Kaiba's New Assistant

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First thing the next morning, both Jou and Seto reported to the principal who seemed to be more than pleased that his strategy had paid off (although both Kaiba and Jonouchi rolled their eyes at this). He was also quite agreeable to the prospect of Jou working for Kaiba as it was likely to help them avoid slipping back into their previous behaviour. Of course he added the rider that if Jou's school-work were to suffer for it then he would be expected to quit, but both Jou and Kaiba assured him that this would not be the case.

Jou's friends greeted the news of his truce with Kaiba with various states of acceptance and disbelief, from Yugi's 'Good, it's about time' to Honda's frank scepticism. However, at the news that Jou was now working with Kaiba as his personal assistant, it was Otogi that objected.

"What? How come he's got you working for him?" Otogi exclaimed.

"Well..." Jou looked around at his friend's expectant faces and knew he wouldn't be able to dodge answering, "We kinda lost track of time yesterday afternoon so I ended up being late for work..."

"So you got sacked, right?" Honda interrupted with a scowl. "I knew that bastard would get you fired one day."

"You're right," Jou said, "and I suppose that after I told Kaiba why I'd been sacked, he felt kind of guilty about it so he offered me the job as his personal assistant..."

"Oh spin me another one," Otogi said disparagingly. "Kaiba doesn't know how to feel guilt. He's probably just doing this in order to humiliate you somehow."

"I don't think he'd do that," Jou said, putting a brave face on things although he was beginning to feel a little less certain in the cold light of day and under the scrutiny of his friends.

"Well I think it's great," Anzu said with a smile, giving Jou a much needed boost. "I'm really happy for you."

"I agree," Yugi said. "I always knew that if you two could stop snapping at each other for five minutes you could be... friends." There was an odd inflection to Yugi's words that had Jou looking at him sharply, but he was soon distracted before he could think about it too much.

"Humph," Otogi seemed a little miffed that only Honda had sided with him, but then his eyes lit on the quietest member of the group. "What do you think, Ryou?"

Ryou looked up nervously. "I.. I'm sorry, Otogi, but I'm afraid that I have to agree with Yugi and Anzu. I never liked Jou and Kaiba fighting all the time and I'm glad that it's over with."

"Thanks guys," Jou said, eyeing both Honda and Otogi askance. "I'm glad at least some of my friends can be pleased for me."

Honda looked guilty. "Sorry man, you're right. I guess it is a good thing that you are going to get on with Kaiba better now. At least you won't be stuck in detention all the time."

"You probably still won't see him outside of school," Otogi pointed out waspishly. "Kaiba will work Jou to the bone then once he's done with him, he'll simply toss him to one side."

"Look, Otogi," Jou was starting to get annoyed now, "I don't know why you are so upset about this, but I need this job and I am working for Kaiba. Nothing that you have to say is going to change that. Got it?"

"Fine," Otogi finally subsided, knowing that he was onto a loser here with no-one supporting him. "In that case I suppose I should congratulate you," he said sullenly.

"Well, I'm so pleased to hear that I have your approval," a sarcastic voice said from behind them." They turned to see Kaiba standing with his arms crossed and an annoyed look on his face.

"Kaiba!" Yugi exclaimed. "Will you sit with us?"

Kaiba gave Yugi a look that simply said 'are you crazy?' before turning to Jou. "Jonouchi, I expect to see you in my office at no later than five today, so make sure you don't end up in detention," he snapped. Then, without waiting for an answer, he whirled around and stalked off.

Jou watched him go, a neutral expression on his face. He had known that this was likely to happen as they had discussed it earlier, but it still felt... weird. He was kind of disappointed that Kaiba wasn't prepared to let the truce extend to letting his friends in, but in Jou's view this was still a start and things could change in the future...

"What the hell?" Honda finally said as Kaiba left the room, bringing Jou's attention back to the rest of the group.

"Well, it looks like I was right," Otogi said smugly. "Kaiba is going to treat Jou really badly."

Jou shook his head. "No, you're wrong," he said. "I'm sorry to say that just because I'm getting on with Kaiba a bit better now, you shouldn't expect that to extend to the rest of you and he's not likely to treat me all that much differently either, at least not outside of Kaiba Corporation." He shrugged, "I suppose that things might change in the future, but don't count on it."

"That's OK Jou. It's a start, at least," Yugi said with a smile, unknowingly echoing Jou's earlier thought.

"Thanks Yug'," Jou said with some gratitude. "I knew you'd understand."

Otogi wasn't exactly happy with this and was about to say something else, but the bell rang for class and it was put out of their minds. At least for the moment.

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For several weeks after that, Jou worked for Kaiba without incident and Jou's friends, happy that the fighting had stopped at least, had let the matter drop. Jou did catch Otogi giving him odd looks from time to time, but he didn't bother about it as it didn't matter to him what Otogi thought.

Kaiba's 18th birthday came and went and the CEO had imperceptibly relaxed since that milestone had passed. Now that he was a legal adult, it consolidated his position with regard to both staying on as CEO of Kaiba Corporation and keeping custody of Mokuba. Not that social services had stopped sticking their noses in where they were neither needed or wanted, but they all knew that he now had a much lesser chance of losing any case if anyone were to decide to cause trouble and try to challenge his custody of Mokuba for failing to 'stay in line'.

As Jou continued to work for Kaiba, he noticed that Jou was extremely quick to pick things up and showed aptitude and intelligence way beyond his school grades. He resolved to ask Jou about it when the opportunity presented itself, however, he felt that he had to be at least somewhat careful about it. For all that they were getting along better now, they were both still walking on eggshells around each other somewhat, neither of them wanting to either cause an argument that would sour things between them, or to end up taking the step that they had avoided on the day that the principal had caught them 'fighting'.

It had been a close run thing on both counts. On one occasion, Jou had done something that, under normal circumstances, should have been seen as only minorly irritating, but Kaiba had been in a foul mood and threatened to fire him. That only lasted until Jou's expression turned stricken and he'd begged with Kaiba to reconsider. Despite that, Kaiba had been about to tell him to get out of his sight when he remembered what Jou had told him in confidence on that first evening of working for him. He then shocked Jou as he apologised and promised that he would not threaten that again, at least not without a goodreason.

Then there had been the occasional glances and touches that had both of them blushing. The attraction that they had avoided mentioning since that first day had not gone away, but because of their issues neither of them could bring themselves to chance going any further, instead contenting themselves with keeping the status quo. However, it was getting more difficult as the longer they spent together, the more they found that they were attracted to each other. Something was bound to give eventually.

The tipping point was to come one Friday evening when Jou was late for work. In all the time Jou had been working for Kaiba he had never been late even once, so this instantly had Seto on edge. He was about to call Jonouchi on his KC issue cell phone when he heard signs of a disturbance just outside his office door. He opened the link on the intercom to listen in, just in case he needed to call security.

"...can't go in there looking like that, Jonouchi. Whatever would Mr. Kaiba say? We do have standards here you know." The disparaging voice of his secretary came across the com-link.

"Look, Keiko," Jonouchi said with obvious weariness in his voice, "I know you don't like me and you know that I hate to pull rank on anyone like this, but I'm not answerable to you. I answer only to Kaiba himself, so I am going to go into that office even if I have to physically move you out of the way."

"Don't push me Jonouchi," the woman hissed, "I don't know how in hell you managed to get the personal assistant's job but you don't deserve..." Kaiba had heard enough. He was already on his way over to the door and he flung it open before Keiko could complete that sentence.

"You won't finish that thought if you still want to have a job here tomorrow, Miss Nakamura," Kaiba growled. Then he noticed Jou and his eyes widened at the dishevelled look of his personal assistant. He had a couple of shallow cuts on his face and the beginnings of what was obviously going to be a killer black eye. From his posture, Kaiba was sure that Jou was hurt elsewhere as well.

"Jonouchi!" he exclaimed. "What happened to you?" He pushed his stunned secretary out of the way and steered the other boy into his office as he shot an 'I'll deal with you later' look at the woman and closed the door behind him.

Jonouchi winced as Kaiba guided him over to a chair and made him sit down. "It's not as bad as it looks," Jou said with not a little bravado.

"Nonsense!" Kaiba exclaimed. He gently prodded Jonouchi's side which caused him to wince visibly. Kaiba's expression softened, "Now, tell me what happened. How did you end up in this state?"

Jou knew that he had to tell Seto the truth – at least some of it anyway. They had come a long way in their friendship over the last several weeks of working together and he trusted Kaiba a lot more now than he had at the beginning of this arrangement.

"Remember that press conference you had today?" When Kaiba nodded Jou continued, "When they asked about your new personal assistant and my name was mentioned my dad suddenly realised that I was earning a helluva lot more money than I was letting on..."

"So he made you give him more money?" Kaiba interjected.

Jou nodded. "I was pretty sure that something like this would happen eventually, but I can tell you that he didn't get all of it." He grinned tiredly.

"Is that the only reason?" Kaiba asked sceptically.

Jou didn't trust himself to speak. It wasn't the only reason by a long shot. No the main reason was that his dad wanted to make sure that he wasn't being a 'fag' and because, in his dad's opinion, he was just a glorified secretary which was 'women's work'. The man had even tried to get him to spill some of Kaiba's secrets, but Jou had adamantly refused. He would sooner die than betray someone's trust and the only way he'd managed to get his dad off his back had been to give him quite a substantial amount of money. However, he couldn't bring himself to tell Kaiba any of this. He winced as Kaiba applied some antiseptic to one of the cuts on his face.

Seto sighed as it became clear that Jonouchi wasn't going to answer. "Well, you've almost completed your training, and much more quickly than I anticipated, so your pay will go up to the appropriate level," he said with pride. His puppy was really something. "He doesn't need to know about that, does he?" He paused, sensing that now was as an appropriate a time as any, "It does make me wonder though..." he mused.

"Oh?" Jou said.

Kaiba gave Jou a frank look. "to be honest, your grades in school have been utterly abysmal, but in contrast your work here has been nothing short of exceptional. If your achievements here were translated to your school-work you should be near to or at the top of your classes. I just don't get it." Seto was truly bemused by this.

"Maybe I just don't get the inspiration or motivation to do well at school," Jou evaded.

"I'm sorry, I don't buy that," Seto said, "This has come so naturally to you that, in my opinion, you should at least have been getting passing grades in most of your classes without even trying."

Jou sighed, knowing that he would have to explain things in a little more detail. "Look, Kaiba, I was in a gang. If I had done anything like well in school it wouldn't have gone well for me." He shrugged. "I guess it became habit to just slack my way along after a while. Then after my mom took Shizuka away and my dad turned to drink, I didn't see the point, after all, it wasn't like I had a parent to encourage me. Feh, my dad didn't give a shit and he still doesn't care how I do in school as long as I can work to feed his drinking habit." He looked Seto in the eye, "I have been trying to turn things around since I became friends with Yugi, but it's kinda hard when some of the teachers are still prejudiced against me, I was ending up in detention all the time for fighting and I was working all hours to make ends meet. It is getting better now, but I still don't get the peace I need to do my homework at home."

"Jonouchi," Seto said gently, "If things are so bad at home couldn't you just leave and get your own place? You are certainly earning enough money to pay for it now."

"Nah," Jonouchi said, "No-one wants to rent a place to a school kid, especially one with my kind of background." He shook his head, "Besides that, my dad would only get Social Services to bring me back. They might let it go now that I'm so close to turning 18, but I'm not willing to take the chance. At least my dad seems to have forgotten when my birthday is. He hasn't even mentioned it for years and I'm certainly not about to remind him."

Seto interjected here, "Talking of Social Services, Couldn't they have done something for you?" Knowing how Social Services were, at least around these parts, he suspected that he already knew the answer to that particular question, but he still had to ask.

"Hah!" Jou exclaimed bitterly, "Not likely. Even if they gave a crap, how would they help me? My mom wants nothing to do with me even though I got the money for Shizuka's surgery. That was something else I got into major trouble with my dad for, but it was worth it so that she could see again." He paused, "No, I'd probably end up in a foster home somewhere or other, probably not even in Domino."

"They'd send you out of Domino?" Kaiba's eyebrows raised.

Jou nodded. "Because I was in a gang, they'd probably take the opportunity to ship me out to somewhere else, away from the so-called 'bad influences'. I saw it happen to one of the other ex-gang members, although to be fair he was a little younger than I am now." He shook his head again, "Even if my home life is crap, Domino is where I belong and my whole life is here."

Seto gasped as Jou looked up into his eyes. He could see all the pain and longing there and he knew that even if he'd treated Jou really badly in the past, at least part of the reason that Jou had chosen his path was because of Seto himself. Faced with that truth he could not hold back any longer and he leaned forwards to claim Jou's lips in a soft kiss. He was doubly pleased when not only did Jonouchi respond, but surged to his feet and took control. Seto surrendered happily, revelling Jou's total domination of the embrace. He absently wondered where Jou had learned to kiss like that as he was so good at it, but he found that he didn't really care.

After several moments of utter bliss, Jou pulled away, seemingly confused over Kaiba's utter quiescence despite the fact that he'd found it quite arousing. However, he decided to put that to one side for the moment then looked Kaiba directly in the eye. "Not to put a downer on things, but isn't it against the rules to get involved with your employees?" he asked.

"Screw the rules," Seto flashed a smirk at him, "I'm the CEO here and I make the rules! Besides, what better than to have just one person keeping both my boardroom and bedroom secrets?"

Jou looked at Kaiba quizzically at that last, then sighed. "I'm still worried about it getting out but I'm tired of fighting this. I want to be with you, I'm pretty sure you want to be with me and we spend enough time together that I don't think anyone would notice as long as we are careful. What do you say?" He looked up at Kaiba with hope and expectation.

"I think we can give it a go," Seto said with one of his rare genuine smiles, then he stood away from Jou. "Come on, Pup. We're not going to get anything done here tonight. Come home with me so that I can get you cleaned up and tend to your injuries properly. You can even stay the night if you want. In a guest room of course," he added hastily.

"Thanks, Kaiba," Jou said, "It's probably for the best if I stay away from home for the night anyway." He made a mental note to call Yugi and ask his friend to cover for him in the unlikely event that his dad wanted to know where he had been. If his dad were to find out that he'd stayed with Kaiba, then his reaction had the potential to be quite bad. Not that the ass would probably notice as he'd got enough money now to drink himself into oblivion for several nights. Now if only the old fucker would drink enough to give himself alcohol poisoning... Feh, he should be so lucky.

As they left the office together, Seto turned to address his secretary. "I'm going home for the evening and I am not to be disturbed unless it is a dire emergency." He then sent her a withering glare, "Also, do not presume to stop Jonouchi from entering my office in future, no matter what he looks like. I told you in no uncertain terms that Jonouchi is only answerable to me and I meant it!"

"But Mr. Kaiba," the woman was not about to let things go, "can't you see what kind of person he is? He isn't worthy to be your personal assistant!"

"And I suppose you think that youare a more worthy candidate for the job?" Seto asked with a dangerous undertone to his voice.

Jou's comment of, "Hey, I'm right here you know," went ignored by both parties.

The secretary either missed Kaiba's tone completely or chose to ignore it, "As it happens yes I do, but having said that, even the man that cleans the toilets would be more worthy than this piece of," she gave Jonouchi a contemptuous glance, "street trash."

"Well, luckily for me, it's not your decision to make. So tell me, Miss Nakamura, what exactly do you know about Jonouchi that makes you think you are in a position to judge his character so harshly?"

"I don't need to know anything about him to know street trash when I see it," she countered, giving Jonouchi a filthy look as she did so.

"Well, for your information," Kaiba began, bringing Keiko's attention back to him, "Jonouchi is exactly what I need for this position. I don't need to justify myself to you, but I will tell you this much; he is loyal to a fault and will never betray my secrets. He is also not afraid to tell me what he thinks even if it is disadvantageous to himself." Seto pierced the secretary with a glare, making her step back. "He also understands Duel Monsters. Can you say the same?" He knew that she could not. "If you had bothered to get to know anythingabout it then you would know that Jonouchi is the third ranked duelist in the world after Yugi Mutou and myself. Did you know that he had only been playing Duel Monsters for mere weeks before he went to Duelist Kingdom?"

"But his academic record..." the woman was grasping at straws now.

"You had no right to look into his records," Seto was beyond angry now, "but they are not a true indicator of his aptitude." He pierced her with a cold glare. "I think I've heard enough from you. You may be a competent secretary, but you have well overstepped your bounds tonight. You can clear your desk and leave my sight."

"But Mr. Kaiba..."

"You are fired, Miss Nakamura. End of discussion."

The woman then turned and launched herself at Jonouchi. "This is all your fault," she hissed as she scratched at his face.

"No way, woman!" Jou said as he fended her off, "You brought this on yourself." He sighed in relief as two burly security guards seemed to come out of nowhere and peeled her off him.

"Remove her from the building this instant," Kaiba instructed the men. "Jonouchi will clear her desk tomorrow and arrange for any of her personal items to be forwarded to her." He watched the men manhandle the struggling woman out of his sight and then escorted Jou into his personal lift. "Are you alright?" he asked. His face was a mask of concern.

"It was nothing," Jou insisted, "It was like fending off a kitten."

"Even kittens have claws," Seto said as he traced a fresh cut on Jou's face. "Are you sure you are alright?"

"I'm more than alright," Jou gave Kaiba one of his biggest smiles, "No-one has ever defended me like that before. I kinda liked it."

"Get used to it," Seto said, then he scowled, "no-one should dare to talk about you like that, let alone in my presence."

Jou smiled at Seto then moved away from him as the lift reached the ground floor. They walked out to the limousine and climbed inside. Jou couldn't disguise a wince as his bruises once again made themselves known. Seto looked at Jou with some concern. "I'm OK, just a little sore," Jou was quick to reassure.

Seto wasn't totally convinced. "If you like, you can take a bath when we get home. I have some special bath salts that should help with the soreness."

"Thanks Kaiba," Jou said as he leaned into the taller man. "I might just take you up on that." Kaiba put his arm around Jou and they travelled on in comfortable silence, both of them wondering how things would develop now that they had taken that next step.

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A/N - Boy, this chapter gave me some trouble. I had to add a lot to it so that things made a bit more sense and I'm probably not completely happy with it, but I've been fiddling with it for so long that I'm starting to go crosseyed and I think it's past time to move onto the next chapter. That should be up next week sometime all being well.

Thank you for reading.