#Jou saying fuckface fills me with unfathomable joy

[alectoperdita]

Fictober - Day 25

prompt: “sometimes you can even see” fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters pairing: Jounouchi Katsuya/Kaiba Seto rating: teen warnings: none a/n: look, i’m not sure what i wrote for Kaiba’s birthday here. but it includes both established relationship and a dimension-hopping Kaiba from a parallel universe | Kaiba had always been his own worst enemy.

His feet slowly descended onto the floor. He sensed it was carpeted before the bright blue haze of the protective field generated by the Dimension Emulator cleared. The familiar sight of his office greeted him. Well, maybe not his specific office, given the shiny barrel of a handgun he was currently staring down.

"Who are you?" the man pointing the gun demanded with fury blazing in his narrowed, blue eyes. "What are you?"

Kaiba raised one confident hand, his arm adorned with the active Duel Disk and pushed the firearm aside. "That should be obvious. I'm you. From another dimension."

The other man slowly lowered his gun, but not his guard. In dead silence, they scrutinized each other at length. 

Kaiba supposed this was definitive evidence of the many-world interpretation because he was staring at another version of himself. This world's Kaiba—Seto, he mentally amended to avoid confusion, was dressed in business formal, a slim tailored suit that accentuated his tall, lanky body. Seto's shoulders were not quite as broad as Kaiba's, and not all it was due to their difference in attire. The pistol that Seto wielded, though, was identical to the one Kaiba kept in a biometrically locked drawer at his own office desk. He must keep it for protection in the same way Kaiba did. But looking at Seto's face was like staring into a mirror: same sharp eyes, same long nose, same thin lips.

Same voice and paranoia too as he glared at Kaiba. "Why should I believe you?"

"Whether you believe me or not isn't my problem," sneered Kaiba. 

They glared at each other at a standstill—neither willing to back down out of either sheer stubbornness or paranoia.

A cheerful ringtone that Kaiba didn't recognize shattered their awkward silence. Without releasing his gun, Seto fished his phone out of his jacket pocket and brought it to his ears. He barely glanced at the name on the screen before answering, "I'm busy."

But hearing whoever was on the other end of the line caused Seto's shoulders to relax a fraction. Kaiba would have missed it if he wasn't studying his other self so closely. "No, everything's fine... No, I'm not hiding anything. Just leave me for a few hours. I'll explain later... Don't come to the office under any circumstance. I mean it—"

Seto pulled his phone away and gaped at the screen. Evidently, the other person had hung up on him. Steeling his expression again, Seto returned his attention to Kaiba. "As you can see, the role of Kaiba Seto is already occupied in this dimension. Now leave."

"If I could, I would already be gone." Kaiba raised his arm to display his latest Duel Disk fitted with a portable Dimension Emulator. "I'm attempting to return home, not take a jaunt through the surrounding dimensional neighborhood. But something here must have thrown off its ability to lock onto the home beacon."

Unable to resist the tech, Seto stepped closer to examine the device on Kaiba's arm. "Where were you returning from?"

"Aaru." At Seto's confused expression, Kaiba clarified, "The afterlife."

Seto laughed. So that was what it sounded like when Kaiba mocked others. "The afterlife? Why the hell would you want to go there?"

That was where the first key difference between him and Seto became evident. Part of Kaiba was curious to uncover where they diverged. Surely, Seto had met Atem. Much of the office was arranged as it was in Kaiba's home dimension with shelves full of Duel Monsters curios and various Duel Disks models from over the years. There appeared to be significantly more photo frames on the shelves closest to the desk, but Kaiba stood too far away to make out any of their subjects.

Seto finally drew away and crossed the room to put away the gun. From behind his desk, he regarded Kaiba imperiously and barked, "Tell me how it works. The sooner we figure it out, the sooner you'll be gone."

Reluctantly, Kaiba gave a top-level overview of his prototype. If he was going to trust anyone with the secrets of his invention, it might as well be another version of himself. But the more he explained, the more it became apparent that Seto shared no great interest in the subject other than scientific curiosity. Kaiba quickly learned that there was no Quantum Cube, no Duel Links Solid Vision System, no Crystal Cloud Network, and no space station in this world. 

Before he could dig into these baffling differences, the office door burst open with a bang. 

"Alright, enough of this stupid moping shit!" exclaimed a voice that Kaiba hadn't heard in nearly a decade. 

Seto swore as Kaiba spun to face the newcomer. Jounouchi Katsuya, grown into a man as Kaiba had never seen him, stood shellshocked in the doorway, jaws slackened as he gaped at the two men inside the office. 

"What the hell is going on? Why are there two of you? Please tell me he's a hologram or something!" Jounouchi screeched and jabbed an accusing finger at Kaiba.

Briskly, Seto rounded his desk and crossed the room. He grabbed Jounouchi by the elbow and dragged him across the threshold before slamming the doors shut and locking them again. "I told you not to come up here," he hissed.

Jounouchi tore his incredulous gaze from Kaiba to meet Seto's gaze. "I thought you were just being weird about your birthday again. Didn't think you were having a meeting with your clone or whatever."

Kaiba glanced at the digital clock on Seto's desk, noting the date and time as 20:30 on October 25. It was indeed their birthday. He addressed the two other men with a sneer, "Your barking's as loud and obnoxious as ever, deadbeat. I assure you. I'm neither a hologram nor a clone."

Fists clenched, Jounouchi glared at him. "What the hell is going on?!"

Seto sighed, but curiously, he'd yet to release Jounouchi's arm. "He's supposedly the Kaiba Seto from another dimension."

"Shut up! You for fucking real?"

Seto leveled a flat and severe expression at the blond man, which seemed to finally convince him. 

"Well, he's certainly got your bad attitude," Jounouchi grumbled unhappily.

Kaiba and Seto shared an equally disgruntled look.

-x-x-x-

For some reason that Kaiba couldn't fathom, Jounouchi hung around after that. Nor did he understand why Seto tolerated the man's presence. Granted, the deadbeat kept his mouth shut most of the time, seemingly casually lounging on the office couch while surfing the web on his smartphone. But Kaiba could tell that Jounouchi was as much on-guard as his counterpart. It felt like Kaiba had been flanked by suspicious parties from all angles.

After another hour of scrawling diagrams on printer paper and going so far as to open up Kaiba's prototype to make sure the inner circuitry hadn't fired on his hop over from Aaru, Seto excused himself to check something in the labs located in the building's sub-basement levels. He wasn't keen on leaving Kaiba in his office but was even less keen on inviting Kaiba into the labs.

"Watch him." Seto had ordered Jounouchi before he glided out of the office.

Jounouchi sighed and slid his phone back into his jean pockets. He rose from the couch and approached the desk to investigate all the drawings and schematics that the two Kaibas had penned. 

Meanwhile, Kaiba put some distance between them and placed himself near the window to gaze out onto a wholly unfamiliar skyline. This was not the sprawling metropolis of his Domino, lacking the sleek high-rises and technologically-advanced infrastructure he'd singlehandedly financed in his hometown. This Domino was quaint with its suburban creep. It was positively backward in his eyes.

Jounouchi appeared beside him. His alien presence felt wrong and grated against Kaiba's nerves.

But Jounouchi was oblivious as ever when he spoke up, "It's gorgeous, ain't it? The night view gets me every time. Sometimes, you can even see—"

Kaiba whirled on the other man and loomed. "Why are you here?" This was one mystery he was determined to solve before he left this strange dimension.

Jounouchi met his eyes without fear. "At least I belong in this dimension, unlike someone here."

"That's debatable, deadbeat. You certainly don't belong here in this office, though. My office."

At the challenge, Jounouchi's hackles visibly rose. "Yeah, well, that shows how much you know. Shit, I forgot how much of an asshole you can be."

Kaiba wondered if Jounouchi was addressing him or Seto. He decided to press his advantage and stepped into Jounouchi's space. But instead of hitting Kaiba or pushing him away, Jounouchi froze and stared helplessly into his face with rounded eyes, enthralled by his presence in a way that Kaiba had never seen. His breath even audibly hitched.

In that instant, the pieces fell into place. Jounouchi had sought Seto out on his birthday of all days. He had called Seto's direct number, and Seto had answered in such a way that Kaiba had assumed he'd been talking to Mokuba. He had access to Seto's locked office and navigated it with a familiarity that could only come from frequent visits. 

There was no way that any version of him would... Would he?

There was a way to confirm his suspicion.

Kaiba grabbed Jounouchi's shirt, yanked him forward, and swallowed his startled yelp by crushing their mouths together. Jounouchi's lips were soft, warm, and tasted like mint chapstick. For the briefest second, he started to lean into Kaiba's kiss on instinct before catching himself and violently shoving him away. Wide-eyed, Jounouchi stumbled several steps back and gaped at him. Kaiba responded with another sneer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"You two are fucking each other," Kaiba declared.

Jounouchi pursed his lips unhappily at the description, exposing an opening so wide that it could be seen from miles away.

Kaiba laughed. Oh, this was rich. The him of this world was not only sleeping with the deadbeat, but the deadbeat appeared to have caught feelings. Well, he would do himself a favor and set the idiot straight. Crossing his arms over his chest, he regarded the other man with a superior smirk. 

"He'll never return your feelings. You'll never be more than a third-rate nobody. But ]you must fuck better than you duel because I can't imagine why he'd put up with—" A right hook out of nowhere caught him by surprise, and he hit the window with such force that the glass rattled. Clasping a hand to his aching chin, he straightened and glared at Jounouchi. "How dare you—"

"Shaddup!" shouted Jounouchi. "You don't know what you're talking about. You're not him." Before Kaiba could argue, Jounouchi reached under his shirt collar and pulled out the thin chain tucked under the fabric. The platinum band hanging off the chain glinted in the light as he lifted it into the air. "As for Seto's feelings, I think I know better than you. We're engaged, fuckface."

Engaged. The word struck him like another physical blow across the cheek. "Impossible! You're lying!"

Jounouchi snorted. "All this tells me more about what kinda sorry asshole you are in your world. You've already pushed everyone away, haven't you? I noticed you aren't wearing the locket. Seto never takes that off. When was the last time you spoke to your Mokuba?" A note of pity had crept into his words by the end of his speech.

Kaiba was seized by rage and shock. How dare this nobody see through him so easily?

This was the tense scene to which Seto returned. In his arms, he carried a glowing device that reminded Kaiba of the homing beacon he'd built in his dimension. His eyes darkened when they landed on the bruise that'd begun to stain Kaiba's jaw. Jounouchi stormed across the room, but Seto stopped him before he could reach for the exit. "What happened?"

Without looking back at Kaiba, Jounouchi loudly declared, "I'm going home! And when you come home, it'd better be because this asshole's fucked off back to whatever hell he crawled outta." He ripped his arm out of Seto's grip and slammed the doors shut with an ear-splitting bang.

As Seto approached, Kaiba noticed the thin chain peeking out of his open collar. No doubt, another ring hung off Seto's necklace. Kaiba's blood boiled at the realization. Part of him wanted to confront his other self and demanded to know why and how'd he'd lost his mind. But he already sensed that would be a long argument that would satisfy neither of them. Instead, Kaiba focused on the device that Seto had returned with.

Thankfully, it didn't take long to confirm that Seto's device, a long-range communication prototype, operated on the same dimensional frequency as Kaiba's homing device. It wasn't an identical wavelength, but it was close enough that his Dimension Emulator had attuned itself to this dimension. Turning it off should allow Kaiba to get a lock on his home dimension. 

As Kaiba reassembled his Duel Disk, Seto worked silently behind his desk. Any appetite Kaiba previously had to get to know this world's him had died. The knowledge of Seto's engagement sat sour deep in his guts. When he finally dared to look at the photos on the shelves, he caught a glimpse of a man who had been surrounded by family and friends. Images of Mokuba growing up and smiling stabbed like knives in his back. 

This Kaiba—Seto was weak. He'd settled for people when he could have attained unimaginable power. Pathetic.

When he was finished, he donned the prototype again and rose to his feet. Seto copied him.

"It's done. Turn that thing off," he ordered.

Seto's hand lingered on the case and made no move to power down the device. "I should shoot you for touching my fiancé," he growled as he locked eyes with Kaiba. "Or maybe I should invert the frequency when you try to leave and hopefully scatter you to the dimensional void."

"Ah, yes, you checked the CCTV footage," Kaiba snickered. Seto's venom, though, he welcomed. Even if it came from a misguided source. At the very least, the vindictiveness proved they weren't as far from one another as he initially feared.

"I did. He's off-limits. He's mine, and you're not me."

"No, I'm not." For the first time, Kaiba wasn't 100% sure that was a good thing.

With a firm nod, Seto turned off the device. Kaiba's Duel Disk beeped. It had locked onto a different dimensional wavelength. Without a word of goodbye, Kaiba activated the Dimension Emulator and vanished in a shower of blue lights and particle effects.

Alone again, Seto collapsed into his chair and ran a hand through his bangs. What a mess the evening had turned into. He spared a glance at the prototype and made a mental note to shelve the project. He didn't want to turn it on again if it drew that doppelganger back to this dimension again. He didn't know if he could stop himself from shooting the bastard on sight the next time.

He retrieved his phone and dialed his fiancé. "Katsuya? He left. I'm on my way home now."

Check out other puppy/violetshipping ficlets I’m writing all #fictober20 long

#fictober20 #violetshipping #puppyshipping #kaijou #my fanfiction #my love-hate relationship with DSOD!Kaiba continues #Jou saying fuckface fills me with unfathomable joy #i'm as confused by this thing as you probably are #i wanted to write fluff or smut but the prompt just didn't lend itself to that #happy birthday you dragon nerd #sorry your other selves are such an ass on your birthday #yugioh