Murderous Love

Title: Murderous Love

Chapter Title: Killer Equal

Author: Orangeaura868 a.k.a. O. S. Acious

Rating: PG-13

Genre(s): AU

Pairing(s): Seto/Jou

Spoilers: Set after high school graduation, anything is fair game.

Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh does not belong to me

Betas: I should get one. Seriously.

Little dragon : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/little_Dragon/

*****

“So in my mind that makes us equal.”

There. In the serene confines of his own mind, he could find something strangely wrong with the whole arrangement. It was outrageous how he had never considered this situation from the very beginning: a fellow classmate of his was now a contact killer that was working under him. And yet, it wasn’t exactly that either. There was a certain perversity in how he had reacted that he knew he should be punished for. It would have been different had he been thinking of the reward of the God Cards for returning this stray mutt back to the pound. But, it never even occurred to him that there was a reward on Jounouchi. And Kaiba Seto couldn’t quite say he was focused on recovering his kidnaped brother either, so riveted he was on finding him.

What was this feeling classified as? As close as he could figure, it was akin to the delight of a young child finding a particular favorite toy that they had lost. He need not have reminded himself that he had never been a child, and thus could not truly recognize the raw feeling of a child and a regained toy. Pet. Mutt. Puppy.

Sitting in his posh, black leather office chair Seto found himself unable to quite concentrate. At all. His mind had gone on an extended vacation but his body had not. He was still in his expensive, dark, office, and the sudden metaphor of a child had almost made him want to spin around until he was too dizzy to know right from left. Up from down. From what was right in front of his face to something he could never obtain.

The young CEO reminded himself that he liked to be able to think clearly, despite how his clarity was as clear as what was now his fifth cup of coffee; he’d been drinking all day to keep from falling asleep in his utterly spin-able chair. Honestly, who would like to think on percents and percentages when someone from a seemingly far behind past had dared suggested they could be equals? The man leaned back against the chair thinking on more important things. It was only a Sunday after all.

Seto could recall Friday with startling clearness, unlike his coffee-mucked-up state over the present. But Friday had been different. Friday had been the second day that he had not seen his younger brother. He was honestly beginning to lose pieces of hard earned sanity. Friday had been when he’d lost it all.

Jou had come visiting.

A cheerful doorbell rang through the hollow halls and echoed in his ears. Seto took the second needed to remove his glasses and got up from his office after the third time the annoying pealing rang through his house. The maid got off early on Friday, he remembered. Seto walked confidently to the door, half expecting a child asking for donations to some cause. Instead he found a pizza delivery boy.

“Delivery for a Kaiba Seto,” the delivery boy announced monotonously, holding a pizza box in one hand.

“What? I didn’t ask for a pizza...” Seto said with a hint of irritated distaste. He was cut off when the delivery boy lifted the lid to show a single piece of paper tacked onto the underside of the lid.

Someone might be spying. By now they will have expected you to question whether such an inferior race of a human being got the right pizza you ordered...

Seto paused to scoff.

...so the poor delivery boy would be lifting back the lid of the pizza box. The cynical CEO would than scrutinize the contents with intense suspicion and concentration. Nod your head twice. Open the door a little wider. Show me inside.

Seto followed the commands, noticing that the pizza delivery boy had a set of smiling green eyes and freckles.

The lid came down, and Jou walked safely inside the Kaiba Mansion. He tugged off the black wig and shook out his own dyed red hair. Seto was about to say something insulting when he heard another voice from behind.

“My turn.”

The brunette turned to see another young man decked out in the same Pizza Pagoda uniform. He struggled to keep his eyes from widening as Jou handed over the wig to his partner and as they traded parts.

“See you back at base, boss,” the man said before smirking once at Seto, and leaving.

“Sure thing, Black Spider,” Jou answered in a happy tone. He waved once before turning back to Seto with his altered appearance.

“Drastic measures?”

“Not at all, there’s been improvement on your case,” Jou replied simply.

“Already?” Seto asked incredulously.

Jou had sighed then and plopped himself down on a soft couch in the living room that was juxtaposed to the foyer.

“Ya know, for a ‘genius’ you ask a bunch load of questions, Moneybags,” Jou said with a frown. “Don’t underestimate me, either.”

“I see. Then what do you have for me?”

Jou held up a hand. “Not yet; let me explain the circumstances in case you aren’t quick in catching up with the more shady side of the law.” He paused, frowned again, and continued. “I really think you have surveillance set up outside your mansion. Whoever is the kidnapper, is not the only one. Not only would the kidnaping need several people, but there must have been someone scouting around the grounds for who knows how long before. The enemy has eyes, ears, and a cause.”

“Do you think I’m fucking blind, Mutt?” Seto lashed out.

Jou had flinched with a wounded look.

“They left a note. ‘Sign the deal.’ Do you think someone would kidnap a child when they didn’t have a damn plausible cause?”

The ‘blonde’s’ normal tone of voice had gone and died somewhere. Instead, Jou took on a dangerous, icy growl, “Don’t underestimate me, Kaiba. You still are blind,” he glared. “If you think that all this is is some deal, than you’re horribly wrong.”

Seto turned stiff and serious.

Jou gazed at him -the tall, regal man that he had always had a thing for. He put on his fake voice, in all its glorious mockery. “Here you are, Kaiba Seto, esteemed bachelor and CEO to a multi-billion dollar company. You have influence, you have money, you have an empire, hell, you have looks.” Jou made a point of narrowing his eyes even further. “Do you know how much someone could fucking hate you?”

Seto hadn’t been able to see if it was truly hate in Jou’s eyes, or if it was jealousy, or something else entirely.

Jou continued almost enthusiastically, “And even now you’re too high and mighty to be forced into anything. Your younger brother was kidnaped and, to get him back, all you need to do is sign a fucking deal. Well, don’t want to tarnish your wonderful reputation, do you? Thinking, ‘give an inch and they’ll take a mile.’ So you hire a contract killer to do the job for you.”

There was an unmistakable look of pure disgust in Jou’s eyes before he turned away as if it was Seto that had been insulting him the whole time. The blonde looked burned... like he had no choice in ~anything~ that he did, even though he was a contact killer.

“They want everything you have. Have you seen their stocks? The purchasing price has been growing for a while. They look to be successful; the deal should be awfully tempting for a business man, right? Why go into kidnapping?”

Seto’s brows furrowed and his lips thinned bloodlessly.

“They knew your father. They would have been the richest company in Japan if it hadn’t been for you. This isn’t a company that would give your brother back if you sign a half-assed deal.”

“Well then, mighty Dark Raven, what do you propose to remedy that?” Seto asked bitterly.

“Don’t talk like you know what I’ve been through to be here now,” Jou hissed back, “-don’t talk like you have any idea what living is like for me.”

Kaiba Seto was strangely quiet.

“If they can get Mokuba, they can get you just as easily. Ever think of that? Or did you think that every person out there is stupid enough to stick with getting you through your brother?” asked Jou with a cutting edge to his voice. “Sign the deal, they’ll kill your brother, kill you, and then take over Kaiba Corp. Don’t sign the deal and they’ll ~still~ kill your brother, kill you, forge your signature, and still take over Kaiba Corporation.”

Seto paled considerably and folded his arms.

“If I were you, I’d be a little more trusting of your little assassin.”

“...the sick bastards. Obviously colleagues of Gozaboru...like he’s still alive...bastards...” Seto muttered in a state of unwelcome distress.

Jou managed to put on a blank face through all his nonsense blabbering.

“It’s a game. I win games,” Seto proclaimed abruptly.

“How much are you going to pay me, then?” Jou asked.

Seto stared at him, red hair, green eyes, freckles and all. It was as if it was the first time he had seen the man. He felt like saying something cutting, like: ‘Is the money all you think about?’ But Jou looked tired. Horribly, gruesomely tired. Even ~with~ those unnatural green eyes, it seemed a lot like the old Jou, as if the man was talented in the way of making something so odd look so unbelievably real. Like he could own the very ground beneath his feet -all while looking as if he was suddenly close to collapsing. This type of person obviously found something important in everything he did.

“50 million yen,” Seto replied in a businesslike manner.

The very manner everything progressed had seemed to sicken Jou. “From today on I am formally working under your orders. You are my client, and I am not to talk to you in any way to suggest otherwise. Payment will be collected upon completion of the job. Good day,. Kaiba- San.”

With that, Jou- no, Dark Raven- had turned and stripped off the pizza place jacket to reveal a professional-looking button-up shirt underneath. He pulled out a pair of glasses, grabbed a book from one of the bookshelves that Seto had everywhere and finally turned back around to say, “I am an old friend coming to collect a book I’d lent to you.”

Then he was gone.

Kaiba Seto rubbed his temples to rid the headache he felt. He had not been able to think clearly for some time. He had checked the stocks like Dark Raven had said, and had found everything to be right. It wasn’t like he was worried for himself, or for Mokuba anymore. He won his games. But this one, this one that Dark Raven- no, Jou- had started was too much. Why?

Because, somehow, the other could make him feel as if everything he did was wrong. The other could make the gap between them suddenly grow larger and rear its ugly head. And he didn’t even know why. He had come with a wealth of new knowledge- though Seto hadn’t let him know- and he had asked for money. Suddenly Seto was afraid of becoming close during all this...teamwork.

He wanted to understand the other. It was obvious that something had caused the man to turn to killing, and he began to believe that the other had indeed had no choice in the matter. Seto could see why distance would be so important though, in that job. But it hurt to put so much distance between two high school frie-. They’d never been friends, had they?

Not friends, but Jou could proceed with sudden freedom in his distance. He could send coded e-mails that seemed to be from the false identity of the ‘book friend’ telling him that he ‘knew nothing of home.’ Seto could only guess that it meant that no one else Jou knew from his career was behind it. Seto had looked over his telephone bill to find one to the Pizza Pagoda, indeed for the pizza that Jou had left him. There were so many things that had changed. There had been Jou’s partner, the obvious fact that there was a whole circle of people who knew Jounouchi Katsuya, and so much that he had overlooked. To think that Jou had trained to become a killer...

And the thought bothered him. What had happened after graduation? What made Jou become Dark Raven? What made Dark Raven matter so much? What could possibly have made that cheerful soul into the hardened killer?

And what could bring him back?