Fixation

Chapter 4


Seto Kaiba only worried about his little brother and his company. It was a rule that had shaped his young life, and he had no intention of deviating from it for the sake of some upstart mongrel who through far too highly of himself.

When Jou didn’t show up at school on Monday after their little chat in the alley, Seto was not worried. He was not concerned when the blonde idiot skipped the entire week of school. He did not stop typing when he overheard the Mutt’s friends talking about how no one had seen him since he left the arcade.

After eight days without seeing Jou, he’d gone to the City Center Café for a cup of coffee. The coffee wasn’t quite as good as what his secretary usually brought back from the espresso stand across from Kaiba Corp, but it was decent and it was on his way to work. At least, it was on his way to work if he had Roland drop him off at the park and walked the eight blocks back towards Kaiba Corp on his own.

He sat down at a small table in the corner where he had a good view of the restaurant and poured over the business section of the newspaper.

A petite woman brought him his usual black coffee immediately and set a small paper menu down with the cup. “Welcome, welcome. We’ve got some fresh croissants this afternoon, and our lunch special is spring onion soup and vegetable tempura. Would you like to look over the menu, or will coffee be everything this afternoon?”

“Coffee is fine. But I’d also like some information from you, if it’s not too much trouble. A boy named Jounochi Katsuya works here…”

The woman’s smile twisted into a cruel sneer. “Worked here, you mean. He didn’t have the nerve to list me as a reference, I hope.”

Seto kept his face passive and processed the new information quickly. It wasn’t that big of a surprise that the Mutt had managed to get himself fired again. “He didn’t leave under good circumstances, then?”

“Hardly. Sir, I am never one to speak poorly of people, but that young man is not fit to work in a café, much more in a reputable office. He was always wandering in late, sporting new bruises and ripped clothing. He is a hoodlum.” The woman shook her head and did her best to look sad. “Still, I gave him as many chances as I could. I always hoped he might turn himself around if someone just gave him a chance… But I can’t have some ruffian waiting tables with a black eye or broken lip, with who knows what trouble following him. If he thought that I would give him a good reference after all the times he frightened away my customers, well, I don’t know what the urchin was thinking. I promise you, it would be in your best interest to tell him to look for work elsewhere.”

It was very seldom that Seto had to bite the inside of his cheek to maintain his neutral mask. This time he didn’t even notice he was doing it until the taste of blood filled his mouth. The Mutt hadn’t gotten himself fired. This time, Seto had gotten the Mutt fired. He clenched his jaw, fighting the urge to curse and smack himself on the forehead.

He was quick to regain his composure. “Thank you for the information,” Seto said quickly.

“Happy to help,” the woman replied. She bowed before returning to the counter.

Seto left money for the coffee, and a small tip, on the table and hurried out, leaving the cup of coffee untouched.

After ten days without seeing Jou, he was not panicking. When he happened to skip work and wander three miles out of his way, and up four flights of apparently random stairs to the Mutt’s apartment, he did not panic when he found that the door had been broken open. The door was still on its hinges, but the wood around the frame was shattered where the deadbolt had ripped through the wood. Cracks in the lower half of the door made it obvious that someone had kicked the door open.

Seto pushed the door open without knocking, wandering into the gloom and stench of the Jounouchi home. It wasn’t much of a home, even as apartments went. There was a small main room with one corner covered in lenolium and miniature kitchen appliances, then two small, sparcely furnished bedrooms and a single bathroom with a shower stall but no bath tub. Garbage, beer bottles, and unwashed clothing littered the floor of the main room.

Seto glanced into the first bedroom and decided, from the smell of cigarette smoke and the foot deep pile of beer bottles that covered the floor, that the room must belong to Jou’s father. The other room was remarkably clean compared to the rest of the apartment. It contained a small futon pad shoved into one corner, a low table and a half-broken dining chair covered in torn vinyl upholstery. Unlike the rest of the apartment, trash in Jou’s room had actually found its way into a garbage can. Bandages, empty bottles of Tylenol and empty physician’s samples of prescription strength ibuprofen were in the trash, along with empty plastic water bottles and two empty take out containers.

There were no blankets or pillows on the futon, but there was a worn out sheet that had somehow escaped the grime of the rest of the apartment. There was also nothing else. No television, no game system, no Duel Monster posters or extra cards, no textbooks. In the closet there were two sets of second hand school uniforms, an pair of worn out blue jeans, and three t-shirts, including two that Jou had won by ranking as a finalist in Duel Monster tournaments.

Seto sat down in the vinyl chair for a minute, taking in the bare, unlived in look of the room. It looked more like a prison cell or monastery than a teenage boy’s bedroom. How had the Mutt managed to come up with the entry fees for Seto’s tournaments if he couldn’t even afford clothes or a blanket? Seto ran his fingers over the clean sheet stretched across the futon and then left Jou’s room. As he left, he noticed a splatter of old blood across a small section of the door frame and the wall beside it. A few blonde hairs were stuck in the wood.

Seto clenched his fists and hurried out of the apartment, trembling with a rage that he didn’t want to feel. He had no right to be angry at whoever had slammed Jou’s head into that wall. He might have done worse to the blonde himself. But at that moment, his guilt was crushed beneath a burning desire to slowly torture whoever had hurt his Mutt. The logical part of Seto’s mind reigned him in, reminding him that getting into a brawl with a boy his own age was close enough to normal that no one would cause a stir over it, but killing a middle aged impoverished drunk wouldn’t be so easy to brush off as normal teenage aggression. Even if he was an abusive asshole.

Seto called for Roland and waited on the steps outside of Jou’s apartment, his anger radiating off of him in cold waves like dry ice and making even would-be muggers take a few extra steps around him. At his next tournament, Seto resolved to waive the entry fee for high ranked duelists, and maybe to offer cash prizes for the top five finishers instead of just the top two. He would talk to Pegasus, too, and get the fee waiver made an official rule for future tournaments.

He had Roland drive passed Yugi’s game shop, just in case the Mutt had been staying there. Every other member of Yugi’s little friendship cult was in the front room of the game shop, all looking worried. Seto caught a glimpse of Jou’s sister Shizuka, her eyes red with tears, but no sign of the blonde.

Seto would admit that, after eleven days, he did actually threaten to fire Roland when the security expert refused to tell him if he knew what happened to the blonde that day in the alley. Of course, that was a question of the loyalty he expected from his personal staff. It didn’t have anything to do with Jou.

By the time twelve days had passed, Seto was at his wits end from not worrying about Jounouchi.

As he waited for school to be dismissed for the day, he typed out a methodical to do list for the afternoon. He would call every hospital within twenty miles and ask for Jounouchi’s room number. If each hospital told him they had no Jounouchi registered, he would check with every jail within fifty miles. If that failed to produce the Mutt, he would go break each of Otogi’s fingers. Seto was sure that dog-suit joke was just an excuse to give the dice-obsessed freak with some kinky mental imagery to jack off to. It was possible the man had found the injured blonde and taken him home to molest him. After Otogi, Pegasus was next on Kaiba’s list. If the old letch didn’t have the Mutt, Seto would go back and search the alley and surrounding streets, again. As a last resort, he would do the unthinkable—he would ask for Yugi’s help.

It shouldn’t come down to that, of course. Seto was nothing if not thorough. He already had a list of hospital and jail phone numbers incorporated into his to do list. He would find the Mutt before the day was out. Seto hadn’t slept in the last three nights because he had not been worrying so damn much.

Seto knew that there was a slight chance that the Mutt was avoiding him. If Jou was upset, or even disgusted, by what Seto had done, he knew that Jou wouldn’t want anything to do with him again. Their arguments and fights would be at an end. Still, Jou wasn’t the type of person who got upset or disgusted without shouting it out for everyone to hear, and he hadn’t shouted for Seto to stop, or even to let go of him, in the alley.

Seto knew that he shouldn’t have hit Jou, but having Roland walk up on them freaked Seto out more than he wanted to admit. He was sure that Jou would have recognized that, though. If Jou was angry about the punch, he just would have hit Seto with a sucker punch when they were both back at school on Monday. It wouldn’t be enough to make the blonde avoid him without trying to get one last shot in first.

It was much more probable that the stupid Mutt was badly hurt or in more trouble than he could deal with on his own. If the Mutt was hurt, there was at least a fifty percent change that Seto himself had been the one to hurt him, and that meant Seto had to find him and deal with it. Seeing the blood on Jou’s wall had at least allowed him to put off that storm of guilt until he knew the blonde’s fate.

If Jou was just in trouble… Seto focused on the clock in the corner of his laptop screen and sighed. There was nothing that would obligate Seto to help. A list of excuses ran through his head, but none of them would stand up to Jou’s scrutiny. He couldn’t very well bail the Mutt out of jail and then insist that his motivation was none of Jou’s business.

Seto closed his laptop and shoved it into his briefcase just moments before the bell rang. He was out the door before the bell finished. Behind him, someone who might have been his teacher shouted after him, but Seto had no intention of slowing down.

He was required to stay for the duration of the school day and he would not volunteer another moment of his time unless the school district was willing to pay him for it. If the idiot masquerading as a teacher couldn’t manage to finish his lecture and assign homework for the following day before the bell rang, it wasn’t his problem. The first time the principal had dared to say he really should stay until the class was finished, Seto kindly offered him the card of a Personnel Consultant who specialized in teaching staff better time management skills. The second time, he filed a civil suit, demanding that the school district pay for every minute of his time they wasted. Two years later, it was still tied up in court and had become one of the school district’s biggest headaches. He was just a little bit proud of that.

Roland was waiting beside the open door of Seto’s limousine, as always. “We’re not going to Kaiba Corp,” Seto explained, for the third day that week. “Stay put while I make some phone calls.”

“Yes sir.”

Seto opened his laptop and dialed the first hospital listed.

“Domino General, how many I direct you call?”

“Hello,” Seto said in his most charming voice, “I’m trying to find out what room a friend of mine is in so I can send flowers and a get well present. His name last name is Jounouchi, first name Katsuya.”

Seto hear typing on the other end. “It looks like he’s in 442. Also, there is a latex allergy note next to the room assignment, so if you send balloons, please be very careful to buy latex free.”

A broad smile spread across Seto’s lips. He had found him on the first try. It hadn’t been a waste of time to prioritize the list of hospitals by their proximity to the alley after all. Then Seto smirked. His little Mutt was allergic to latex. That was a bit of information he would definitely keep in mind. “Latex free? I’ll remember, thank you for letting me know.”

“My pleasure. Have a nice day.”

Seto hung up the phone and took a deep breath. Jou was in the hospital after all. At least Seto hadn’t had to waste any time calling random facilities throughout Domino. Seto shut his eyes and tried to remember how hard he’d hit the Mutt. He was confused. They’d both hit each other harder than that dozens of times. That one half-hearted punch shouldn’t have been enough to put Jou in the hospital.

Unless Jou was already hurt.

Seto had been avoiding that thought for the last three days. A full three weeks before, Seto had gotten the upper hand in a fight with Jou after gym. They were both worked up from class and they’d been trading insults back and forth all day, so when the tension finally exploded, as it so often did, both of them fought for all they were worth. Seto had spent two weeks afterwards covering up bruises. He could remember what had made him go overboard, but he didn’t want to remember. Jou and his friends had been sitting beside the bleachers for the second half of class, talking about how the girl’s class, which was in the middle of a basketball game, looked in their short shorts. As Seto and Jou were fighting after school, all Seto could think about was Jou talking about which girls he would sleep with if he had the chance. It wasn’t like that was a decent excuse for the way Seto had lost it, but it was the only excuse he had.

If Jou had been seriously hurt during that fight, the punch in the alley might have been enough to convince him to go to a doctor. Not that the Mutt could afford to see a doctor, Seto reminded himself. Seto felt his stomach sink and twist inside of him as his imagination began to supply theories about just how badly the blonde would have to be hurt before he would face the debt that would come from a trip to the emergency room.

He hit the button on the intercom hard enough to crack the plastic plate around it. “Domino General Hospital. Now.”

For nearly a minute, nothing happened, then the engine died. Seto took a deep breath and pushed the button again, “I will walk if I have to, but you better have a very good explanation for this insubordination!”

The door opened and the large European man who had been both his driver, butler, and bodyguard for the last six years opened the door. He stepped into the limo and pulled the door shut behind him. “Mr. Kaiba,” Roland sat up straight but refused to meet Seto’s gaze, “I have always been loyal to you, sir. Please, believe me when I say that you should avoid Domino General. It’s for your own good.”

“You presume to know what’s good for me?”

“I presume manslaughter charges wouldn’t be good for you.”

“Jou’s fine!” Seto shouted. “He’s in the hospital, he’s not dead!”

Roland took a deep breath. Seto could see the man shaking with rage. He had never seen Roland get emotional before. “Mr. Kaiba, sir, that boy suffered four broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a cerebral hemorrhage after you attacked him in the alley. If I hadn’t arranged for him to be transported to the hospital, he would be dead.”

Roland raised his eyes to meet Seto’s. The strength in those gray eyes was almost overwhelming. Whatever strength of will Seto still had crumbled as the list of injuries engraved itself in his mind. He felt like he was going to throw up.

“I stayed by your side when Gozoboro died, Mr. Kaiba, and I never questioned you about it. I supplied you with weapons and training, even though you weren’t legally old enough to own a handgun, when Mokuba was kidnapped. I never questioned what you did when you caught up to the men who took him. Until recently, I enjoyed the delusion that I worked in the service of an honorable man, despite your age. Consider this my resignation, Sir, and my warning. Until you grow the fuck up, I will be there every time you go near Jounouchi Katsuya.”

“Wait,” Seto whispered, stopping Roland as the large man reached for the door. “I… I deserve worse than that, you’re right. I… I didn’t know what happened. I didn’t know what his life is like, that he couldn’t afford a doctor if he actually got hurt. I just found out that I cost him his job two days ago. I…” Seto buried his head in his hands, trying to physically hold in moisture that was making his vision blur. “I really fucked up, Roland. I at least need to go apologize. And it’s my fault he’s in the hospital, so I can at least make sure he doesn’t have to pay for it. After that, I’m done. I’ll stop insulting him. I’ll stop picking fights with him. I’ll leave him alone. I didn’t mean to hurt him…”

Across from Seto, Roland’s posture sagged. “Kaiba-sama,” the larger man sat a comforting hand on Seto’s shoulder. “It’s alright, you know. I remember how tough this kind thing was when I was seventeen. Frustrating enough when it’s a girl and each person knows exactly how things are supposed to go. Jou’s going to be alright. Doctor Nakamura is treating him, and he’s the best money can buy, after all.”

Seto bent down, so relieved his brain completely stopped working and his whole body seemed to utter a collective sigh. “Thank you Roland… If you still want to leave, I understand…”

“Nah. Apologizing is a good first step towards growing the fuck up, so just try to stick with it from here on out. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Seto smiled at him.

“Good. I’ll…” Roland shook his head in disbelief. “I’ll take you to Domino General.”

“Ah, we’ve got to stop by the Kame Game Shop first.”

“You’re actually going to tell Mr. Moutou that Jounouchi is hurt?”

“What? No! I’m going to buy a couple booster packs for Jou. My Battle City Tournament, and the launch of the duel disk system, is coming up in a few weeks, and I’m sure that lo—I’m sure Jounouchi will want to rework his deck before then. Plus, it’ll give him something to do while he’s in the hospital.”

“You’re hopeless, Mr. Kaiba.”

By the time Kaiba picked up the booster packs from Yugi’s grandfather, it was close to six o’clock in the evening. Roland dropped him off and the hospital and Kaiba asked him to return home and make sure Mokuba was working on his homework instead of playing videogames. As he walked towards the cracked door to room 442, he slowed down, listening to the cascade of voices pouring out of the room. From the sound of it, all of Jou’s friends were packed into the hospital room at the moment. Seto didn’t want to deal with the glares he would face from the midget and his friends, so he went to find a vending machine, grabbed a cup of coffee, and found a seat in view of the door so he would know when Jou’s friends left.

It took about twenty minutes for Seto to become so board he was ready to start tapping out classical melodies with his feet. Seto wandered closer to Jou’s door, listening to the laughter inside the room, then he wandered passed the empty nurse’s station. He wandered passed two more times, taking note of the assignment board used by the nurses for each shift, and the vertical file folders with each patient’s chart next to the board. On the forth trip passed the nurse’s station, he nonchalantly picked up Jounouchi’s chart and strolled away. He found a quiet waiting room on the ground floor and paged through the chart with the same calm air of a man flipping through an old magazine.

He read the details of both the surgery to release the pressure over Jou’s visual cortex and to repair his lung and ribs. He read Doctor Nakamura’s notes about evidence of old, healed fractures that had never received medical attention, about interviews with Jou being consistent with the presentation of child abuse victims. One form, labeled Authorization to Provide Medical Care was almost blank. In the parent or legal guardian signature line was a scribble, in Nakamura’s own handwriting, that looked suspiciously like “Projectile Throwing Prick.”

On the most recent page of notes was a short paragraph detailing a consultation with the Department of Family Services and police department, along with a note that Jounouchi would be allowed to remain with his father but that a specially approved foster home placement would be made available to Jou whenever Jou himself felt it was necessary. Doctor Nakamura advised Jounouchi’s new case worker that, given Jou’s age, allowing him some control in the matter would prevent Jou from becoming uncooperative with Family Services. Doctor Nakamura also noted that he had recommended Jou avoid contact with a “school bully” who had caused additional minor injuries.

Seto finished reading the chart and closed it, incredibly relieved that he hadn’t been the one to cause Jou such severe injuries. He shut his eyes for a moment, his body finally able to relax as the anxiety over Jounouchi disappearing began to fade. A few moments later, Seto heard someone sit in the empty chair beside him. He opened his eyes to see a man in a white physician’s coat sitting next to him, his hands clasped together and his elbows resting on his knees.

“I can explain,” Seto said quickly.

Nakamura sighed, grabbed the manila file and firmly pulled it out of Seto’s hands. The doctor glared at him but said nothing.

“I needed to know how badly I hurt the Mutt, and I couldn’t very well ask him! I couldn’t go in there and face him in front of his friends, they’d eat me alive!”

Nakamura augmented the glare with a single raised eyebrow.

“And really, since I am paying for his medical care, I should be consulted regarding his condition.”

Seto shifted uncomfortably.

“Kaiba-sama,” Nakamura stood up, taking Jou’s chart with him. “It is my duty to advise you that your behavior towards Jounouchi Katsuya is extremely unhealthy.”

“How so?” asked Seto, pretending to be oblivious.

“Your behavior could be characterized as stalking, Kaiba-sama.”

“Stalking? I’m not stalking him…”

“Are you enjoying gym this year, Kaiba-sama? I was glad to hear that your delusion of asthma has cleared up, by the way. And pre-calculus?”

Seto said nothing.

“And imagine how surprised I was to hear that your schedule has become flexible enough to allow you time to go to the arcade, and to go out for coffee. Do you find classical history to be a challenge, Kaiba-sama? Your instructor said you and Jounouchi were the only two in the class to actually understand Plato this year—he was quite pleased.”

“The Mutt got a higher score on that test than me,” Seto said without thinking.

“And how do you know that?”

“I suppose I might have gotten a bit carried away… The point of this whole school experiment was to be social, though…”

“You’ve become obsessively fixated, Kaiba-sama.”

“I suppose I might be a little over-focused on the Mutt. I think fixated might be a bit of an exaggeration, though.”

“Kaiba-sama, I think, for your own mental wellbeing, you should avoid any and all contact with Jounouchi in the future.”

Seto sat forward, ready to argue.

Nakamura raised his hand to stop Seto. “But I know you wont. So, what you need to do, Kaiba-sama, is to learn socially appropriate ways of interacting with Jounouchi-san. Whatever you do, I must insist that you assume that Jounouchi-san is concealing severe injuries every time you encounter him. That might help you to keep your temper in check.”

“It’s not just—“

Nakamura held up his hand again. “I am well aware that Jounouchi-san is a willing participant in these altercations between the two of you. I’ve treated the concussions and scrapes he’s given you for the past year. For now, he needs time to heal. If you can’t refrain from assaulting him for the next six weeks, then you should avoid him entirely. If you think you can control yourself… I’ve informed the nursing staff that you are authorized to visit after normal hours.”

Seto nodded. “Thank you.”

Nakamura grunted, held the file under his arm, and gave a quick nod before strolling away.

Seto sat there, thinking about the how he could possibly face Jou now. He had known Doctor Nakamura since he was a young boy and he knew that the older man would have told the Mutt that Seto was a bit pre-occupied with him. That ruined any hope Seto might have had about trying to pass his behavior in the alley off as a joke. Of course, the way the other boy had responded to Seto’s touch, he might not have to try to pass it off as a joke.

And as his thoughts so often did, they raced around inside his head until they came around to an entirely new conclusion. He had to avoid the Mutt.

He couldn’t possibly let things get more carried away than they already had. He was Seto Kaiba, after all. As hot as the Mutt was, Seto couldn’t get involved with him, not now that he knew the type of life he lived. Even if Jou was willing to sleep with him without Seto’s money as a motivator, no one else in the world would see it that way. They would see Jou as a worthless whore, and they would see Seto as the evil pervert who hired an under-aged, impoverished boy as a prostitute. No one would care that Jou could duel, that he was always standing up for people, or that he was smarter than everyone else gave him credit for.

It didn’t take long for Seto to decide what he had to do. On his way out the door, Seto threw the booster packs in the trash. He left a polite message on the principal’s voice mail explaining that he would need all of his time for the next several weeks to devote to the release of his new duel disk system. He had a lot to get done before he could finalize the software for the official duel disk release. He also had to put together the press release about the tournament, organize the exhibition duels, and arrange catering. He had to order a new trench coat, too.