Fixation

Title: Fixation
Genre: Yu-Gi-Oh/Yaoi/ah? Not sure where else to put it
Pairing: Jou/Seto; Seto/Jou
Warnings: A/U
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. Come to that, I don’t own much of anything. I am just an obsessed fangirl and I don’t profit from this in any way.

THIS IS JUST BEING REPOSTED TO CLEAN UP HTML TAGS!!!! THIS IS NOT AN UPDATE, I'M JUST CLEANING UP MS WORD CRAP! SO, CHAPTERS MAY BE OUT OF ORDER UNTIL I FINISH REPOSTING THEM--SORRY FOR THAT.

Jou was kinda glad the bus was running late. He needed the time to come up with some kind of excuse before he showed up at work with a black eye, again.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his green jacket and kicked a pebble off the side walk. It was his own fault. Kaiba insulted everyone, but no one else let the rich bastard’s insults get to them. If Jou had just ignored the ‘Mutt’ comment as he walked passed the taller boy when school let out, he’d be fine. He even would have had time to grab some food before heading to work. Now he was going to have to wait tables on an empty stomach, with more than his share of bruises forming on his face and torso.

In all fairness, only a few of them were from Kaiba. The rest were from last week, when his dad caught him steeling twenty dollars from his stash of beer money. Not that his old man hit him all that often—just when he was really drunk or Jou had really screwed up. And his old man never hit him in the face. It wasn’t like he could ask that rich prick for a time out and explain that he’d really appreciate it if Kaiba could just hit him in the chest when he decided to beat the crap out of him.

Maybe he could tell his boss that it had happened in gym. If he could convince his boss that he’d just collided with someone during a basketball game, and he was running late because he needed to stay and let the school nurse look him over, he might not be in too much trouble. It was worth a shot.

When Jou finally raced into the back of the City Center Café, he was already twenty minutes late for his the start of his shift. He clocked in quickly, then ducked into the bathroom to change into his uniform before his boss could see him. He was knotting the strings of his black apron when he noticed that his boss wasn’t waiting for him behind the counter as usual, but was out front, waiting on the tables in Jou’s section. Jou stepped back into the kitchen quickly.

“I am so screwed,” he whispered.

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Honda, rushing out passed him with a loaded tray propped on his arm. “Kaiba’s bodyguard is out front, along with some guy in a suit, waiting for you.”

“What?” Jou felt his world spinning out of control for the second time that day. “That prick wouldn’t actually press charges! He already won the damn fight!”

“Just stay in here.” Honda backed through the double doors. “I’ll tell Haruno-san that you’re back here.”

Jou wandered over to an out of the way stool and plopped down, grateful that he hadn’t found time to eat. All of the fear and anxiety that he very carefully kept off his face was making his stomach do flips, and he probably would have thrown up at the mere thought of being arrested for fighting with Kaiba, and the hell that he’d have to pay at home when his dad found out. He should have figured that Kaiba wouldn’t hesitate to humiliate him more.

Jou didn’t get to wallow for long. Less than a minute later, his boss, a petite woman whose temper was large enough for ten women her size, came through the door screaming. Jou just sat there and listened to her rant. He could feel her breath as she shouted at him. She called him a troublemaker, a hoodlum, and told him that he had twenty-four hours to hand in his uniform or she would take the replacement costs out of his last check. Jou just nodded. It wasn’t the first time he’d been fired, and he knew that Haruno-san was too mad to listen to any excuses he might try to make.
He vaguely noticed that Kaiba’s bodyguard Roland had slipped into the kitchen, along with a man roughly half his height with short, cropped hair, a pair of wire rimmed glasses, and a classic but well-worn suit. The smaller man caught his eye for a moment, his concern evident.

“I’ll change before I go,” said Jou, heading back to the bathroom where he’d changed out of his school uniform just a few minutes earlier.

The short man in the suit nodded to Roland, who followed Jou without a word.

“What do you want?” Jou asked, half-way through the bathroom door.

“Mr. Jounouchi, I noticed that Mr. Kaiba and you were involved in another altercation. The younger Mr. Kaiba insisted that Doctor Nakamura and I find you at once and make sure that you received medical attention.”

“Mokuba sent you?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Jounouchi, in conjunction with the advice of the Kaiba Corp legal department.”

“Ha? He’s covering his older brother’s ass now, is that it?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir.”

“Well,” Jou smiled brightly, “Tell Mokuba, and the Kaiba Corp legal department, that this bullshit not only gave me a concussion but lost me my job.
Hey, maybe your boss can burn down my apartment building next!”

“I’m sorry about the trouble with your boss, Mr. Jounouchi.”

“Yeah, if you’re sorry, then you can do me a favor and get lost! It’s bad enough that I’ve got to put up with Kaiba, I don’t need the charity of some spoiled ten year old on top of his shit.”

Jou slammed the bathroom door behind him and locked it. He took his time changing into his school uniform and folded his waiter’s uniform carefully. When he was finished, he stared into the broken mirror above the sink, studying the bruise that was already visible and forcing the tears lining the rims of his eyes to vanish. He was not some cry baby who couldn’t handle losing a job. He would find something else. In the mean time, he’d just blame it all on Kaiba.

When he peaked out the door again, Roland was gone. He left the uniform in the empty back office and let himself out the back door. In the alley behind the City Center, Jou pulled on his backpack and headed towards his apartment, knowing that he really couldn’t afford to waste money taking the bus home at the moment.

“Hold on a minute,” a gentle voice sounded behind him. The short man in the suit was leaning against the alley wall, ignoring the filth of restaurant trash all around him. He was paging through a thin manila file folder. “I’m giving you a ride to my clinic, then home.”

“Fuck off!”

The man smiled and pulled out a cell phone. “Matsuri Yukito is your Family Services case worker, right? If you refuse, then I’ll see to it that you’re picked up by Family Services and in a foster home by the end of the business day.” He started dialing. The man’s smile, unlike his threat, was friendly and sympathetic. “I’ve already tried to get your father to sign a permission slip authorizing treatment, and since that didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped it would, I have a duty to make sure that you are assigned a guardian who will get you medical attention. Or you could just come with me and get it over with and Family Services never has to know.”

“You talked to me dad!” Jou wasn’t sure if he should feel horrified or offended. “Who the hell do you think you are!”

“Nakamura Tenchi. You can call me Nakamura-sensai, if you’d like. Can you guess what your dad’s response was?”
Jou shrugged, then thought about the time two years before when he had told his father he needed to go to the doctor because he’d broken his arm.

“Last time I told him I needed to go to a doctor, he threw a beer bottle at me and told me I was a worthless piece of shit and he wasn’t wasting any more money on me.”

The small man nodded slowly. “I’ll count myself lucky then. All I got was an empty beer can. I imagine that bottles hurt quite a bit more. Come on.”

“I ain’t going with you,” Jou insisted, walking passed the man as quickly as he could.

Nakamura pressed the send button on his phone, held it up to his ear, and started to walk away. “Go home and pack then. DFS will be by to pick you up within the hour.”

Jou froze. As much as he didn’t like his dad when he was drunk, his dad was the only real family he had in the world. He as only a year away from being a legal adult anyway, there was no point in trying to take him away from his dad now. Jou didn’t want to imagine how long his dad would last if Jou didn’t make sure there was always food in the fridge and that the bills got paid.

“Just to a clinic?” he asked.

Nakamura closed the phone. Jou’s hearing was good enough to pick up the Family Services greeting through the speaker. “Yes. Just to my clinic.”

“No money bags Kaiba or anything?”

“No. Kaiba-sama is my employer, but even he can’t command me to break my patient’s trust. I wont tell him anything about you at all—or about your dad.” The short doctor strolled towards the end of the alley, not checking to make sure Jou was following. He seemed to know that Jou was right behind him. The doctor opened the passenger door to a small black BMW and let Jou climb in. He drove them to a small clinic two blocks from the Domino hospital and then led him through a warren of offices and hallways.

Instead of an exam room, he led Jou to a small office. Despite its size, the office held more books than Jou had ever seen before. They lined the walls and were even stacked on the floor. One stack was next to a small leather chair and, thanks to the addition of a knit doily, had been doubling as an end table. Books covered the desk and were stacked on the wall behind it, right up to the windowsill.

“So what kind of doctor are you?” Jou asked.

“The lucky kind, according to my colleagues. I am the Kaiba’s private physician. I am paid a retainer to be available for whatever care Kaiba Seto or his brother and immediate staff might require. Unfortunately, that means I need to be something of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to medicine. I got the impression, from your dad anyway, that you’ve probably never seen a doctor outside of an emergency room visit or two, is that correct?”

“Does it matter?”

“No, not really. If you had any major medical issues, they would have come to light by now.”

Jou said nothing to that. He couldn’t meet the doctor’s gaze, but he wasn’t going to volunteer anything he didn’t have to.

Nakamura sat down in the small office chair behind the desk and pulled open the file folder he’d been carrying in the alley. Inside was a half page of hand written notes and a blank medical file. “It does mean that Kaiba-sama should have found someone else to fixate on. If you two ever succeed in really hurting one another I know that I can provide him with any care he might need, while you’ve probably got to go home and suck it up. Or, go to work and suck it up. Why don’t you go ahead and sit down.”

Jou sat in the small leather chair and set his bag down between his legs.

“Least I don’t have to worry about work t’day,” Jou muttered darkly.

Nakamura bit his lower lip and stared at Jou. “That was unfortunate. But it wasn’t just over one black eye, was it?”

Jou shrugged. “I have a hard time keeping jobs.”

“She said you’re always showing up covered in bruises. Is that true?”

“You…” The man already knew about his father, and he seemed confident enough in what he knew that he was ready to report Jou’s situation to Family Services, so there was no point hiding anything from him. “Yes, it’s true. It’s not all the time. Between Kaiba and my dad and the neighborhood I live in, things get rough. And with school, and usually detention for the crap Kaiba pulls in school, and not having a car, I’m usually late about once a week. Much as I want to blame Kaiba, it ain’t all his fault. Hell, he said it himself, I’m too much of a mutt to control my temper when he starts trying to get a rise out of me.”

Nakamura scribbled a quick, and with Jou’s vision, completely illegible note. “Mutt or dog?”

“Both. Usually it’s Mutt, though.”

“Aha.” Nakamura scribbled another note. “Has your father ever sexually abused you?”

“What?” Jou sat up, shocked by the question. “No! He’s not like that! He gets angry sometimes, but he’s never done anything like that!”

“Okay. Let’s go over a quick medical history, then…” The doctor started with a series of questions that seemed endless. He wanted to know about Jou’s childhood, about major injuries, dental work, vaccinations, his parents’ divorce, his sister’s surgery and even Jou’s grades. “So do you just not pay attention in school, or do you not have time for homework?”

Jou shrugged. “I don’t like to read all that much, it gives me a headache. I try to get the homework done, but there’s no time. Reading on a white board or anything far away really gives me a headache, so sometimes I close my eyes in class. And sometimes, when I close my eyes, I fall asleep.”

More medical questions followed. Questions about alcohol, drugs, his non-existent sexual history and orientation. “What’s that got to do with anything,” Jou demanded, not quite confident enough to answer one way or the other.

“Two things,” Nakamura said, still scribbling. “STDs can have a very serious impact on the body, and if you haven’t been tested and you’ve potentially been exposed, then you need to be tested.”

“That’s a bit outside of the whole cleaning up after Kaiba thing, isn’t it?”

“No. I’ll explain why in a moment.”

“Well, I ain’t had sex with anybody yet, so exposure to STDs ain’t an issue,” Jou assured him. “What’s the other thing?”

“Kaiba Seto is gay,” said the doctor, as though it were the most natural and widely known thing in the world. “Or, rather, I’ve only ever seen him date men. He came out of the closet some time ago, although he’s threatened to crush any media organization that makes an issue of it. I’m asking because I can’t help but wonder if his fixation on you, and thus the violence between you, might be due to homophobic tendencies on your part, or possibly a sense of romantic rejection on his part.”

“Ah, you’ve got your wires crossed there, Doc. Kaiba hates me. We’re rivals, although he doesn’t think I’ll ever be good enough to beat him. I guess the only thing he’d admit to is that he’s my best friend’s rival. He knows I can hold my own in a fight, though, and Yugi can’t. If he beat up Yugi he’d just look like a bully.”

Nakamura scoffed. “He is a bully. Don’t bother sugarcoating things with me. Does he insult your friend? Talk to him at all? Or just duel with him?”

“They pretty much just duel.”

Nakamura nodded. “Jounouchi-san,” the doctor steepled his hands in front of him. “I am bound by the same oath of confidentiality towards Kaiba Seto as I now am towards you. I cannot tell you anything he may have said to me in confidence in my role as a physician, not that he ever says anything at all, but… Well, from my dealings with him socially, I can tell you that the only two people he talks about on a regular basis are you and his younger brother. I don’t know the names of any of his brief romantic interests, and he has no friends, but he talks about you often enough that I know you have a sister named Shizuka who lives apart from you and would have lost her sight completely if you hadn’t been determined to help her. I did not use the term fixated lightly. He is fixated on you. Honestly, I was hoping that this discussion might give me the clue I need to help him find an outlet for that fixation. One that is less likely to cause either of you broken bones… If you’re straight, I can’t imagine Kaiba-sama would stay in this pattern you two seem to have fallen into. If you’re gay, I am confident that he would pursue you in a romantic context. The only explanation I’ve come up with is that he’s unsure about your orientation. I can very easily see him reverting to the social skills of an eight year old and acting out as a way of getting your attention, just so he can find out if you’re gay.”

“You mean like the little boy pushing the little girl out on the playground because he likes her?”

“Exactly.”

“That don’t make sense. Kaiba’s a genius. He has the social skills to manipulate business executives and politicians, there’s no way he’d do something that stupid around someone like me.”

“Ever heard the phrase Too smart to change a tire? Being a genius does not mean that Kaiba knows how to interact with people socially. But enough of that. Come on, let’s go into the exam room.”

“There’s more?” Jou groaned. “It’s already eight o’clock!”

Nakamura looked down at his watch. “Hu. Well, my wife’s going to kill me. Let’s hurry.”

Jou grabbed his backpack and followed, exhausted but unwilling to put up with a Family Services agent no matter how long this took. Nakamura took him through several more hallways, all now dark and empty, and into a small exam room with a paper-covered table. “Have a seat on the end of the table, please.”

Jou did as he was told.

“Okay, obviously you’ve got the contusion on your right eye and right cheek… Where else are you injured?

“Kaiba hit me in the chest a couple times, but I already had some bruises there, so it looks worse than it is.”

“Any other injuries?”

“No.”

“Are you suffering from a headache or feeling lightheaded?”

“Yes, but that’s nothing new.”

“Hm. Take your shirt off please.”

Jou slid his uniform jacket and t-shirt off, then sat hunched over, with his elbows resting on his knees.

“It wont work,” Nakamura said, barely glancing at him.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re used to hiding injuries. Stop. I can see them clearly, even with you sitting like that, so stop.”

Jou grumbled, but relaxed.

Nakamura poked and prodded each bruise on his face and chest, had Jou rotate his shoulder, twist at the waist which hurt like hell, and then announced they would need to take x-rays. Nakamura took the x-rays himself, since there were no nurses in the now empty clinic. “We really should get you in for a cat scan…” he said as he brought the x-rays of Jou’s chest back. “You’ve broken two ribs. It’s hard to tell from the scans, but I’d guess they’ve already started to heal. About a week old, I should think.”

Jou said nothing.

“Come on, hearing and vision tests are next.”

“What?” Jou panicked. “I can hear and see fine. You don’t need to worry about checking that.”

“Didn’t I say stop trying to cover things up? You’re very easy to read, you know,” Nakamura said again. “Two things make it quite obvious you’re lying. First, I don’t believe that you see fine for an instant. You track everything, including my location in the room, by sound. I moved when we were taking your x-rays. You spoke to the spot where I had been standing until you heard me reply. You report having headaches when you read, which means headaches when you strain your eyes. Second, blunt trauma to the head can cause visual and auditory problems. Have you ever had your eyes checked, Jou?”

Jou said nothing. He folded his arms and turned away.

“You really are easy to read. No wonder he likes you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“How bad is your vision?”

“I don’t know, alright. I’ve never had it checked, but… Well, I do read, even though it hurts. When Shizuka first lost her sight, I read up on the condition. They say it can run in families, and I’ve always been so worried about it that I’ve never gone in for an eye exam.”

“They say?”

Jou shrugged. “There was ‘dis article in some magazine…”

“I thought you said it was fairly rare.”

“That don’t mean people don’t write about it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t self-diagnose based on articles that appear in popular magazines. They’re seldom accurate.”

“This one was.”

The doctor chuckled. “Really, what was the source? A health magazine or a pop science bit?”

Jou pressed his lips together when a low growl managed to escape from his throat. He put up with Kaiba thinking he was stupid, but he wasn’t going to take it from a Kaiba lackey. “Don’t treat me like an idiot! It was in the New England Journal of Medicine, Winter 1997! The condition is a build-up of spinal fluid pressure that pushes against the visual cortex, it inhibits blood flow to the optic nerve! Once blood flow stops, there’s nothin’ they can do to repair the nerve damage, but if they catch it soon enough they can release the pressure and stop the damage from happenin’. I had to go to the library at Tokyo University to get a copy, and I had to read an entire physiology text book to understand the damn thing, you know!”

Nakamura smiled brightly, like a man who was trying to keep from laughing. “Gotcha. He can manipulate executives and politicians, but I have a feeling you challenge him more than you give yourself credit for… Still, just for your own information, there’s a lovely program you should look into, it’s called Interlibrary Loan. They could have just photocopied it and faxed it the library in Domino for you. I imagine even your school library could have gotten a copy for you.”

“They could have?”

“Yeah. It’s not the type of thing most high school students would know about, mind you. Not really the type of thing they’d ever use. Let’s get those ribs taped, do a quick eye exam, and get an idea of how bad your vision is. I don’t have the equipment or training for a thorough eye exam, just the old eye chart and a pirate costume eye patch from Halloween, but it’ll do.”

“Fine. Guess I might as well get it over with.”

As nine o’clock came, Nakamura’s cell phone rang. “Yes, dear?” he asked, without looking at the caller ID. “No, I’ve been out of the office all day, I’m at the clinic. It’s going to be a while. Yes, please. Ah, bring three large, will you? Yes, three. Thank you, love. Bye.”

Half an hour later a petite and beautiful woman, dressed in a western style business suit and high heals, strolled in carrying three large pizzas. Nakamura smiled at her and continued to wrap athletic tape around Jou’s chest, ignoring Jou when he hissed and whimpered.

“You’re actually with a patient?” the woman looked horrified. “I am so sorry, I should have knocked before coming in. Please, forgive my intrusion.”

“I’ll be finished taping this in a moment. Would you mind waiting?”

“Of course,” she bowed slightly and stepped out of the room, shutting the door.

When Jou’s ribs were taped and wrapped in an ace bandage, Nakamura sat up and stretched. “Come on, food, then eye exam, then we’ll talk about follow ups for the ribs and concussion and what to do about your eyes.”

“There’s nothing to do about my eyes,” Jou said glumly following Nakamura back to his office.

“Sakura,” Nakamura kissed the woman on the cheek, “There is someone I would like you to meet. This is Jounouchi Katsuya, he is a friend of Kaiba-sama’s.”

“A friend of Kaiba-sama’s,” the woman’s smile cooled slightly, as though she knew that anyone who claimed Kaiba had friends had to be conning her.

“I’m not a friend of Kaiba’s,” Jou insisted.

Nakamura opened his mouth, then sighed heavily. “I believe that is still open for debate.”

“I’m closer to an enemy than a friend, I know that.”

Nakamura shook his head quickly. “No. Kaiba-sama destroys his enemies. Believe me, I have been on retainer to the Kaiba’s since before Kaiba Gozoboro was ki—died. Since before Kaiba Gozoboro died.” The small man’s permanent smile faltered for a moment.

Jou didn’t even try to keep his face neutral. Nakamura had seen the way Jou reacted to his slip, had seen the lack of surprise. The woman didn’t seem surprised by it, either.

“I’ve seen him destroy enemies who are a threat to Mokuba,” Jou insisted, “But aside from them, he prefers to humiliate people.”

Nakamura stared at him. “Have you ever seen him waste time humiliating someone when it wasn’t part of the process of crushing them?”

“Well, no, but I know that he’d say I’m just not worth the effort, the self-centered bas—“ Jou bit his tongue when he saw the woman’s face twitch.

“Either way, he destroys his enemies. Jounouchi, Sakura is Kaiba-sama’s personal accountant. She works quite closely with him.”

“Oh, I apologize, I ah… I spoke inappropriately about your boss. Please forgive me.”

“Jounouchi Katsuya?” she asked, glancing between Jou and her husband. “The Jounouchi Katsuya?”

Nakamura smiled and raised both hands, as if trying to offer an explanation and failing to find the right words.

The woman strolled towards Jou and looked at him critically, hissing in sympathy at the sight of his black eye and bruised cheek. “No wonder he was in a good mood all day.”

“You mean Kaiba?”

“Didn’t double check my reports and walked out with a smile on his face thirty minutes earlier than normal.”

Jou shook his head, hardly able to comprehend the implications of what the Nakamuras had revealed to him. Not only was there a chance that Kaiba was attracted to him, but the prick might actually get off on hurting him. “He really is a sadistic fu—“ Jou caught sight of Sakura’s raised eyebrows and shut his mouth again. She just giggled.

“Here, Jounouchi, you eat, I’m going to go find that eye chart. Sakura, would you give me a hand?”

Nakamura and his wife left and Jou took two pieces of pizza. He was so hungry he could have eaten an entire pizza himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to be that impolite. Granted, the doctor had blackmailed him into coming here in the first place, but after six hours of talking and hanging out, Jou found he didn’t mind the blunt man quite as much as he had initially. When the couple returned, Nakamura was carrying an old eye exam chart, but his wife looked pale and furious. Like she had just seen a ghost for the first time and instantly decided that the existence of the supernatural was a deep, personal insult.

Sakura put three pieces of pizza on a paper plate and shoved them into her husband’s hands. She grabbed another plate and loaded it with another three pieces. “Jounouchi, please eat more. If it helps, you should know that I put it on Kaiba’s expense account as revenge for making my husband work late.”

Jou smiled and nodded a little. “I suppose I don’t mind exploiting Kaiba’s money a little,” he admitted, taking the pizza.

“Jou, I’m going to ask you another queston,” Nakamura said slowly. “If you would like to answer in private, that’s fine. When was the last time you ate?”

“Wednesday,” Jou said, trying to chew and swallow the bite in his mouth as inconspicuously as possible.

A soft sound, halfway between a sob and a sigh, escaped from Sakura. Jou didn’t need to be able to see perfectly to notice the tremor that ran through her, or the way her fists clenched. “Eat,” she said with a soft smile. “I’ll run down to the vending machine and buy us each a soda.”

“Oh, here,” Jou dug through his pocket and passed her a dollar. “Pepsi, if you don’t mind.”

Sakura’s stared at the money, a sudden anger burning in her eyes, but then it smoldered and died entirely. “Alright.” Perfectly manicured fingers took the dollar.

The eye exam did not go well. As ten o’clocked rolled around, Nakamura looked up from a reference book with an astounded smile on his face. “Good news, Mr. Jounouchi!”

“Yeah?” Jou asked, leaning over the doctor’s shoulder.

“This says you’re not quite legally blind. Your vision is seriously impaired at a distance, but it’s not so bad up close. At least you can see something.”

“I guess that could be good news. It means regular glasses might help, right?”

“No,” Nakamura said bluntly. “I don’t have the equipment to tell whether you’re just near sighted or if this is a result of the optic nerve issues. Based on the location of the headaches, though, I’m guessing you’re going to need the same surgery your sister had, and you’re going to need it within the year.”

“Great,” Jou sat back in the leather chair, both hands covering his eyes and he tried to come to terms with the news.

Sakura, who had stayed during the eye exam and had been pretending to go through paperwork of her own, looked up curiously. “How expensive is the surgery?”

“About fifty thousand, American,” said Jou. “My sister’s surgery was done in the States. We were both born there, and our mom thought the surgeons there were more familiar with the procedure. I don’t know what it’d be here.”

Sakura smiled brightly, looking at her husband with raised eyebrows and an expectant look on her face.

“I’ll make some calls Monday morning and get you a solid number, along with the other paperwork.”

Jou shook his head. “Nah, don’t bother. I’ve gotta figure out how to tell my old man I lost my job, and then find another one. Every dime I make goes to keeping us afloat. It’s not gonna happen.”

“Oh yes it is,” said Sakura, springing to her feet with more energy than anyone should have at the end of the day. “Kaiba Corp maintains a litigation fund—money set aside to pay for, or to settle, law suits. That includes torts committed by our executives. Get me a figure and I’ll get you a check.”
Jou laughed, shaking his head. “But it’s genetic. It’s got nothing to do with Kaiba hitting me.”

Nakamura shrugged. “My medical opinion is that the condition was probably…” he sat down on the corner of the desk and glanced at his wife, “aggravated?” She nodded. “Aggravated by the trauma inflicted by Kaiba-sama’s punches. You likely never would have needed the surgery, but for Kaiba-sama’s lack of self-control.”

“But he didn’t cause it,” Jou insisted. “If the problem wasn’t already there, the punches wouldn’t have made me lose my vision.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sakura insisted. “There’s a legal principle called the Egg Shell Skull Rule. Basically, it means that if you hit someone, you’re responsible for any actual damage you cause, whether they’ve got a normal skull and just suffer a bruise or a skull that can break as easily as an egg shell and you end up killing them.”

“What, are you a lawyer?” Jou scoffed.

“Yes,” she said simply. “I specialize in tax law and international copyright, but I’m authorized to settle potential tort claims on Kaiba Corp’s behalf, if our in house medical expert recommends settlement. If our own doctor says we’d lose a case, there’s no point in having to pay a hundred times the settlement amount after an expensive trial where Kaiba-sama will no doubt be dragged through the mud and made to look like an ignorant teenage bully.”

“No,” Jou insisted, struggling to get to his feet. “Do you know how much that bastard would gloat if he thought he hit me hard enough to make me go blind? I’d never live it down!”

“You’re going to put maintaining your pride over saving your vision?” she looked at him like he was insane.

“Does Kaiba have to know?” Nakamura asked, unrolling his shirt sleeves and re-buttoning his cuffs.

Sakura’s mouth opened slightly, her eyes shifting back and forth as though reading a document right before her eyes. “Ah, no,” her smile returned. “Given his notoriety, he’s always the subject of law suits… I lump the settled claims together each year… He goes over the R & D budget with a fine-tooth comb, but whatever money is left over from the litigation fund at the end of the year is just put into employee year-end bonuses. It’s completely written off. I doubt he would notice unless I brought it to his attention, so I just wont! There, problem solved.”

“I really don’t think it can be that easy. It doesn’t even sound legal, ta be honest” Jou insisted.

“It’s sneaky,” Sakura admitted, “But not illegal. Besides, no one at Kaiba Corp wants to deal with him moping around for weeks again, so there’s no way I’d let Tenchi tell him he actually hurt you.”

“Moping?”

“You are the one who ended up out of school for a week when he knocked you down that flight of stairs last year, right?”

“Yeah,” Jou rolled his eyes.

“He moped around the office shouting at people for the whole week, muttering about how he couldn’t believe you were such a wimp. He felt really bad about it.”

“People don’t insult someone if they feel bad about hurting them.”

“Kaiba does if he doesn’t want to admit he’s feeling guilty. Either way, that’s settled. Can we call it a night?”

“Yeah, I think we’re done. I’m just going to give Jounouchi a ride home, dear.”

“Jounouchi, would you mind if I tag along? I hate driving in the dark.”

Jou shrugged. “Don’t worry about giving me a ride. I can walk. It ain’t that far.”

“No,” Nakamura insisted. “I’m going to milk that DFS threat for all I can get. You’re accepting a ride home.”

Jou grabbed his backpack and followed the older couple out of the clinic. “You gonna black mail me into getting the surgery, too?”

“If it comes to that, yes,” Nakamura said honestly. He hit the keyless entry button on his car. Jou, determined to show that he at least had some sense of manners, held the door open for Sakura.

On the ride home Jou was surprised by how comfortable he felt with Doctor Nakamura and his wife. The man had been a bit unorthodox throughout the day, but Jou was glad that he was able to chat and make jokes with the older doctor. Sakura was easily one of the most charming women Jou had ever met, making small talk and telling stories about Kaiba’s business exploits that were only marginally appropriate. All in all, Jou laughed more during the ride home than he had in days. He even pretended not to notice the way Sakura’s lips pursed when Nakamura pulled up in front of his apartment building.

“Jounouchi,” Nakamura hesitated, taking a deep breath, “Are you going to be alright tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s a Friday night. My dad ain’t going ta be home until the bars close, and I’ve got all weekend to start looking for another job.”

“Here,” the doctor held out a tiny pill bottle.

“Ah,” Jou tried his best not to cringe. “I don’t like to take any drugs… I don’t like to be too spaced out.”

“It’s just prescription strength ibuprofen. It’ll help with the pain and swelling.”

“Oh, thanks. And, I know Mokuba put you up to this and all, but thank you.”

“Well, we’re not done yet. Come by the clinic Monday after school, I want to check the swelling around your eye and by then I’ll have some more information about what this surgery is going to involve.”

“Thanks, Doc. Ma’am, thanks for the pizza.”

Jou headed upstairs, wasn’t terribly surprised to find the door to the apartment had been kicked in again, and quickly searched the apartment to make sure it was empty. He didn’t bother trying to figure out if anything was missing or broken. The place was always trashed anyway, and anything left in the apartment that was worth anything would have been pawned for alcohol ages ago by his own dad. Everything that he owned that was worth anything was in his backpack. He checked to make sure the bars on his bedroom window were in-tact, wedged a wooden chair under the door handle, stripped down to his boxers and went to sleep.