won't ask again then."

Maybe he felt lonely and was reluctant to admit it. Jounouchi grabbed his elbow as he was about to turn away.

"Wait, lemme put away everything and we can check out the festival together." He smiled in that way he knew would make Kaiba pause and reconsider. His heart sped up. It could be like a date, but Jounouchi knew better than to say it aloud. Kaiba was liable to storm out and ignore him for the rest of the week if he even hinted at the idea.

Kaiba nodded, and Jounouchi scrambled to lock the Legilis and his tools away. Good thing his laziness won out earlier; otherwise Jounouchi'd have to go back to his room to change out of his work uniform. He didn't want to give Kaiba any excuse to change his mind. Who knew what his next chance to for a not-date would be?

He jammed the case into the safe and slammed the door close. The electronic lock engaged as he twirled to face Kaiba again. "Let's go!"

In the week between the end of the semi-finals and the final match, PPSE and several other sponsors organized a Gunpla festival. Traditionally, it was a big a draw as the final battle in the championship. Jounouchi once read that the festival alone accounted for almost 40 percent of Shizuoka's annual tourism revenue.

This year's may be the biggest one yet.

There were food stands as far as the eye could see. Jounouchi was hard-pressed to pick something first. Someone was grilling squid on a skewer several feet away. Everyone else around them was munching on Haro-shaped taiyakis. It was a good thing that competitors ate for free, so at least his wallet wouldn't suffer— just his waistline.

A finger tilted his chin up and snapped his mouth closed.

"Jounouchi, you're drooling," Kaiba scolded him softly. Jounouchi would like to think he did so affectionately.

Confounded by the various choices, he turned to the other man for advice. "What do you want to eat first?"

Kaiba sighed, "You have an incredibly one-tracked mind." Despite his complaint, he motioned to a nearby stand serving yakisoba.

Further down the stretch of stalls, he spotted Reiji, Sei, Aila, and another girl with glasses in a group. They were all smiling and laughing with one another. Sei then looked his way, and the younger builder waved upon recognizing him. Jounouchi waved back with equal enthusiasm.

"It appears that everything has worked out between them." Kaiba's voice rumbled right above his ear.

Jounouchi craned his neck to look into his face. Kaiba was standing so close, practically pressed against his back. "Yeah, they had a good battle yesterday. Did you watch it?"

Much to Jounouchi's disappointment, Kaiba ran off to do some errand or other right after their battle with Mai. He didn't return to the stadium afterwards, not even after Reiji and Sei finished their battle with Aila. He found him back at the hotel instead, typing furiously into his laptop and shunning Jounouchi as he worked. Dejected, Jounouchi went back to his own room and tried to distract himself with manga. When Kaiba sought him out again later that night, he was in a marginally better mood, but Jounouchi still sensed he was troubled.

Kaiba nodded. "I did. Although they were flirting more than battling. But what was that sudden light in the middle of the battle?"

Jounouchi shrugged. The battle started out tense and brutal, similar to Aila's previous fight with Ricardo Fellini. Even though Sei had brilliantly packed the vulcan bullets with paint to mark the Qubeley's transparent funnels, the two teenagers soon found themselves on the defensive when the Qubeley's markings started to glow. Jounouchi had feared that it would soon end in tears for somebody. Another minute later, two sources of golden light originating from both fighters' cockpit nearly blinded everyone in the arena. Afterwards, the mood did a complete 180— no more cheap tricks, just pure unadulterated battling. Reiji and Sei won, and whatever bad blood existed between Reiji and Aila vanished afterwards. Jounouchi counted it as a success and he couldn't be happier for them.

He nudged Kaiba in the ribs and joked, "Who knows? Maybe it was the light of the human heart?"

Kaiba snorted. At the front of the line, he paid the vendor for two platters of yakisoba, shoving one into Jounouchi's waiting hand. Jounouchi was about to point out his mistake, but his stomach did funny flip-flops at the thought of Kaiba paying for him on their not-date. Goddamn, he was getting all sappy.

Before inhaling a mouthful of noodles, Jounouchi asked, "They're going to be our opponents in the final match. Aren't you excited?"

Jounouchi, for one, couldn't wait to see how their Imperial Legilis measured up to the Star Build Strike's RG System. Iori Sei's Gunpla remained one of the most creatively engineered models to come out of this year's competition. Kaiba may have doubted their abilities at first, but Jounouchi never did. From the first moment he laid eyes on it, he knew it would be their final opponent at the end of the tournament.

Kaiba looked back over at the group of teenagers, a strange and muted light in his blue eyes. Jounouchi was still learning how to read him, but he could make out the dash of regret mixed with something else. Was he afraid of losing? But there was no shame in losing to honorable opponents like Iori Sei, Reiji, and their Star Build Strike. Aila, Fellini, and others were proof of that. Jounouchi wanted his partner to recognize how damaging the all-consuming desire to win at any cost was. That was not just true of Gunpla battling, but of life in general. He swore that if he ever had the chance to meet Kaiba Gozaburo, he would punch the asshole good for the number he did to Seto.

Then Kaiba blinked and his face cleared, calm as the surface of a frozen lake. "You're excited enough for the both of us, Jounouchi," he drawled. "You're like an overgrown puppy."

Jounouchi kicked him in the shin and strolled over to the yakitori stand. Served the jerk right.

-x-x-x-

For the rest of the afternoon, they browsed the stalls, peeking into the Gunpla building classes and some of the fights in the Free Battle corner. They watched Fellini trounce several opponents with his newly rebuilt Wing Gundam Fenice Rinascita, but his win streak ended at the hands of Kirara's pink Gerbera Tetra Custom.

Jounouchi couldn't remember the last time he had this much fun joking and hanging out with someone. There was one thing that bugged him though.

Kaiba turned heads everywhere they went, no doubt due to his personal cocktail of tall, handsome, and haughty. High-school girls clad in their uniforms were the worst offenders. They moved in groups, giggling and mooning at Kaiba when they flocked past. Not for the first time, Jounouchi wondered why no one recognized him as Meijin Kawaguchi the Fourth. It should be obvious even to blind people. While he cut a very dashing figure in the Meijin costume, he was no less handsome and only slightly less distracting outside of it. Less distracting for Jounouchi anyway— these days, thoughts about that trench coat and sunglasses were often accompanied by a punch of lust deep in his gut.

He studied his partner (could he even call him his boyfriend?) out of the corner of his eyes. Today, Kaiba wore khakis and a blue button-down shirt that brought out the color of his eyes. Shit, Jounouchi did not just think that. Shit, he was full-on staring now. Kaiba smirked as he brushed a firm hand against the small of his back. Feeling his face grow warm, Jounouchi shivered despite the summer temperature.

Bastard.

"What now?" Jounouchi asked, trying to ignore the gut-wrenching arousal awakened by Kaiba's touch. Even though it was now early evening, the crowd had yet to thin. In fact, more people kept coming out of the woodwork.

"I need to meet Yuugi by the statues soon."

He blinked in surprise. "Oh, lead the way then."

One of the festival attractions included the life-size 1-1 scale Gundam models from Odaiba. Every year, a new feature was added to the two models of the RX-78-2 Gundam and the MS-06S Zaku II Commander Type. Organizers were letting people sit in the actual cockpit this year, which meant that the area was going to be insanely crowded. Thankfully, Kaiba was tall enough to see over most people and Yuugi and his crazy hair had the good sense to stand apart from the main throng of people queuing up.

"Kaiba-kun, Jounouchi-kun, congratulations!" Yuugi greeted, still dressed in his PPSE uniform, having came straight from work.

"Thank you for making the trip over here, Yuugi." Kaiba inclined his head politely in his version of a bow.

"It's no trouble at all," Yuugi smiled and passed a backpack over to him.

Unable to contain his curiosity, Jounouchi asked, "What's that?"

"Kaiba-kun asked me to bring him some extra clothes from his apartment."

Jounouchi laughed. "Shit, what's his place like?"

"Clean, unlike yours," Kaiba muttered loudly.

He pouted, "How come I've never been there?" Jounouchi was fishing, but it seemed unfair that Yuugi had keys to Kaiba's place and he hadn't even seen it before. The sleeping-together-thing was a recent development in their relationship, but he and Kaiba had been friends beforehand.

"Maybe I'll invite you over after the championship," Kaiba's lips twisted up with the hint of a promise.

Fuck, that lust burned like a wildfire now. He wanted nothing more than to get Kaiba alone somewhere and to pay him back for all the teasing. Instead, Kaiba turned to Yuugi and invited him back to the hotel for tea and more conversation. Jounouchi trailed behind them, silently cursing Kaiba's sudden desire to socialize. Judging by the few over-the-shoulder glances that Kaiba threw at him, Jounouchi was in for a long night.

-x-x-x-

As soon as Yuugi was out the door, Kaiba found himself backed against a wall with an armful of Jounouchi and a firm thigh inserted between his legs. He always forgot that Jounouchi was stronger than he let on. Jounouchi was also an annoyingly good kisser— but Kaiba didn't like to think about where he acquired that vast pool of experience from. Not only was his mouth hot against Kaiba's, his hands were working under his shirt after pulling the hem loose from his waistband. Kaiba felt his knees weakened, forcing him to rely on the wall to keep him upright. One hand drifted south to grope his buttocks and Kaiba froze up.

Yuugi's company ID, which he had lifted earlier, was like a lead weight in the other back pocket not cradled by Jounouchi's palm.

Thankfully, Jounouchi sensed the change in mood and peeled away with a concerned expression. "What's—"

Kaiba pushed him away and stalked over to the window. Shit, for a moment, he'd almost forgotten about Noa's surveillance bugs, which were still in place. He glared at the framed landscape picture on the wall that contained one of Noa's pinhole cameras. As much as he wanted nothing more than to rip out every last one, doing so would only make his actions suspicious to Noa. But it also didn't mean he should present his older brother with any further ammunition to use.

Jounouchi looked lost and more than a little hurt. "Did I do something wrong?"

Kaiba blurted out the first excuse that came to mind, "I have work to do tonight." Which was true, but he still felt like an ass for saying it.

"Oh," Jounouchi cast his gaze down at the floor and shuffled his feet. "Sorry, I'll get out of your hair then." Before Kaiba could apologize, he was gone.

Kaiba slumped against the window pane and scrubbed one hand across his face. Despite everything, he still could have handled that better. He would have to make it up to Jounouchi later. He set his feelings aside and concentrated on the task at hand. Right now, his first priority was Yuugi's ID badge.

Copying the card's credentials was easy enough given the right equipment, which Kaiba had acquired earlier that morning. The entire process took less fifteen minutes once he had the equipment and programs set up on his laptop. With this, he could grant access to his own company ID or print a copy of Yuugi's to use. The latter option was less likely to rouse suspicions.

Now he needed to alert Yuugi about his company badge. His work would be for naught if Yuugi reported the card missing and security reset his credentials.

There was a new message written in English waiting in his inbox. It read: "Location confirmed. Making arrangements now." He deleted it after reading it.

He composed a new email to Yuugi that simply said, "You dropped your PPSE ID in my room. I'll bring it to you in the morning."

Yuugi's reply came almost immediately. "Oh thank goodness! I didn't even notice I dropped that! orz You're a lifesaver, Kaiba-kun!"

Despite overcoming his first hurdle, Kaiba cringed. Yuugi suspected nothing out of the ordinary, but Kaiba didn't feel any better about taking advantage of his childhood acquaintance. All he could do now was minimize the fallout to himself and no one else. It was the least he could do for Yuugi and Jounouchi's sake. He firmed his resolve and set out on his next task: locating the transmitter receiving the data from Noa's surveillance bugs.

-x-x-x-

The last thing Jounouchi expected was for Kaiba to come into the workshop the next morning and to place those two items on his table. He stared at the bottle of lube and package of condoms like he had never seen them before. Several moments later, he heard Kaiba growl in frustration before his chair was yanked back and Kaiba climbed onto his lap. Jounouchi didn't need to be told twice after that.

Sex in the workshop— Jounouchi fantasized what that'd be like several times before. He'd never done it before. Sleeping with a coworker was risky, and he knew better than to try and sneak someone into PPSE for a quick romp. Not to mention, he'd been too infatuated with one Kaiba Seto for months to consider anyone else. It was better than he imagined— the perfect mix of novelty and almost dirty-wrong. Maybe it wasn't so much the locale as his partner.

After last night's awkward rejection, Jounouchi briefly wondered if Kaiba was uncomfortable with sex unless he was the one to initiate. If true, that would definitely become a problem in the future. Jounouchi didn't do passive; at least not a hundred percent of the time. He liked giving his partners pleasure as much as he liked receiving it.

As if he sensed Jounouchi's concern, Kaiba, though not quite docile, was more permissive than usual. He let Jounouchi dictate the pace, even if he complained bitterly about it. But Jounouchi always managed to momentarily quiet him with a lick here and a bite there. Now buried deep in Kaiba, Jounouchi drew out each thrust until he could hear the faint whine in his voice and the hitch in his breath.

"Faster, dammit." Blunt fingernails dug hard enough into his back to break skin.

"Nope."

Jounouchi turned his head sideways to nip at the milky thigh slung over his shoulder. He paused mid-move to admire the mark he made.

Kaiba glared, but it dissolved into a gasp as soon as he snapped his hips forward. His head knocked back against the workbench with a soft thud. Deciding to take pity on him, Jounouchi braced one arm against the wooden surface and wrapped a fist around his neglected arousal. Kaiba arched off the table, hands raking across Jounouchi's back and scrambling for purchase. Fuck, watching him unravel like this more than made up for last night.

"Are you close?" he asked breathlessly, driving over and over into the hot and tight body underneath him. He pumped the cock in his hand in time with each thrust.

Kaiba's lips fell open to say something, but the only sound to emerge was a choked moan. Instead, he nodded and craned his neck to deliver a sharp-edged kiss to the corner of Jounouchi's mouth.

"Fuck, you're gorgeous."

"Stop yapping, it's—" he groaned and shuddered. "Distracting."

"You can't make me," he laughed, a little drunk and dizzy with love.

Kaiba tried to muster another death glare, but Jounouchi knew exactly how to handle him now. When Kaiba climaxed, tight around his cock and wet between his fingers, Jounouchi felt like he was watching him shatter and reform all at once. Kaiba's defenseless expression pushed Jounouchi over the edge with a frantic "I love you" rolling off his tongue.

They remained entangled for several moments as they regained their breath. The Jounouchi's muscles screamed and burned from exertion. He pulled out and let down Kaiba's quivering legs. Kaiba sat up and rolled his neck with a wince. It turned out that workbenches weren't the most comfortable surface to have sex on. Jounouchi stripped and tied off the used condom, wrapping it in tissues for disposal later. He almost laughed at the cringe on Kaiba's face when he wiped the semen from his stomach. As soon as he finished, Jounouchi wound both arms around his waist and buried his face in the crook of his neck.

"I'm gonna insist on a bed next time. Or at least a sofa," Jounouchi joked halfheartedly.

"What's wrong, Jounouchi? I always figured you'd be the adventurous type," Kaiba taunted, but its bite was softened by the hand running through Jounouchi's hair.

He sighed contently and tightened his embrace, pressing his face into the crook of Kaiba's neck. Kaiba smelled like sex and the hotel soap. He pressed a soft kiss and smile against the fluttering pulse point. "We can always try over a battle console next time," he teased.

Kaiba tensed in his arms.

"Chill, I was just joking." Well, sorta— Jounouchi wasn't opposed to experimentation if Kaiba was up to it.

"What would you do if I wasn't Meijin Kawaguchi?"

Still blissed out from his orgasm and the endorphin flooding his system, the question caught Jounouchi off-guard completely. He lifted his head from its comfortable resting spot and scrunched his forehead in concern. "Huh? What are you talking about? Even if you weren't the Meijin, I'd still love you for you."

Kaiba may have been able to brush off the last "I love you" as some orgasmic slip of the tongue, but he couldn't ignore it a second time. A lump formed in Jounouchi's throat, making it hard to breathe. Nobody ever accused him of lacking courage, just brains. Jounouchi Katsuya loved Kaiba Seto for all his strengths and his flaws, and he wasn't going to pretend it was anything but the truth.

But to say it out loud was a gamble. Jounouchi should know better than to gamble— given his history and his father's history. Everything about their relationship was a gamble from the start: from their first meeting, to being partners, to becoming friends. That had all paid off so far.

Kaiba's unreadable gaze roved over his face, and he seized the chance to study the man in return. Jounouchi had always been fascinated by Kaiba's face, not only because he was classically handsome. Kaiba was more than capable of a convincing poker face, but he often didn't bother to. Most of the time, he didn't mince his words anyway. When someone tested his patience, his growing temper became apparent in the pinched corner of his lips. He smirked, furrowed his brows, and rolled his eyes with the rest of humanity. The only time he tried to hide his feelings was when he felt uneasy or when his disdain turned inward. Both of which happened nowadays more than Jounouchi liked because of Kaiba Noa and Gozaburo's interference.

But Kaiba's eyes, blue as cobalt and often steely with resolve, was his best feature. Maybe that's why no one recognized him out of the Meijin outfit, because the sunglasses hid one of his most distinctive traits from the rest of the world. Watching Kaiba's expression slacken into something less unnaturally neutral, Jounouchi's chest ached. His heart swelled with unspeakable tenderness for this difficult and bullheaded man. There was so much potential for good and love inside him if he'd let it happen. He kissed the seam of Kaiba's mouth and then the hard slant of his cheekbones, trying to mend together the tattered edges. Kaiba jolted under the touch, tensing and then relaxing as he slid one arm down Jounouchi's neck to rest on the small of his back.

"Does sex always make you this mushy?" Kaiba's tone was light and casual as he spoke. His eyes were unclouded and clear of the doubt previously lurking there.

It wasn't a rejection. Even more importantly, it wasn't a denial of how Jounouchi felt. Kaiba accepted his feelings, even if he didn't know how to respond yet. Jounouchi could wait for a little longer. There was no guarantee they wouldn't end in heartbreak, but he dared to hope.

It was always better to choose hope.