cherry-coloured funk

He stood outside the door for a second after it clicked shut, jacket in hand, body catching up to itself in the quiet. The carpet was thick enough to erase footsteps. There were no ice machines up here, no families arguing about breakfast, no half-drunk men trying to remember room numbers. Just walls, doors, hidden cameras, the faint smell of flowers, and Jounouchi, who had a tournament trophy in some event office, a plane ticket to Japan, and the outline of Kaiba’s fingers still warm on his hip.

He started toward the elevator.

Halfway there, the thought hit him: the drawer.

He stopped so fast his shoe dragged on the carpet.

No. No, he had taken it. He had to have taken it. He patted himself frantically, crammed his hands into his pockets. Nothing. He… had not taken it. He had left Kaiba’s bed, put on his clothes, collected his phone, checked the floor for his sock, made jokes like an idiot, and left the only thing that made the flight possible in Kaiba’s bedside table. Heat surged into his face. His stomach cramped harder. He turned around.

Fine. Fine. Go back. Knock. Say he forgot something. Get it. Leave. Simple. People forgot things in rooms all the time. Chargers. Watches. Dignity. Drugs in their sponsor’s drawer. 

He knocked once.

Nothing.

He knocked again, harder. “Kaiba.”

The hallway swallowed the sound. Somewhere far off, the elevator chimed for another floor. Jounouchi leaned closer to the door.

“Kaiba. Open up.”

No answer.

He knew Kaiba was awake. He had just spoken to him. The bastard was probably ten feet from the door. Jounouchi knocked again, three quick hits with the side of his fist.

“Come on, man. I forgot something.”

This was not panic yet. This was the part before panic where the world offered several options and every one of them required a person to behave better than he historically had. He could call. He could text. He could go down to the desk and… say what exactly? Hello, could you please ask Mr. Kaiba to open his penthouse suite because I left a small bag of heroin in his bedside table and also may have had sex with him twice, unrelated.

He knocked again.

“Kaiba, please. I know you’re awake.”

Please. Great. Excellent. Strong opening. Very professional. The player profile would need updating again: dynamic Japanese competitor known for unorthodox risk calculation and pleading outside doors before noon.

No answer.

The early sickness sharpened. His skin tightened across his back. A thin, sour sweat gathered under his shirt. His nose had started to run. He wiped it with the heel of his hand and hated the gesture as soon as he made it. He knocked again, this time with his palm flat to keep from making too much noise.

“Kaiba. Fuck. Please open the door. I forgot something. I’m not kidding.”

Still nothing.

He pressed his forehead briefly to the door, then lifted it before anyone on this rich-ass floor could turn the corner and discover him in a tableau of personal decline. 

“Seto,” he said, lower.

The lock clicked.

Jounouchi stepped back as the door opened.

Kaiba stood there in trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt, barefoot, hair still sleep-mussed and expression fully awake now. He held the door with one hand and looked Jounouchi over from face to shoes with a laziness that was not laziness at all. He took in the sweat. The jacket clutched in one hand. The breathing. The return.

“Do you ever stop begging?” Kaiba asked.

The words landed before Jounouchi could prepare a face for them. His body, traitor, reacted to the tone as much as the insult. Heat moved low in him, fast enough to confuse with nausea if he was interested in lying to himself, which he usually was and currently did not have time for.

“I forgot something,” he said.

“You said.”

“Can I just come get it?”

“What is it?”

“My stuff.”

Kaiba’s eyes sharpened by a degree. “Your stuff.”

“Yes.”

“Specificity would be less pathetic.”

Jounouchi glanced down the hallway. Empty. Thank fuck. “Kaiba, come on.”

“No.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I’m not playing.”

Kaiba’s mouth moved slightly. Not a smile. Worse, the thing before one. “Who is playing?”

Jounouchi felt the question hook under his ribs. The stupid, awful part of him, the part that had followed Kaiba to his room in the first place, answered before his pride could organize a defense. He stepped closer, not into the room yet.

“Please,” he said. “I just need to get it.”

Kaiba looked at him for another second, then opened the door wider. “Then show me.”

Jounouchi exhaled too fast and moved to step past him.

Kaiba blocked him with an arm across the doorway.

“Not like that.”

Jounouchi stared at him. “What?”

“If you forgot something so important, you should remember exactly where it is.” Kaiba’s gaze dropped to the carpet, then returned to his face. “Why don’t you crawl to where it is and show me?”

The word didn’t make sense for a second. 

“Kaiba.”

“Hands and knees.”

“Cut it out.”

“I’m not repeating myself.”

Jounouchi’s fingers tightened around his jacket until the fabric bunched. His body had become a committee of bad motives. The withdrawal had a hand in it. His secret had a hand in it. Kaiba’s voice, his doorway, his bare feet on penthouse carpet, the memory of his hand in Jounouchi’s hair, all of that had hands too, and every one of them was dragging him toward something he did not have time for.

“I said I’m not playing,” Jounouchi said.

“So why are you here?”

The hallway seemed longer now. Brighter. He could imagine a maid turning the corner with towels, a security guard, a guest in sunglasses, any passing human life entering at the exact second Jounouchi decided how much of himself to set down on the carpet. He should leave. He should tell Kaiba to go fuck himself and find the plug again before the airport. He should do many sensible things, several of which were available to people with better nervous systems.

His stomach cramped.

Kaiba waited.

Jounouchi looked at the floor. The carpet was pale and immaculate, with a subtle pattern that probably concealed stains from people richer than him. His knees still hurt from last night. His hands would hurt too if he pressed weight into them, because the tournament had left a small blister under one finger from gripping his cards too hard during finals. He thought of the drawer. Small black baggie. Enough left to get him through security, boarding, the terrible sealed hours in the aircraft sailing through the air, over the churning ocean.  

“Fuck you,” he said, without force.

Kaiba stepped aside.

Jounouchi lowered himself to the carpet.

The first touch of his knees to the floor went through him like a bell struck badly. The position reorganized the room instantly. Kaiba’s legs became the nearest architecture. The door frame, his bare feet, the line of his trousers, the edge of his unbuttoned shirt. Jounouchi placed his hands down, jacket still trapped in one fist until Kaiba’s voice cut in.

“Drop it.”

He dropped the jacket.

“Go on.”

Jounouchi crawled into the suite. His palms pressed into the thick carpet. His shoulders tightened. The open door remained behind him, and the possibility of being seen sat on his back with every movement. Kaiba closed the door after three seconds. The click of the lock sounded almost merciful. Almost.

The suite looked different from this height. Chair legs, table bases, the underside of the bed frame, the seam where the carpet met the marble near the entry. His own discarded memory everywhere. Water glass. Rumpled sheets. One of the pillows on the floor. A room he had walked through with Kaiba’s mouth on him now reduced to distances measured by palms and knees.

He kept his eyes on the bedside table.

Kaiba followed at a slow pace behind him. No hurry. Of course. Why hurry when the whole point was making time serve him? Jounouchi could hear him, not footsteps exactly because the carpet ate them, but the faint shift of fabric, the small sound of breath. His face burned. His cock had started to harden, which was a betrayal so stupid and predictable he could have laughed.

There was a horror in wanting it and needing something else more.

He reached the bedside table and moved one hand toward the drawer.

Kaiba caught his wrist. Jounouchi froze with his fingers an inch from the handle.

“That isn’t your drawer,” Kaiba said.

Jounouchi looked back over his shoulder. It was a mistake. Kaiba was standing above him, face calm, eyes bright with that focused cruelty. 

“I know,” Jounouchi said. “I just need what’s in it.”

“What’s in it?”

“My thing.”

“Your thing.”

“Kaiba, please.”

The word came out too fast. Kaiba noticed. His thumb rested against the inside of Jounouchi’s wrist, over the pulse there, and Jounouchi had the terrible impression of being counted.

“I will open the drawer when I’m ready to open it.”

“Don’t do this.”

“You came back to my room, knocked on my door, and begged to be let in.” Kaiba released his wrist and stepped back half a pace. “I’m doing very little.”

Jounouchi sat back on his heels before realizing the posture gave Kaiba something else to look at. He shifted, then stopped, because shifting made it worse. The room had become too hot. His nose ran again. He sniffed once and wished immediately to be shot.

Kaiba looked down at him. “Why should I open it?”

“Because it’s mine.”

“There is nothing in this room that belongs to you.”

The sentence was absurd. His shoes were by the door, his jacket on the carpet, his phone in his pocket, his marks probably somewhere under Kaiba’s collar if light had any loyalty. But the drawer was Kaiba’s, the room was Kaiba’s, his job was at Kaiba’s company, and Jounouchi had returned here because his own body had overruled every line he meant to draw.

He swallowed. “I left it by accident.”

“You leave a great many things by accident.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re careless and then expect other people to accommodate you.”

“Okay, great, yeah, thank you. Life lesson received. Open the drawer.”

Kaiba’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Ungrateful.”

Jounouchi’s face pulled before he could stop it. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“What do you fucking want from me? I won the stupid fucking tournament!”

“And here you are on the floor.”

The room moved a fraction. Jounouchi laughed. “You are such a piece of shit.”

Kaiba crouched then, not fully, just enough to bring himself closer without surrendering height. “Careful.”

“Or what?”

“Or I leave the drawer closed.”

Jounouchi’s mouth shut.

There it was. There was the exact shape of it. Kaiba didn’t know what was inside. Kaiba thought this was about the game they had been playing since the first night, the thing with insults and attention and the awful relief of being wanted through contempt. He thought Jounouchi had returned because he could not keep from returning. He thought this was another ugly little orbit around him.