
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/81715.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Smallville, Yu-Gi-Oh!
  Relationship:
      Kaiba_Seto/Lex_Luthor
  Character:
      Kaiba_Seto, Lex_Luthor
  Additional Tags:
      Crossover, Boarding_School, References_to_Child_Abuse, Podfic_Available
  Collections:
      Smallville_Slash_Archive
  Stats:
      Published: 2007-02-12 Words: 9779
****** Exchange Student ******
by Xparrot
Summary
     Sometimes broken edges can almost fit together. Lex meets a boy one
     semester at Excelsior.
Notes
     I've said it before, that I fell for Kaiba because he reminds me of
     Lex. Brilliant and deeply disturbed, casualties of their sadistic
     fathers' damage and their own ambitions. Kaiba is the more culpable
     of the two, having chosen his path rather than being born into it;
     ironic that he's the one to eventually rise above his darkness, while
     Lex is ultimately damned. Maybe it's because Lex is destiny's puppet
     victim, while Kaiba has always forged his own. Or maybe Lex just
     needs someone to shatter his heart.
     I've futzed with the YGO timeline; the story is set in the spring of
     '95, with Lex at 15 and Kaiba at 14 (for anyone flummoxed by imaging
     the real with the animated, please follow praiseofshadows's lead and
     picture Kaiba as played by Gackt). The idea is that Gozaburo sent
     Seto to an American boarding school for a semester to practice his
     English; Seto took the opportunity to learn some other valuable life
     skills from the school's expert. I'm not confident of the
     characterizations of either one of them, but hell, they're just kids
     here. Seriously fucked up kids.
     Warnings: for under-aged consensual sex and references to child
     abuse.
See the end of the work for more notes
The wet thump of a fist meeting flesh was an ordinary enough sound in the back
corridor of Fielding Hall, out of sight of the teachers in the minutes between
classes. Students weren't supposed to be in the maintenance tunnels, but when
your English class immediately followed Chemistry it was the only way to get
there by the bell.
Lex's first thought was to be glad it wasn't him this time. He was immediately
ashamed to have such a thought, unworthy of a Luthor in the implied cowardice.
Half-assed beatings from lazy, unpracticed society brats and politicians' sons
were no worse than the marks earned from his private fencing instructor; the
aches rarely lingered more than a day, and his peers were as careful as Henrik
not to inflict permanent damage. And little matter if he was a favorite target
because of his freak baldness, and because his bruises never lasted, never
clear enough for the teachers to notice or call him on them. Thankfully; the
hour he went whining to a teacher who made less in a year than his father did
in a day was the hour he proved himself undeserving of all he stood to inherit.
He remembered every face and name. He would pay them back with the obliged
interest when he had the means.
But for now he slowed his steps, not so much as to plod, but leisurely enough
that by the time he turned the corner the other boys had ambled off, high-
fiving and laughing as they wiped their knuckles with monogrammed
handkerchiefs. The wreck they left behind was sitting up, his back to the
painted cement blocks, staunching blood from his nose with a paper towel. He
probably carried some with him; he wasn't crying, was making no sound except
his rasping breaths. Used to this.
Lex stopped before him. The boy looked up, not flinching, not challenging;
neither prey nor predator, only curious. Evaluating. He didn't blink at Lex's
bald head, and if he was in pain or angry it didn't show in his smooth motion,
as swift and alien as a reptile's. Lex recognized him as one of the Asian
exchange students, here for one semester to perfect their English and provide a
respite for the customary targets of the bored and boorish.
Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or other. Lex took a chance. "Daijoubu desu ka?"
The boy's eyelids flickered once, like a lizard's. "I'm fine," he said, shoving
himself to his feet and picking up his bag. Standing, he was tall for a
Japanese kid, thin and gawky. "Do you enjoy running late, or are you here for
your Japanese lesson?" His English was excellent, not flat or hesitant but
biting.
Lex shrugged, let himself smile. The boy was a class below him; a fourteen-
year-old's attitude was hard to find insulting. "There's blood on your sleeve,"
he said helpfully.
The boy ignored him. He had put his hand to his pocket, and his eyelids
flickered again; then he cast his gaze around the hall, stooping low to peer
under the heating unit. "Chikusho," he muttered under his breath, "nakushite wa
ikenai..."
Lex looked around the floor, lifted one shoe and the other carefully and then
bent down. He spotted a corner of white wedged beneath the ventilation grating
by his feet, felt along the edge until he slipped it free and picked it up.
"This what you're looking for?"
It was a photograph, stained and creased, of two little kids playing chess. He
held it out and the boy snatched it from him, returned it to his pocket without
glancing at it. "Thank you," he said stiffly, jerking his head down in a nod
that was probably an aborted bow.
"No problem," Lex said. "Lex Luthor." He put out his hand.
The boy took it after a moment. "Seto Kaiba," he said, just as stiffly. His
eyes were dark, but going towards blue in the light instead of brown, oddly
mismatched to his Asian features. Colored contacts, or else a mutation.
"So, see you here again," Lex said sardonically, but Seto Kaiba didn't answer
his smile, just turned and strode away, fast enough to remind Lex he was late
himself. And Ms Calloway's English class was never worth skipping. She might
not be wearing nylons today. He hurried the other direction down the hall.
 
===============================================================================
Lex saw Seto Kaiba again two days later, at lunch. Kaiba was sitting with the
chess club, not eating but playing three games simultaneously, turned from one
board to the next, picking up pieces and setting them down with a bored look.
Lex, a sometimes member himself, took a seat next to the club president and
began stripping his croissant layer by layer. "New kid any good?"
Bradley was somewhere between casual acquaintance and friendly rival. He ranked
as a junior grandmaster; Lex routinely beat him in private matches but bored of
tournaments before winning any rank himself. The senior stared at Lex now. "Are
you kidding? His father's a grandmaster."
"And he taught his son well?"
"There's a rumor," Bradley said, lowering his voice as if imparting state
secrets, "that Seto beat his father. When he was only ten years old."
"Is that so." Lex watched Kaiba move another piece. His opponent sighed, shoved
back his chair and knocked the board off the table with a nudge of his elbow
that might have just been clumsiness.
"Hey, none of that!" Bradley protested, getting up.
Lex finished shredding his croissant, ate the chocolate center as he watched
Kaiba soundly trounce his other two adversaries without breaking a sweat or a
smile, then got up and took the seat across from him most recently vacated. "So
you were one of the kids in that photo," Lex said. "Playing chess."
"Luthor," Kaiba said by way of greeting, and didn't answer.
Lex picked up three white pawns, placed them on the board. "Up for another
match?"
Kaiba still didn't smile, but he picked up the black pieces and began to
arrange them. "Sure."
Kaiba played silently and quickly, rarely hesitating more than a moment before
choosing his piece. Lex preferred to take his time, considering strategies and
amending tactics as the game progressed. But their gameplay was similarly
vicious. Lex had always been a brutal player, more interested in crushing his
opponent with evident dominance than the finesse of a careful trap. He fought
to take control of the board as soon as possible and battled to keep it. A good
defense is a good offense, was always the Luthor way.
Kaiba was just as ruthless, forgoing forks and feints to wage a war of
attrition, content to sacrifice piece after piece as long as Lex lost his as
well and always pushing onward. By endgame the board was decimated and Lex was
sure Kaiba was going to force a stalemate, only to get a look at Kaiba's eyes,
gaze locked on the few remaining pieces and his mind working invisibly behind
that opaque blue. No surrender; Kaiba disdained of a draw as much as Lex
himself. Anything but a clear win was a loss, and that was untenable. Lex
wasn't surprised to soon find himself boxed into a mate in three. He knocked
over his king and nodded across the board. "Good game."
A smattering of applause broke out among the geeks gathered around their table.
"Play you again sometime?" Lex asked.
Kaiba looked at him. He hadn't smiled once during their game and didn't now,
but there was such interest in the way he leaned forward, obsession burning in
that thin body that appealed to Lex as much as the need to win, the need to
prove himself. Kaiba was good but Lex was better; he only needed to get a
handle on the younger boy, understand which way the wheels in his head turned.
It wasn't an unpleasant proposition. Kaiba was handsome enough, pretty really,
in the androgynous way Asian boys could be, not exactly feminine but delicately
featured. The thick brown hair falling in his eyes couldn't hide their striking
blue. And for all the angular ungainliness of adolescence, he moved gracefully,
lithe and swift, the sinuous certain purpose of a snake through grass.
"All right," Kaiba said, "I'll beat you again sometime," and Lex smiled.
 
===============================================================================
It took Lex three days to ascertain Kaiba's dorm room, and another three days
for his roommate to be busy in the library for the evening. Lex showed up at
his door with a few books for the offer of English tutoring and a portable
chess game.
As it turned out that Kaiba's roommate had his own full-sized board, so they
set that up instead. Without an audience Lex was comfortable filling the
silence. "I play with my dad now," he said, "but my mother first taught me how
to play. On her grandfather's hand-carved ivory set, she left it to me. It's at
home now. Did you learn from your father?"
"Yes," Kaiba said.
"He's a grandmaster, I heard."
"I learned from my real father," Kaiba said, not sharply but flat. "He had no
rank. My adopted father's a grandmaster."
"And you can beat him."
Kaiba didn't answer that. He moved his queen, captured one of Lex's bishops.
"That photo you have," Lex asked. "Is the other boy your brother?"
"Yes," Kaiba said, flat again, sounding bored. It would have been convincing if
Lex didn't remember how keenly Kaiba had been searching the floor for his
photo, how quick he had been to grab it from Lex's hand.
"I had a little brother myself," Lex said, hearing his voice go soft and
distant, the way it always did when he talked about Julian. "He died a few
years ago, as a baby. I always wondered what it would be like to really have a
brother. If he'd gotten old enough, what we could've done together. Maybe we
would have played chess."
A single bishop did him no good anyway. Lex moved it to fork Kaiba's rook and
knight, forcing a sacrifice. Eye for an eye.
Kaiba didn't immediately choose either piece. Lex raised his gaze from the
board to find Kaiba's blue eyes on him. Not sympathetic at all. Maybe angry.
Maybe accusing and Lex had to steel himself not to flinch, like he was facing
his own father, hand raised and face a mask of rage. Though if he was angry
then Kaiba's rage was cold, ice-blue as his eyes. And Kaiba couldn't know his
sin anyway, would have no way of knowing; Lex's father had seen that not a wisp
of rumor about his child's death had ever escaped.
But he was angry, for whatever reasons, and the sickness in the pit of Lex's
stomach wasn't his own temper answering but the sucking hollow of guilt. He
pushed the chess board to the side. "Whatever. We can finish this later."
"It's my mate in six anyway," Kaiba observed.
Lex cast his eyes back to the board. The boy was right.
There was a video game console plugged into the small television on one
dresser. "Yours?" Lex asked, grabbing a controller.
"My roommate's," Kaiba said. "I'm not here to play games."
Which didn't stop him from kicking Lex's ass in Street Fighter, F-Zero, and
even Warrior Angel Whirl, which Lex not only could play with his eyes closed
but was pretty sure hadn't even been released in Japan. After a while he gave
up trying to win and settled back on the couch to watch Kaiba instead. The boy
played video games like he played chess, sitting straight up and focused on the
screen, working the controller with an expert economy of motion that seemed too
intense to be enjoyable.
Lex watched the light from the flickering TV screen playing over Kaiba's round
young face, the passionate focus there. Like there was something in the balance
far greater than a simple game, like losing would be his death. He wondered
what Kaiba would do if he lost. He wondered if Kaiba had that expression when
he came, open eyes and closed mouth.
When the roommate returned they were on the chair together, Lex perched on the
padded arm leaning on Kaiba's shoulder, far too close, but Kaiba didn't twist
away for all the precepts of Japanese modesty, merely glanced over at his
roommate and said, "We're borrowing your system, Wong."
"All right, okay," replied the other boy, doing a poor job of not staring. Lex
smiled at him, made a show of stretching, his hand grazing Kaiba's shoulder, as
he yawned, "It's late, I should get back before curfew. I'll see you around."
He felt Wong's eyes follow him out, but not Kaiba's, which was a
disappointment. But as he opened the door, Kaiba said, "See you later, Luthor."
Lex gave the roommate a cheery wave, and walked out.
 
===============================================================================
Lex had an acquaintance in student records. Kaiba's GPA was almost as high as
his own, and his demerits were significantly less; in fact he was a model
student, though teachers complained about their inability to draw him out of
his shell, about his lack of friends.
He was the adopted heir of Gozaburo Kaiba, the CEO of Kaiba Corporation, a
Japanese mega-conglomerate best known for defense contracts among a host of
other interests. LuthorCorp wasn't generally in direct competition with any of
their companies, and Lex didn't know if their fathers had ever met. Gozaburo
looked nothing like his adopted son, to tell from the picture in the KaibaCorp
annual report, a stout gray-haired man with a mustache and a cigar, none of
Seto's slender serpentine strength.
Lex met Kaiba after his calculus class, when according to his schedule they
both had a free period, sidling into the classroom as the underclassmen filed
out. Kaiba in the back was busy at his laptop.
"Working on your own computer game?" Lex inquired, leaning over his shoulder to
check out the diagrams on the screen.
"Hardly," Kaiba returned. "You wouldn't understand."
Lex sat himself on the desktop next to Kaiba's. They were alone, with no class
here next. The teacher had taken his books and briefcase with him, gone to a
late lunch. "It looks like a design for a holographic simulation chamber.
Virtual reality?"
Kaiba closed the laptop. "Wong warned me about you."
"That I'm interested in complex electronics almost to the level of prime
geekhood?"
"That you like to play games with the other boys. And not only chess."
Lex leaned back on the desk. His blazer was open and the top two buttons of his
shirt undone, baring the column of his neck and the dimpled outlines of his
collarbone. He didn't know if Kaiba considered himself gay or straight or too
young to care; in his experience such considerations were meaningless in the
long run. Kaiba was watching him now, blue stare alight with curiosity, or
more.
"So are you going to run away?"
"I don't run away."
Of course not; that would be too like losing. Lex tilted back his head,
regarded Kaiba through half-shut eyes as he ran his tongue over the scar on his
upper lip.
Kaiba stood, arms straight at his side, chin lifted. With Lex sitting on the
desk their gazes were level, blue on blue. "I told you, I'm not here to play
games," Kaiba said. "I'm here to learn."
"Want a tutor?" Lex murmured, and stretched out his hand to touch Kaiba's face,
stroked his fingers down his cheek.
Kaiba didn't move, probably didn't breathe. Like a startled rabbit. Or a snake
stilled the moment before striking. But he opened his mouth when Lex kissed
him.
Not submitting, not even close. But some games have more than one winner. Lex
could teach him that much, at least.
 
===============================================================================
Lex's roommate was gone for the night, enjoying a study session clandestinely
supplied with illegal beer. Kaiba sat on his couch the same as he sat anywhere,
back ramrod straight, hands folded before him. He kissed back when Lex kissed
him but his spine didn't relax. Even when he brought up his hands to grab at
Lex's shirt, pulling him closer, it was premeditated, as tactically correct as
his chess moves.
But his mouth was hot and he learned fast. Lex hadn't had so much fun in
months.
Though when he reached down to the button on Kaiba's slacks, the boy went
rigid. Lex took pity. "Don't worry," he murmured into his ear, other arm curled
around his tense shoulders. Kaiba was hard under the trousers, had to be
uncomfortably tight, but his back was so stiff it could crack in half. "This'll
be good."
Lex had lost his virginity at thirteen, and had enjoyed the majority of the two
years since. He kissed the boy again, hard and deep, then slithered off the
couch onto his knees, pulled down Kaiba's zipper to free his cock.
Kaiba's hands closed over the couch cushions, his fingers digging deep furrows
in the padding. His erection was dying, shrinking as his shoulders hunched in.
His eyes were open, all their intensity fixed on nothing, and his face was
unguarded for that moment. Furious.
He was trembling. "Hey," Lex said. "It's okay." He climbed back up beside the
boy. "First time, huh." Dropping his hand to Kaiba's arm, he felt the
vibrations shaking the whole couch. "It won't hurt."
"It isn't the first time."
Lex followed the tense hunched lines of his body with his eyes and nodded in
recognition. "Your father."
"Adopted father," Kaiba corrected, savagely. "My father's been dead for
years—chikusho!" He turned his head away. His eyes were dry but his throat
worked as he struggled to master his expression. Not fear, not pain, just rage.
Against himself as much as his adopted father. "Do it, Luthor," he grated.
"I can't," Lex said. "Forcing you would be my loss."
Kaiba glared at him. Lex shrugged. "Those are the rules of seduction. You have
to want it." He leaned forward. Not quite close enough to touch, but Kaiba
would feel the warmth of his breath on his cheeks. "I have to make you want
it."
Kaiba drew a breath. "If those are the rules," he said, and then he was on Lex,
kneeling on the couch straddling his lap. It was the first kiss he had
initiated and it was vicious and feral and desperately hot. Lex arched his back
up into him and Kaiba ground his hips down, not hard yet but getting there.
When Kaiba yanked down his zipper, when Kaiba took a deep breath and then slid
down between his legs to wrap his soft boy's mouth around the head of his cock,
Lex choked and came almost immediately. And Kaiba smiled, a victorious, assured
smirk that lasted unmarred even as he wiped come from his cheek with his
sleeve.
Though when Lex took him into his arms, he was still shaking a little.
 
===============================================================================
The third time Kaiba beat him with a perfect score at Warrior Angel Whirl, Lex
had to ask, "So how many times have you played this? Are you a big Warrior
Angel fan or what?"
"I've never heard of him." They were lying down together on the couch, Kaiba in
front of Lex, propped up on their elbows to hold the controllers. Being
horizontal or vertical or having Lex's hand stroking his chest or Lex's tongue
in his ear didn't have a significant effect on Kaiba's final score. "And the
game is shit."
"Those are fighting words," Lex warned, and batting the controller out of
Kaiba's hands he pushed him onto his back and rolled on top of him, pinning his
shoulders to the cushions. "Now take it back."
Kaiba struggled violently for almost two seconds, arms braced to wrench Lex off
him, and probably with force enough to break bones, but then he relaxed back
into the couch. He was learning, every time a little quicker to realize they
were playing. "I don't know Warrior Angel, but his video game's total shit," he
repeated, taunting.
"It's maybe not the best game now, but it's three years old. When it came out
it was fantastic."
"The controls are clumsy, the gameplay is mundanely linear, there's no story to
speak of, and it could've had better graphics five years ago."
"Except the console hardware couldn't handle it."
"It could have," Kaiba disagreed. "The Super Famicom's engine could do more
than any of these idiot graphic designers ever exploited. With 64 kb SRAM and
15-bit color, you could—"
"Are you getting hard talking about game system specs?" Lex asked suspiciously,
and needlessly because his knee pressed between Kaiba's thighs was already
giving him the answer.
"You're hard just thinking about Warrior Angel," Kaiba returned.
"I'm hard because my dick has almost been against your butt for the last half
hour. You want to do something about that?"
Kaiba tensed but before he could freeze solid Lex ducked down and put his lips
to his ear. "So what about the Sega Saturn? What could you do with those
specs?"
"The Saturn? That's nothing, won't last long enough to matter. Sony's
Playstation is going to lead the market until Nintendo comes through, but there
will probably be new systems anyway by 2000. And the generation that comes
after that might actually have the graphics and processor power to do something
interesting."
"What kind of megahertz are we talking about?" Lex worked his hand down between
them.
"Gigahertz, by then," Kaiba said, gasping it as Lex squeezed hard through his
slacks.
"Personal computers will barely be running gigahertz chips by the early 2000s—"
"Game consoles will be surpassing your PCs, by then," Kaiba said. "Unless
something better corners the marke—ah," and he lost his last breath as Lex
shoved down his trousers and briefs to take his cock in hand.
After he came, Lex brought up his hand and licked his fingers, his palm, as
Kaiba's watched. "So, consoles are the best investment?" Lex inquired.
"For now," Kaiba answered, panting. "But wait and see. There's other sorts of
games, too, that might overtake the consoles someday."
Lex thought of the VR system on Kaiba's laptop. A video game after all? "I like
to keep my options open for a variety of opportunities," Lex agreed, and kissed
Kaiba with the taste of his come on his tongue.
 
===============================================================================
Even alone in his room, Kaiba didn't like to take off his clothes. Lex, sliding
his hands up under his shirt, realized why, but still, when finally he
convinced the other boy to shower together, he was surprised by the extent of
the damage. Lex's own body didn't scar, with the exception of the blow which
had split his lip. He couldn't help but be fascinated, tracing his fingers over
Kaiba's scars, the lash marks running puckered and pink across his back and
shoulders, the circular burns down his arms from Gozaburo Kaiba's cigars.
Kaiba suffered the examination in barely tolerant silence, steeled not to
cringe at Lex's touch. In the shower, under the water, Lex made him close his
eyes as he glided soapy hands over his flawed skin, working his fingers until
Kaiba's thin frame finally unlocked and relaxed.
Afterwards, as they lay on Kaiba's bed together, naked and warm under a sheet,
Lex admired the contrast of their skins, his arms over Kaiba's. They were both
pale, but in the streaming afternoon sunlight he was pink from the water's heat
while Kaiba's skin was golden. His hair was very thick and it amused Lex to run
his hand through it, wondering what it would feel like growing from his own
head. "It's a mullet, you know."
"A what?"
"Your hair. You almost pull it off, but this style, you'd have to call it a
mullet."
"Ah," Kaiba said, filing the new English vocabulary into his mental dictionary.
"It's not a complimentary style these days," Lex clarified.
"And a shaved head is complimentary?"
"It's not shaved," Lex said after a moment. He had spent half his life avoiding
questions and insults and sympathy over that famous event, was used to the
freak look and the pity look and the deliberately and carefully avoided
staring. Total ignorance was new. But Kaiba had no friends at Excelsior to
share gossip, and apparently small-town America meteor showers weren't news in
Japan. "I lost all my hair a few years ago, when I was a kid." The shockwave,
coming toward him, a wall of wind and dirt; the breathtaking terror, and then
nothing... "There was...an accident." He stroked one of his eyebrows. "These
and the lashes are implants."
"Ah," Kaiba said again, filing this away, too.
"So did you think I shaved down there, too, or did you think I was that
immature?" Lex asked after a moment, curious.
"I didn't."
"Think about it?"
"Yes."
"Ah," Lex said.
Later that night, Lex half-awoke to fingers ghosting over his bare scalp,
exploring his own scars. He kept his eyes closed and didn't try to move away.
 
===============================================================================
Kaiba never had lunch with the chess club again, but he kept playing against
Lex. He kept winning, too, although Lex altered his strategies, devised traps
and elaborate feints, or brute force sacrifices. He checked books out of the
library, followed in the footsteps of other grandmasters, to no avail.
Kaiba never smiled when he won, never gloated even though the victory burned in
his eyes. If any game was equal to life or death to him, then chess was no game
at all but existence itself.
He hated the game, Lex came to realize. After a match he would be edgy and
disconcerted for hours, would snap at Lex or refuse to talk. Whenever they made
out afterwards he was rough and dominant, the seducer, never the seduced;
always the clear winner, but that need was a loss in its own way, and Kaiba
knew it as well as Lex.
Lex kept challenging him to matches. He would until he won, and Kaiba accepted
that, as he accepted all of Lex's challenges.
He thought he had a chance, the night Kaiba's brother called. They were in
Kaiba's room, his roommate off on a field trip, in the middle of their third
chess game of the evening. Lex was trying to build his defenses slowly instead
of striking out, and Kaiba was off-balanced with his forays not being returned,
his moves more cautiously considered than usual. It was nearing midnight and
Kaiba was wound up tight and silent, studying the board with his lips pressed
over his teeth.
The phone's ringing jarred their concentration. Kaiba shot it a glare that by
all rights should have melted the plastic and metal to plasma, but picked up
the receiver. "Kaiba."
Then his blue eyes widened and all the angry tension of the game drained from
him, leaving an emptiness Lex couldn't identify. "Mokuba?" he hissed into the
phone. "Doushite? Nanika atta? Itte kure!"
His voice was hushed, almost broken, his face young for that moment, a boy's
face, and frightened as Lex had not seen before. Lex leaned back on the
cushions, turned away. Picked up the copy of Playboy under the table (Wong's,
he was sure; Kaiba wouldn't care enough to actually spend the couple bucks,
even for appearances' sake) and leafed through it.
He listened as he turned the pages. Lex had been practicing his Japanese, not
with Kaiba but on his own, and this conversation wasn't so difficult to follow.
"What happened? Did he touch you? If he did a thing—if he laid a finger on you,
the bastard, if he broke his word then I can drop out, I'll buy a ticket back
this minute—tell me!"
Kaiba listened for another moment, then said, his voice hard again, "Mokuba,
you can't call just to hear my voice—you can't risk it. If he finds you..."
Kaiba breathed in and breathed out, almost silently, listening, Lex listening
to him listen. "I'll be back in another month and a half," Kaiba said finally.
"You must not call me again."
With that he hung up, and all that betrayed him was how his hand stayed closed
over the receiver, as though he could not let it go, even with the connection
severed.
"Mokuba's your little brother?" Lex asked him. "Adopted? Or by birth?"
"Birth," Kaiba said, dropping back into English without a moment's confusion.
"He hangs onto me. Always trying to follow me around. You know how little kids
can be." He said it dismissively, irritated and uncaring. Like Lex hadn't heard
his fear when he had first answered the call.
Kaiba must have realized he had given too much away. He turned back to the
board. "We have a match to finish."
But he was distracted, Lex saw, shooting glances at the phone, at his laptop.
Not giving the game his full attention, and this might have been Lex's chance,
but it would be an empty victory. Not a situation he could replicate again;
false proof. An experiment counted for nothing if the results could not be
reproduced.
So when Lex rose to relieve himself, he was careful to bump the table with his
knee, such that the board flipped off the edge and scattered the pieces. He
apologized and helped Kaiba collect them, but when Kaiba suggested recreating
their positions Lex protested that they couldn't be sure. As a matter of fact
he had the game memorized, and knew Kaiba did as well, but when Lex said,
"Let's just have another game later," Kaiba accepted the offer.
Lex went back to his own room that night, slipping in through the window to
avoid being caught out past curfew. Kaiba hadn't refused him, but he hadn't
been paying any more attention to Lex than to their chess game. He might have
trained his body to respond, but whatever was under those scars and cold anger
was untouchable, unreachable. At least to Lex.
Lex had built his own walls long ago, his father the architect, instructing him
in laying the foundation, but he had been stacking the bricks himself for
years. He was safe behind them, protected. Kaiba's walls were as high as his
own, as thick and strong, but he left room for someone else behind them, left a
gap someone could climb through and join him. Hurt him. Odd, for someone as
smart as Kaiba. Atypically naive.
When Lex slept that night, alone and cold in his dorm bed, he dreamed of
Julian, dreamed of his little brother calling him at school, eager for him to
come home, begging him to come back to their family.
 
===============================================================================
The bullies targeted Kaiba because he was young, small—if tall for a Japanese
boy—and friendless. Lex rarely spoke to him when anyone else was around, and
while thanks to roommate Wong their new association was a poorly kept secret,
those rumors didn't help make Kaiba any less of a target. Lex was nearly as
popular a victim anyway.
Kaiba never said a word to the teachers, stared down any helpful adults who
asked through black eyes and bruised ribs. Lex saw him beaten a few times. His
eyes were always dry and he never made a sound, not so much as a grunt.
Sometimes that made the other boys stop sooner. Sometimes it provoked them
more.
Knowing the scars hidden under the neatly pressed slacks and blazer, Lex
doubted that any Excelsior boy could do anything to Kaiba that would matter.
Until one day in Fielding Hall, when he came across Kaiba kneeling on the
floor, arms wrapped around his chest. "Chikusho," he cursed, still no tears but
he swallowed convulsively. "Chikusho, ano kuzu, kisama-ra wo korosu!"
His laptop was on the floor beside him, the screen snapped off and the CPU
trashed, the keyboard trampled and stomped on.
"Kaiba?" Lex asked, and Kaiba looked up, blue eyes blazing. There was blood in
his mouth and blood on his knuckles.
"They took the disk, Luthor," he said, "damn them, the sons of bitches took my
backup disk. I don't even know their fucking names."
"I'll get it back," Lex promised him.
Five boys had jumped him; Kaiba hadn't gotten a good look at their faces before
they ran off, but they weren't difficult to track. Lex may have had few actual
friends, but he cultivated acquaintances enough both in the staff and the
student body. Three students showed up at the infirmary on account of a broken
nose, a cracked rib, and a moderate concussion, all of which were reportedly
the result of an unlucky collision during a friendly, fast-paced soccer game.
Since three of them has been in class five minutes before the accident, and two
of them had another class starting five minutes after, it must have been a
hasty game indeed.
The other two buddies of those three unfortunates were soon located. Lex went
to their dorm room personally that evening, with no company but his checkbook
and his cellular phone.
Half an hour later Lex arrived at Kaiba's room with the CD-Rom in hand. "They
swore they hadn't been able to copy it," he said.
"They shouldn't have been," Kaiba said, took the disk and inserted it into his
desktop. He entered a password and hissed out a long, relieved breath. "Those
assholes didn't scratch it."
"They weren't the usual thugs," Lex observed. "McGinley's father is CEO of Wing
Electronics & Software, and Chalke's the kid of the director of development at
the second biggest aircraft manufacturer in the world."
"Who did this? All their names," Kaiba said, and something in his voice was
predatory, lethal as snake venom.
"Forget it. It's taken care of," Lex told him. "They didn't get anything and
they won't try again." He leaned back, hands in his pocket, casual. Unable to
be intimidated by the cold-blooded ferocity of Kaiba's glare. "So what were
they trying to get?"
"It wasn't what they thought it was," Kaiba said.
"No computer game, that's for sure. It's the designs for your VR system,
right?" Lex had seen enough of Kaiba's diagrams to make some sense of them, and
he had also been investigating defense contractors lately. Seeking investment
possibilities, he had said, and that had gotten him access to contracts not yet
made public. He had learned imaginary numbers when he was five; he could add
two plus two. "You're working on the new KaibaCorp military simulator."
"No." Kaiba was on his feet, almost as tall as Lex, his face gone pale but for
a feverish flush in his cheeks. "No, it will never be that."
"What do you mean?" Lex asked. "I've seen the projections—KaibaCorp's going to
make a killing off this thing. Your father must be proud."
"That man," and Kaiba's voice was pitched so low it came out grating and
strangled, "that man is not my father, and his dirty eyes will never see these
designs. Will never see what it's truly going to be. He won't live to see it."
"So it's not the simulator?"
"That simulator's garbage. The designs I showed off to that man before were
only rough drafts, imperfect concepts. I've been more careful since. He doesn't
know how much farther I've come. Since I got here—my classes are a joke, I've
had plenty of time to work. I'm getting closer."
"What are you going to do with the real simulator, when it's done?" Lex asked
him. "Sell it and start your own defense company?" He could do it, from what
Lex had seen. This technology, perfected, would take him as far as he wanted to
go.
"No." It was the first time Lex had ever heard Kaiba laugh, a wrenching,
disruptive noise, like an unexpected blast of static on a clear transmission.
"No, I'm the heir to KaibaCorp, and I'm going to take what's mine. I'll win
against that old man. And then KaibaCorp will become what we—what I want it to
be."
"And what's that?" Lex was honestly curious.
But Kaiba only shook his head. "You'll see," and his uncharacteristic smile was
as disturbing as his laugh. "Everyone will see."
 
===============================================================================
Kaiba liked to draw. He doodled in the margins of his notes in class, and
sometimes when he talked with Lex the pencil in his hand would wander over
whatever was underneath it, notebooks, folders, magazines, napkins. Sometimes
he sketched electronics diagrams, circuit paths or optical transmitters.
Sometimes he drew dragons. White dragons with ridged and shining scales,
armored talons and heavy horns. Wings spread to glide, or furled as they dove
through the sky.
It reminded Lex of the box his mother had given him, supposedly forged from the
armor of the legendary St. George. Lead and iron smelted to withstand a
dragon's fire. But Kaiba's dragons breathed radiance, not flames but shining
bursts of light.
Once Lex glanced over and saw the dragon under Kaiba's pen was a steed, two
small riders perched on the crest of the creature's spine, holding onto one
another as they flew. When Kaiba looked down and saw his own picture, he
crossed lines over it, steady straight hatch marks until the paper was almost
black with ink and the sketch was obliterated.
Lex had gotten his roommate suspended, and then expelled, so he had a single
dorm room now. But until Kaiba's replacement laptop arrived from Japan, he
preferred to spend nights in his room to work on his other computer, and he
refused to sneak back after curfew, unwilling to risk the possible demerits if
caught. He had to maintain the good reputation of the Kaiba name. His little
brother was living with the owner of said name; Lex didn't question his
reasons.
But Kaiba's roommate was just as much a stickler for the rules, so it was
difficult to arrange his absence. After three days Lex resorted to paying off
an impressively developed sophomore girl at the local public high school to
occupy him for one night.
Five minutes after he knocked on the door, Lex was going down on Kaiba, Kaiba
standing before his computer with his hands behind him, clutching the back of
his chair. He never touched Lex when Lex was before him, and never closed his
eyes or looked away. Lex could always feel that blue gaze on him, sure as any
touch of his hands.
After Kaiba's hips bucked and he was spent, Lex rocked back on his heels,
looked up at the other boy. Kaiba was always focused after he climaxed;
sometimes his eyes would be far away but his expression was always searching,
thoughts racing and reaching for more.
Lex put his hands on Kaiba's narrow hips, slowly pulled himself to his feet,
their faces close. "So tell me," he murmured, "is this when you dream up
solutions to those problems with your VR designs?"
Kaiba blinked at him, and for an instant it was like shutters had been drawn
aside, so the boy inside could look out clearly. "No," he said, "this is when I
dream of flying."
 
===============================================================================
When Lex entered his room Kaiba was sitting with his new laptop in front of
him, but not typing; instead he was looking at something held between his
hands. The white-backed rectangle disappeared by the time Lex shut the door. He
shook his head and slouched down on the couch beside Kaiba. "I've seen that
already, you know. The photo of you and your brother."
Kaiba glared at him, but took the photo back out of his pocket. "Mokuba called
you again?" Lex asked.
"He sent me a letter. I threw it away," Kaiba said. "He doesn't understand.
What he wants me to be—what he thinks I can be, it's impossible. Not if I'm
going to do this. Not if I'm going to win." He tossed the picture down on the
table.
Lex picked it up, studied it with interest. Two little boys playing chess,
grinning at the camera; Kaiba looked nine or ten and his brother, four or five.
Lex had only gotten a quick glance at the photo when they had first met. Now,
looking at the other grey-eyed boy with the messy mane of black hair, he could
see the family resemblance in the shape of the eyes. In the smile. Because the
other little boy in the picture was smiling, too, the same happy grin curving
his mouth.
It rendered him almost unrecognizable. Lex glanced from the photo to the grim-
faced boy beside him. Kaiba's few smiles looked nothing like that. And he
didn't smile at all over the chessboard. Maybe he had loved the game once, as
much as he hated it now. Or maybe he still smiled like that with his brother.
Lex tried to remember if there were any photographs of himself looking so
happy. He didn't think there were, not even with Julian. Maybe with his mother,
before the meteor shower. Never after. He ran one hand over his smooth pate,
tried to recall what his hair had felt like, those terrible red curls. He
couldn't.
"What does he want you to be?"
"A fucking loser," Kaiba snarled. Then he put his head in his hands. "I was
stupid. I was an idiot. When our father died, I told him I'd be his father. I
swore it to him, so he wouldn't cry anymore."
It was like a hand had wrapped around Lex's heart, had squeezed all the valves
closed. He could hear nothing, not even the rush of his own blood in his ears.
"I always hated it when Julian cried," he said, aloud he thought, though he
couldn't hear it. "My baby brother—I didn't want him to cry."
"He was your brother," Kaiba said. "You'd do anything to stop him crying. When
Mokuba was a baby..." He shook his head. "Mokuba's not a baby now. He knows
better; he doesn't cry anymore. But he doesn't understand, either. What I've
done, what I have to do—years ago, before the adoption, we made a promise. Our
dream, we promised. And I'm going to keep it, but he doesn't understand that
this is the only way."
"We do what we have to," Lex said, an answer or an echo. "Whatever way we can."
Kaiba nodded, jerkily, his face distant. Lex opened his fists. He could hear
his heart beating again. He took Kaiba's head in his hands, burying his fingers
in his glossy chestnut hair, and drew him in. Kissed him, down the line of his
brow, sucked on the lobe of his ear as he wound his hand under his shirt and
stroked the scarred skin, until Kaiba was looking right at him, until Kaiba's
body arched up into his touch. He turned to Lex, put his own arms around him,
confident enough now to be at ease as he pulled Lex on top of him.
"I'm going to win," he murmured into the hollow of Lex's neck, lips moving
against his smooth pale skin, "I'm going to win, I'm going to win, I'm going to
win..."
He said it until he came, grinding against Lex's erection, and fell asleep
there on the couch, angular limbs stretched out alongside Lex. Lex kept his
arms around the smaller boy to keep him from rolling off, Kaiba's sleeping head
rocked against his chest. He pressed his cheek to Kaiba's thick hair. "We're
both going to win," he promised, listening to their beating hearts.
 
===============================================================================
A week before the semester's end, Lex decided that it was time. He was going to
have Kaiba's ass.
Kaiba had topped him a few times, which bothered Lex not at all; he had been
partial to bottoming since his second time, and Kaiba was undeniably skilled.
But this was a matter of principle, and also a matter of Kaiba demanding it; he
wouldn't count himself victorious until he had achieved everything. They had
tried before, but for all his progress otherwise the boy went rigid as bone
when so much as Lex's hand touched his butt, so tight it was hard to slide one
finger in.
Kaiba was spending most of his time in Lex's room anyway now, needing the
privacy. With only six days left before his return to Japan, he skipped half
his last classes and most sleeping hours in favor of working on his laptop,
programming trials and plotting calculations. "I've been getting more sleep
here than I have for years anyway," was all he had said when Lex had pointed
out the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on mathematical and logical
thinking. His VR technology designs were nowhere near complete and wouldn't be
in only a week, but he wanted to do as much as he could in the short time left.
But all work and no play, etc. So Lex took a cab into town to pick up supplies
and came back that evening fully stocked with lube, condoms, and a selection of
Italian, complete with a couple bottles of illicit wine (an extra five hundred
dollars worked better than a photo ID with a twenty-two-years-old sales clerk).
Kaiba hated beer almost as much as Lex did, but the ruby red Recioto di
Valpolicella was expensive, sweet and would go down easy as juice.
They ate on the bed, devouring cold antipasto with their fingers and scattering
crumbs across the sheets breaking the bread, dipping the crusts in garlic-
flavored oil. Kaiba at first recoiled when Lex pushed down his shirt and drew
his oil-slick fingers across Kaiba's bare shoulder, but relaxed into it, his
fingers fumbling at Lex's own buttons.
The bottle of wine was almost empty by the time Lex cleared the plates away;
Kaiba was lying on his back on the narrow bed, cheeks flushed dusky rose, his
blue eyes watching the ceiling, a little unfocused. Lex stripped off his pants
and lay down lengthwise beside him, on his side facing him. "How do you feel?"
he asked, sliding his palm over Kaiba's bare chest.
"Good," Kaiba said, sounding surprised. Lex had been watching the wine closely,
but it could be hard to judge a new drinker's tolerance. But Kaiba rolled onto
his side toward him, loose-limbed and easy. His eyes were all the bluer for the
black pools of his pupils. "Get to it, then," he said. "Or do you have
something better to do?"
Lex laughed. "You're an ornery drunk."
Kaiba didn't crack a smile, but his tipsy face was softer, obscenely younger.
"And what am I sober, then?"
"Point," Lex said, and kissed him. Kaiba willingly curled closer, and Lex
whispered in his ear, "No, nothing better to do."
He took his time, exploring Kaiba's body as thoroughly and satisfyingly as the
first time, until Kaiba was shuddering against him, fighting to hold himself
and failing, trembling as he came, biting into Lex's shoulder as he spurted hot
over his thigh. Only after that did Lex slide his hands down, around to his
back, to his ass. Kaiba quivered, held himself still, his breath coming too
fast. "Easy," Lex murmured, cheek to his cheek, "it won't hurt so much. I
promise."
Kaiba's breath was sweetly redolent with the wine. He pushed against Lex,
murmuring back, in Japanese too blurred for Lex to understand, or maybe not
words at all. Lex reached back over his head, blindly located the lube and
slicked his fingers. One finger in, then two, and Kaiba was clenched around his
fingers, eyes squeezed shut, a mewling sound in his throat.
"It's okay," Lex said, "you're with me," keeping to English because that would
remind him as obviously as anything where he was, who he was with. He kissed
Kaiba, hard enough to startle him, to take his breath away and take his wine-
dizzied mind to somewhere else, entirely removed from the damage that had been
inflicted on his boy's body, the hurt he had endured before. Somewhere only the
two of them could exist, and remembered pain could not, only the possibility of
pleasure.
When finally Kaiba relaxed, loosening in Lex's embrace, Lex moved slowly, like
one would around any wild creature, rolled on the condom with expert fingers
and lifted Kaiba's legs to his shoulders. Kneeling, he eased himself in,
carefully, achingly slow. Kaiba's eyes were fixed on him, intent and enormously
wide in the low light. He was breathing in short focused pants, arms curled
back over his head to grab at the plain wooden bed frame behind him. He was
tighter than any boy or woman Lex had been with and it almost hurt, how good
that closeness felt.
Lex rocked his hips, gently, cautiously, and Kaiba gasped, head tipped back,
the sound strangled by his stretched throat. Lex thrust again, then with more
confidence as Kaiba gasped again, a dry sharp sound, not the choking wet of a
sob. Leaning forward, Lex set his hands on either side of Kaiba's narrow
shoulders, sinking into the mattress. Kaiba lifted his head and met his kiss,
lips sealed and tongues warring. When Lex came a moment later he groaned his
climax into Kaiba's mouth, and Kaiba kissed him harder, bucking up his hips to
come again against Lex's belly.
On trembling arms, Lex withdrew, cast off the condom and dropped to the bed.
His arms curved around Kaiba and Kaiba twisted onto his side to spoon up
against him, coiling in like a lizard seeking warmth. For a long time they lay
together in the hazy sweating heat, silent but for their counterpoint
heartbeats.
"Don't go back to Japan," Lex whispered finally.
Kaiba's even breathing might have meant he was asleep; but then he replied,
"I'm going."
"You don't have to," Lex said. "You're only adopted anyway. Quit being that
man's heir. Give your simulator to me and I can see to its manufacture, its
distribution—medical, entertainment, military, we'll make millions on that tech
alone. We'll found a company together. Dad can keep LuthorCorp, your adopted
father can keep KaibaCorp. We'll crush both of them someday."
"No," Kaiba said.
"If it's your brother, get him out of Japan, bring him over here. We can find a
way to manage that. He'll be better off here than there anyway. You both would
be."
"Maybe. But I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm going to win, Luthor," Kaiba said. "Because I'm the heir to
KaibaCorp, and it's going to be mine. That man bought me; that man sold my soul
to the military machine, to weapons and death. But I'm going to win against
him. I'm going to destroy him and take everything he has, and I'm going to make
it into what he despises, what he finds worthless and meaningless. I'm going to
keep the promise we made."
"You will," Lex said, and kissed his shoulder, the nape of his neck, until
Kaiba turned in his arms and brought their mouths together.
 
===============================================================================
It was probably the couple glasses of wine he had drunk himself, that when Lex
dreamed that night, he dreamed of the meteor shower in Smallville, those years
ago. Running through the cornfields, sharp green leaves whipping against his
arms and chest, as dust choked the air and the earth rocked under his feet.
Then he was knocked to the ground, and a rushing heat so great it had a
physical pressure forced him down, stole the air from his lungs, stole the
light from his vision and the sense from his mind.
Only this night, this dream, he didn't wake from that blackness in the
hospital, but in a jouncing rocking ride, voices around him, arms holding him.
Smell of brandy and cologne that was his father. And someone touched his cheek,
a soft, gentle touch, too soft to be his father's hands, smoother even than his
mother's. A baby's touch.
He opened his eyes, and a little boy smiled at him. Thick black hair, green
eyes, a wide angel's smile he would never forget.
Julian, he thought, but Julian's hair had been sparse and pale; and Julian
wouldn't be born for years. Kaiba, he thought, but even in his crumpled
photograph Kaiba's smile wasn't that brilliant, wasn't that welcoming.
You're not my brother, that smile said, that gentle touch said; You aren't my
brother and you don't have to be, because I'll be with you anyway.
Then there was nothing but the void of unconsciousness.
When Lex awoke, Kaiba was already up, half-dressed and sitting on the edge of
the bed to put on his socks, his shirt unbuttoned, the shirttails hanging like
wilted white wings. He finished with the socks, turned toward Lex as he sat up
in bed.
"Thank you," Kaiba told him seriously.
"You're welcome," Lex said. "Anytime. You were good, you know. Very good."
"I know," Kaiba said, and smiled, a crooked crocodile's smile that left his
eyes cold, for all his face was the more alluring for it. And when Kaiba leaned
down to kiss him, Lex recognized every one of his techniques in the expertise
of his tongue, his lips, his breathing. Like kissing his reflection.
A mimic will always be found out; mirror chess can never win. "You won't beat
me that easily," Lex said, and pushed Kaiba out of his bed and onto the floor,
smirking the same crocodile smile.
 
===============================================================================
They played their last chess game the day Kaiba left, waiting in his dorm room
two hours before the car came to bring him to the airport. Most of the students
going home for the summer were staying another week, but Kaiba took his finals
early at the demand of his adopted father, who was no doubt anxious to have his
heir once more under his lash.
Kaiba played as focused as ever, a canny and sharp game, more devious than his
usual callous sacrifices, his knights running interference while his queen
sliced back and forth across the board like an assassin. Lex let him nip off
with pawns and bishops, lackadaisically reciprocating the captures while he
focused on his own strategy.
Kaiba as always preferred to play in silence; thus, needless to say, Lex talked
throughout the game. "So Jenkins went to the emergency room with a broken arm,
and Reyes has two black eyes, and Flynn isn't admitting why he's in the
infirmary but the rumor mill assures he will be able to have children, with
surgery. Probably."
Kaiba moved his knight. Lex considered the board for a moment.
"They know it's not worth getting anyone in trouble at the end of the semester,
so they're not saying who got them this morning. You're public enemy number one
to about half the campus, and a personal hero to the other half. Anonymously,
of course. And everyone wants to know why it didn't happen sooner," Lex went
on, and castled.
Kaiba moved his queen and took Lex's. Trap sprung. Lex allowed himself to grin
once Kaiba had taken his hand off the piece.
"Of course if you had made outright enemies of that many guys, they and their
allies would have made your life hell even if you kicked their asses every
time. Like this, there's nothing they can do, unless they take their summer
vacation in Tokyo—only you're not based in Tokyo anyway. So they're beaten, and
know they're beaten, and know that you could have beaten them at any time if
you had so chosen. They're not going to say a thing about you to anyone." Lex
moved his knight into position and sat back in his chair. "Check."
Kaiba extended his hand, then paused before touching a piece. His eyes narrowed
as he took in the board. After another moment he moved his king one square
over.
"By the way, I heard that KaibaCorp went public with its new military simulator
last night," Lex said. He took Kaiba's queen with his knight. "Oh, and check,
and mate in four."
"Yes," Kaiba said, tipped over his king and stood.
Lex stood with him. "He's doing it to get to you," he noted. "Your adopted
father held the press release until you were coming back, to remind you who's
in charge."
"Obviously," Kaiba said, bored.
"You're going to beat him," Lex said.
Kaiba smiled, tight and sharp. "Yes."
He advanced the steps between them. Lex stood still, let Kaiba wind his arms
around his shoulders and press their lips together. He didn't pretend he wasn't
hard but he didn't do anything about it, either, as Kaiba grinded his hips
against him. Kaiba's hands were as cold as his mouth was hot, the trimmed nails
scraping his skin like claws.
When Kaiba stepped back, he looked satisfied. Like he hadn't expected the win.
Maybe he didn't realize the loss at all. A cold-blooded look, fierce and
armored as the dragons he drew.
"I should go," Lex said, heading for the door. "Chemistry final study group."
Kaiba nodded, knowing well that Lex could teach said class with a fair bit more
confidence than the teacher.
"Be seeing you," Lex said. "Maybe in the board room. Will KaibaCorp be going up
against us, when it changes direction?"
"Probably not," Kaiba said. "It depends. Will LexCorp be a significant presence
in the gaming industry?"
"Hard to say, considering LexCorp doesn't exist."
"But it's going to. You're going to win, too, Luthor."
"We'll see."
"I don't lose to losers."
Lex raised his eyebrows, replied, "And I don't need a pity win to express
gratitude for something I'd've done anyway. Or are you telling me you honestly
didn't see that knight fork coming?"
"Maybe." Kaiba shrugged. "Maybe not."
"I'll play you again," Lex told him. "And I'll beat you again. That's my
promise."
Kaiba's blue eyes analyzed him, far older than any schoolboy's. Ancient as a
dragon's smoldering orbs. At last he nodded. "All right," he accepted.
Lex opened the door, paused on the threshold. "The gaming industry—your VR, you
could do anything with it, but it's a video game after all, isn't it."
"Hardly," Kaiba said disdainfully. "Or would you call the atomic bomb a
firecracker?"
"A firecracker that changed the world."
"That destroyed it, for so many people. I'll never create anything like that,
not for anyone ever again." His eyes on Lex burned steady, fiercer and hotter
than any of their days or nights together. The radiance of a promise more
important than anything they might have ever had. "We're never going to be
partners, Luthor."
"Maybe," Lex answered. "Maybe not." He raised his hand. "Sayonara," he said,
the American pronunciation, crass instead of rounded. "Give your brother my
regards, when you see him."
"Goodbye," Kaiba said, and Lex closed the door behind him.
End Notes
     Translations of the Japanese:
     Chikusho: A curse, approx. "Damn it"
     Daijoubu desu ka?: Are you okay?
     Nakushite wa ikenai...: I can't lose it...
     Doushite? Nanika atta? Itte kure!: Why [are you calling]? Did
     something happen? Tell me!
     Chikusho, ano kuzu, kisama-ra wo korosu!: Damn it, you trash, I'll
     kill you!
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