Sometimes, even though things are different now, Jack lets Yusei sleep in his bed.
Naturally, it’s nothing like before—Jack knows this all too well, but he isn’t sure if Yusei knows. He’d been told not to expect Yusei to be the same as he was before, in terms of his thoughts and feelings—in terms of his body.
And yet, Yusei’s body is almost the same, almost as comparatively small as Jack remembers. If Jack were to position his own body a certain way, if he were to hold Yusei from behind, there would be no detectable alterations. Jack knows that, if he were to close his eyes in such a position, he could still try to reach a world in which the last few years had never passed them by.
Of course, Jack can’t have Yusei sleep curled in his arms. Perhaps if Jack were someone else, but not here. Not now, and not ever—that world is dead. Now, Jack is the King, and Yusei’s mind is almost gone, but not quite; he responds when Jack touches him, breaking from the quiet black of inaction to dip under Jack’s touch, to lean into whatever Jack demands of him.
It makes him sick, really.
And so, when permitted, Yusei sleeps at the foot of his bed. Jack isn’t fully sure why he allows it, but he also isn’t sure where they keep Yusei once he’s finished with him. Perhaps they keep him in a closet somewhere or fold him up in a tiny, suffocating box. The more Jack tries to imagine the possibilities, the sicker he feels.
Perhaps, Jack thinks, a warm bed is the barest form of apology he can offer. The very least he can do, after everything that’s happened.
It may not have been Jack’s hand that turned Yusei into what sleeps at the foot of his bed, but it had been on his orders.
It had been with his permission.
“Where is he now?”
Godwin was silent for a moment, staring out of Jack's floor-length windows. The panes glittered against his eyes as they roved over the world below, lighting something unreadable in his face. “By now, he’s probably in a detention center.”
At first, Jack didn’t respond. Godwin’s tone was hard to parse, as were Jack's own thoughts. There were a thousand different things he could have opened his mouth to say, and another thousand unsavory consequences that could have come from each of them.
In the end, he didn't say anything at all.
“Jack,” Godwin gave him an oblique look. “Have you been feeling…” he paused as though searching for the right words; seemingly thinking better of himself, he changed the subject. “Mm. Forgive me for watching you unannounced, but…” He turned to face Jack, his prized investment. “Well, Jack, I commend your victory over that boy, but it came quite close.”
The meaning was not lost on Jack. A bit too close. Unspoken though they were, those filthy words hung between them in the shiny, clean air of Jack’s penthouse, and they dragged an ugly surge of bile up through the base of his skull.
“If I may be frank,” Godwin went on, “it won't be any good to let him run free. I’m sure you can understand why.” He didn't take his eyes off Jack. “It seems to me that he’ll always come after you. That is all a stay in prison means, provided the sentence has an end date.” Godwin cleared his throat. “The look in his eyes when Security came to take him… It seems there’s more to your relationship than what you’ve told me thus far.”
“I don’t go out of my way to hide things from you,” Jack didn’t look away from the window. “But he isn’t me. You can’t expect me to control his delusions.”
The smokestacks churned on below, far and away, spitting and belching out roiled waste into the sky. Waste, Jack thought. Waste, all of it.
“It’s been two years since I’ve seen any of them.” Two years since I’ve seen him . “You know I’ve never looked back. You know—”
“My King,” Godwin bowed his head, “I did not come here to chastise you. I am here so we can solve this problem of ours together.”
Jack wanted to bark at Godwin, then. He wanted to say, then get to the point. Truthfully, he wanted to tell him to get out and not come back—not until Jack had at least one more win under his belt. Just one more victory, at the very least, before he was to be dragged down this spiny, nightmarish hole. Just one more cheer from the crowd before he was chewed up and eaten by the inconceivable monster of the city’s upper echelon.
Just one more chance to prove himself.
At long last, Jack turned his attention toward Godwin. “Then explain yourself.”
“Well,” Godwin stepped away, standing behind Jack, out of his line of sight—almost as if encouraging him to look back out the window. “I need not say again that you have proved yourself far beyond my wildest dreams.” Godwin smiled behind Jack’s ear, and Jack just barely caught the sound of it through Godwin’s polite, dulcet voice.
Jack wondered, if only for a moment, if Godwin could see inside his mind.
“However,” Godwin continued, “my apologies for reminding you of this, but we all saw that duel.” A strange fog gathered behind his eyes, darkening the edges of his face. “This will not happen again.”
Godwin’s little apology did little to deaden the pain of the reminder. Between them, it was no secret that the King loved driving himself into corners just to pull himself back out again; in the seat of a D-Wheel, surrounded by hundreds of thundering faces, showmanship was life or death. But this had been Yusei—Yusei Fudo, Satellite trash from the gutters of the slums, and Jack’s near-loss had been no act of careful melodrama. After all, not a soul had watched from the bleachers, and Jack’s adrenaline had quickly run into cold, sluggish fear after his second real mistake.
It must have been all over his face by the end of it, he thought.
“Of course,” Jack agreed simply—there was nothing more he could say.
“…Well,” Godwin said, after a moment, “I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that this can all go away very quietly. Neatly, even. Much more so than you might expect.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
If the question surprised Godwin, he didn’t let it show. “Would that disturb you, Jack?”
“I’m not saying that.” Jack didn’t move, eyes fixed again on the bleak, dirty smokestacks of Satellite out past the water’s edge. “I was just asking.”
“In this great land,” Godwin joined Jack in looking out over the city, eyes lingering on the bleached-bone shine of the lower Tops, “most problems have much better solutions than petty murder.” His face flattened into something Jack couldn’t quite understand, reflected back at them both through the black windowpane. “And there are far worse punishments than death.”
Sometimes Jack hated how Godwin could read him, but this time he was grateful. Yes. That was what he wanted, surely—to destroy Yusei, to punish him for challenging his position of safety—of authority. Something inside Jack wanted to crush Yusei down into a small and motionless thing, to twist him until he was pulverized into dust, into sand that would assume the shape of whatever container it was made to fill. Jack wanted to taste it, to swallow it, to force Yusei’s life to dance down into the bottom of his stomach. In this, surely, he would find the peace he sought. There was no better answer, no greater vindication—there couldn’t be.
His position left no room for doubt, and even less for hesitation.
“Jack,” Godwin assumed a strangely cautious tone—not quite clinical, but teetering on the edge of it—“if I may get a bit more… personal. Just for one moment.”
“You may.”
As if such failure left him in any place to say otherwise.
“Tell me.” Godwin’s voice tightened into a neat, unblemished line, “Have you been feeling… tense at all, before any of your duels?”
Jack bit his lip, teeth catching it only on the inside—the last little space inside him that he thought Godwin couldn’t see. “Define tense.”
“Forgive me,” Godwin dipped his head, silver tresses spilling over his shoulders. “I mean nothing untoward by this,” he continued, “but you seemed somewhat… stimulated by your encounter with the Satellite boy.”
At last, Jack caught Godwin’s meaning. “You—” He stammered, twisting his body around to face Godwin, “you can’t be serious.”
“I’m not suggesting anything more than that, Jack.”
“It’s not like that,” Jack insisted. “Do you think I want that for my life? Why do you think I’m here?!”
“My King,” Godwin said, “I will remind you of what I just told you. I mean nothing like what you think I do.”
“If I wanted to die in the gutters with them,” Jack scorned, voice bitten down into a thin, brittle edge, “I would have done it years ago.”
“It’s alright, Jack.”
Godwin's voice had a paralytic effect; Jack's body was salt-pillared beneath his words, still and bleached, muscles stinging with needle-tipped inertia.
“You’re not the only man who gets… excited when he duels. With what’s at stake for you, it would be stranger if you didn’t.”
“Don’t tell me you think I’d rather be there than here.” Each new surge of feeling that bubbled up from within Jack had him forget his place a little bit more, though he was quieter now, more motionless. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I am suggesting nothing of the sort. In fact,”—was Godwin leaning just a little bit closer to his ear?—“I think it would be to your benefit to keep him close. Here.”
What?
“That—that can’t happen.” Jack fought to keep his tone level, but he felt a rickety tremor creep in at the last moment. “It's been too long, and—”
As though remembering where he was, Jack froze, steadying himself with a deep, poorly-masked breath. “You don’t know him like I do. If he comes near me, he won’t stop until I’m destroyed. You don’t understand.”
“Jack,” Godwin’s tone was careful, measured, as though explaining some lofty, delicate subject to a child—a particularly sensitive child. “Are you familiar with Neo Domino City’s reeducation facilities?”
Only what I heard when my friends disappeared off the streets.
“No.”
“Then I'll tell you this much.” Godwin cleared his throat into his fist, brow creasing, stepping away from Jack’s shadow and into the window’s dark light. “In certain cases, prisoners cannot be rehabilitated by ordinary means.” He curled a stray lock of hair behind his ear, preening himself as he looked out—perhaps out of habit. "Sometimes, they are fundamentally sick. In other instances, they are simply… idealistic. Their ideals are strong—immutable—but in complete disagreement with the values of the people of Neo Domino City.” Once again, his eyes flicked away, meeting his double in the glass mirrors before retreating back to Jack’s face. “Such is the case with your friend from Satellite.”
Friend. Jack cringed at the word like he'd been slapped. "He's not—”
“Despite our people’s labor,” Godwin ignored Jack's protest, feigning that he hadn't heard. “Even criminal marks can be interfered with or rendered useless. For especially problematic individuals, the only solution is a sort of… medical intervention. In combination with specialized reeducation, of course.” He kept his eyes on Jack’s, face plain even as it bordered his unrelenting stare. “For when other methods are impossible or impractical,” Godwin said, “there is a certain facility,” something changed in the corners of his eyes, “that can make this kind of intervention possible.”
“...Are you talking about a lobotomy?” Jack winced a bit as the word left his tongue. His mind spat out pictures from a dirty book from a long-abandoned Satellite home, a greasy and unpleasant memory he hadn't missed. “I thought those were—”
“Antiquated, to be sure.” Godwin dimly shook his head. “No, Jack, no one has picked up a scalpel in such a way for a very long time. We are far beyond that.” His eyes wandered once again. “Far more sophisticated.”
At once, Jack felt phenomenally small, alienated. He almost thought, What kind of world am I living in? before he closed the shutters on himself—he couldn't think that way.
Not now, and not ever.
Godwin cleared his throat again. “On the subject of your need to… relieve yourself,” he said, “you are far from the only man with such a condition. It's only natural.” He stepped forward again, closer to Jack, into the space he had filled before. “I’m sure it’s no secret to you how many people want you. They are in no short supply,” Godwin eyed Jack’s reflection, “men and women both. But I do not speak of simple little trysts when I bring this up.” He stepped half a pace closer and cleared his throat. “I mean something a bit more… full-time.”
“Don't be vague.” Jack couldn't look at him. The last of his protests had slithered from him. It had been such a long, dark night.
“Mm.” Godwin inspected the tips of his gloves. “Forgive me… How shall I put this? You are the King, and your life means a great deal. Of course,” Godwin lowered his voice, and Jack watched as his eyes crept to the dirty, distant silhouette of Satellite, “the people of Neo Domino City also mean a great deal. Our world divides people by intrinsic worth. By potential.”
“Right.”
“Such is the natural order of things… As you know well, my King. What I’m trying to say is that,” Godwin paused, “people here all have the potential to make something of themselves.”
And the people of Satellite don’t.
“Of course,” Jack said, again. It was the right answer when addressing Godwin. In his position, outside of the King’s arena and away from the public eye—as long as he had people above him in rank to answer to—it was always the right answer.
“Still,” Jack’s hands tightened into fists, “why him?”
“Ah,” Godwin shook his head, “I don’t mean to imply that our people are too good for you. Really, if one were to pose such a question to the public, I’m sure many would agree that your sexual organs are worth a great deal. You might consider them an extension of your D-Wheel.” Godwin’s hand nestled itself into the cleft of Jack’s neck and shoulder. “Priceless, unbuyable treasures.”
“Then why?”
“If I may speak crudely for a moment,” Godwin dipped his head one more time, “it would be in violation of a sort of… natural law, if you will, for a citizen of Neo Domino City to abandon his or her post in life to enter a position of…” He paused. “Sexual servitude.”
Jack went rigid, incredulous and struggling not to wear it on his face. “You want me to—I mean, with him? Forever? Here, in—?”
“That’s precisely my point, Jack.” Godwin didn’t take his hand away. “Although, in your position, ‘forever’ is only as long as you want it to be.” He eyed Jack's face with strange, hollow eyes, as though hunting for weaknesses and imperfections. “I’m sure there are untold numbers of people who would be happy to take a position on their knees for you. However,” he glanced out the window once more, “for the good of the people, and for the good of our blessed city, that role must fall to someone who will not be missed.” The corners of his mouth furled into an innocent smile. “Don’t you agree?”
“Don’t think that I don’t follow you.” Jack half-bit his lip again, averting his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. Why him?”
“Are you not attracted to him, Jack?” Godwin’s eyes grew stony at the edges. “Forgive my presumptuousness, but you have yet to lead me to believe otherwise.”
“That’s…” Jack couldn’t help but look at the floor, at his feet—anywhere but Godwin’s warm, impenetrable eyes. Anywhere but Satellite. “It’s complicated.”
Godwin squeezed Jack’s shoulder. “And where’s the shame in that? After all,” his fingertips trailed down Jack's spine, “a man must sate his hunger in order to live.” His hand disappeared, and he stepped away. “As long as you are the King, complicated or otherwise, you shall want for nothing.”
And there it was again—that one singular condition of his parole, that thundering warcry— as long as, as long as, as long as…
“And, Jack,” Godwin bowed, arm across his chest, and Jack could see he was preparing to dismiss himself. “If you want true protection from harm, from loss,” he turned away, “I think you’ll find the most exquisite pleasure that one can have,” his voice disappeared into Jack’s skull, “with him at your feet.”
The yes, of course, that sounds wonderful was implicit—Jack was, as always, in no position to refuse. He didn’t need to say it out loud; Godwin would hear it inside him regardless, and wheels would begin to turn according to his hand’s direction. Perhaps that much had already begun; perhaps it had begun even before this meeting.
“Yeager will be in touch with you regarding your… tastes,” Godwin moved to shut the door, “in manners such as this.”
And so it was.
Jack slumped into bed, alone in the hopeless, gleaming world of his penthouse. He had no strength to think about what he had left behind; no space remained in him for the other children of the slums who, like him, had left and never returned. In accordance with natural law, with the burning order of reality, they had all gone somewhere, but it wasn’t to the top of the dueling world—after all, it was just as he always said.
There is only one King, and that’s me. There was no bearing that impossible weight.
Still, he consoled himself, it would be months before he would have to think about this again. Maybe even a full year—maybe longer. Even in Satellite, people didn’t break overnight.
He had another duel booked for tomorrow; a rematch, standing room only—and Yusei would be kept somewhere else, at a safe distance from him, for a long, long time. From his position on the throne of the world of Duel Monsters, by his authority as the King of Games, he could be confident in that much.
In reality, it didn’t take very much time at all.
Jack thought it a cruel joke. It had been just long enough since his duel with Yusei to nearly forget about it, to drench himself in victory anew, to mire himself in peaceful delusion. This miscalculation, this misjudgment of how much time he really had left, tore the duel-wound afresh and filled him with rancid spite. Toward whom, he wasn’t sure. Maybe everyone, maybe everything.
More than likely, the only real target was himself.
“You played an excellent game tonight,” Godwin smiled, and Jack barely heard him. “The people are singing your praises more than ever.” His eyes misted over strangely, but the rest of his expression didn’t change. “How fitting that tonight should be the night of your reunion.”
“Fitting indeed,” Yeager made a stupid, constipated face, like he was trying not to giggle. “Perfectly so.”
The implication was clear. Jack had seen Godwin silence Yeager before over comments much less salacious than that, but it seemed he was letting it go—Jack was tempted to get in Yeager’s face, to say, who the hell do you think I am? Instead, he said nothing at all. It felt like Godwin said even less, somehow, all his silence speaking for him in great, fathomless waves.
“He’s almost gone, you know,” Yeager tapped his brow and snickered in that impish way Jack hated. “I wonder what you’ll think of him when you see him.” He lowered his voice. “Do you think he’ll recognize you?”
“According to you , he’s supposed to,” Jack muttered, not giving him the satisfaction of being looked at. Godwin remained silent, but he held his hand up, palm facing Yeager’s face and invoking a very welcome silence.
“Anyway,” Jack stared straight ahead, refusing to look at either one of them. “I don’t want to see him right now.”
Yeager stifled another maggoty laugh, and Godwin looked at Jack—curiously, without apparent malice—but the sudden attention turned Jack’s stomach. He thought it might twist out of his mouth.
Jack said, “Just let me eat first,” as if it would help him save face. “I’ll send for him when it’s time.”
Despite himself, some morbid part of Jack wishes he could have seen how it all happened.
When his ‘preferences’ had been cataloged, he had tried to ask questions about the process behind what he was signing Yusei up for, but no one would say even as much as Godwin had. When pressed on what he “liked,” he had mumbled something thoughtless like, I don’t know, I was always too busy dueling, much to Yeager’s amusement and his own personal embarrassment.
Still, he had made it through the ordeal, answering whatever he could, and he had made one very important thing perfectly clear.
He didn’t want Yusei to be entirely without sense. He wanted him to know where he was.
He wanted him to know who he was looking at when he met Jack’s eyes.
Now, recentering himself in his body, Jack takes a deep breath—it’s nearly time to find out how Yusei will slot into his life anew. The faint starlight above Neo Domino City frowns down at him through the penthouse windows, and he wonders again how he’s reached the point he’s at now—how Yusei has done the same. The moon is swollen above Satellite, hanging low and orange like fruit ready to burst, and Jack takes a deep, necessary gulp of the drink in his hand, wincing as it burns on the way down.
It won’t do to wait much longer.
Yusei has been alone with him for at least five minutes, going on ten. Jack knows this, but he still hasn’t turned around, and Yusei hasn’t spoken or made any sound; for all intents and purposes, Jack is still alone in his glass tower, looking down on his people below as he has for the past two years. In Neo Domino City, two years might as well be a lifetime; for the King, this lifetime—every glitzy, special feature of it—is not something to be readily abandoned, nor shared with the unworthy.
Jack chases the drink in his belly with more drink and tries to ignore Yusei's reflection in the polished windows, a featureless smear of strange medical garb and old memories. He hasn't moved even once since being left in Jack's care, no matter how Jack has paced or avoided him or what he's muttered under his breath. If anything, Yusei might as well be dead.
And if that's true, he finally tells himself, lips sweet with brandy, then he has nothing to lose by turning around.
At first glance, Jack isn’t sure that Yusei is real; he seems more like a mannequin, though made with great attention to detail. It doesn’t help that Godwin’s paid attendants had wheeled him into Jack’s penthouse on some sort of strange, perverse dolly cart; it’s bottom-heavy, standing on its own, silver all over with a certain boniness to it that makes it look more like a torture rack. Unmoving against the all-silver frame, wrists and ankles zip-tied to the edges, Yusei’s body looks most like the corpse of a non-human animal, strung up as though in a giant freezer, ready to be skewered and eaten by the superior being who had ordered his fate.
Still, it must be Yusei, because Godwin has no reason to lie; at the sight of him, Jack feels his inner face—his real self, he thinks—slip partway away in favor of his royal mask, and he notices this lapse in control with a certain measure of horror, fingers running cold with apprehension as they reach for Yusei’s hair. It looks the same as it always has, although more manicured, like the dense alley air and Satellite smog have been rinsed from it with blessed water. His fingers curl into it on one side, exploring with tentative touches as though surprised it isn’t doll hair. Yusei’s scalp is warm, alive—the proof of his existence at the very top of the world, the position Jack has bought for him at an uncertain cost; the proof that he is still alive, if only for Jack to touch him like this, as he pleases and without censure or shame.
Yusei still smells of the barest hint of oil, just as he always has, and Jack’s breath catches in his throat on the way down. Is it really him? He almost opens his mouth to ask, but Yusei’s eyes finally drag themselves open, and the look in his eyes answers all his questions.
And the King smiles.
There is something there, something left in Yusei’s face that burns both of them to hold, and Jack feels something coil in his belly at the realization. Yusei’s mind is almost gone, yes, but not quite—and Jack’s cock twitches at the feeling that rolls up through him. It would be one thing, he thinks, to have a Dutch wife in the shape of a long-dead friendship, but this is Yusei. That quiet, too-old scowl still lives in the furrow of his brow, lashed to a stone behind his eyes, restrained according to some invisible force that Jack can't fathom.
“So you’re finally awake,” Jack says, even though it hasn’t really been that long. He steps closer, and the click of his shoes on the polished floor seems to send something squirming up through Yusei, rousing him further. As he stirs, Jack catches sight of something like a small metal ledge nestled between Yusei’s limp legs—additional support, he assumes, but something in Yusei’s drugged limbs seems disturbed, as though his body is trying to twist away from a foundational, violent reminder of something Jack can’t see. Something about it is grotesque, awful, but it stirs Jack’s cock further still; in his restraints, Yusei bends and thrashes, and above all other things, he looks weak. He is weak, wings clipped and bound to his open-faced cage, and Jack stifles an evil, hungry sound; a laugh; a cry of relief.
As though drawn by an unseen cord, Jack steps closer—close enough to touch his prize.
“Welcome to Neo Domino City, Yusei,” Jack whispers, fingers fanning across Yusei’s chest, astounded at its warmth, its realness. “Is this what you thought it’d be like when you ran?” He leans closer, close enough to feel Yusei’s warm, sluggish breaths against his face. “Are you excited for your new life?”
There is a piece of Jack—the biggest piece of him, he’d like to think—that tightens down in pain at his own words, his own behavior; but his two-year lifetime of glamor and self-secrecy has forged the King into something real, something beyond a means to stoke the crowd. Constant competitive fury and quiet, private moments of depravity have hardened into something real, something that can animate Jack to do as he refuses to believe he would do. It is this same force that drives him now to smile down at Yusei’s battered mind, to touch him so brazenly, to disregard each of his own body’s protests.
His hand creeps up to the side of Yusei’s neck. The flesh there is softer than Jack had imagined it would be, but the tenderness is a balm under his itchy fingers, a panacea for all his worries. It’s proof that he can do anything—before this arrangement had been made, Yusei would have slapped Jack’s hand away, maybe worse than that, for exactly the same reason that Jack still has Stardust in his deck. Now, however, Yusei’s body is inert, bordering on inviting. Yusei, Jack decides, is complicit in this great crime against his own body; no amount of vitriol behind Yusei’s eyes will ever be enough to form the word ‘no,’ but his lips do nothing to try to make up the difference.
“You know,” Jack murmurs, “you’re like this now because of me.”
He admits this not because he’s proud of it, but because he wants to see how Yusei recoils from his words in disgust—how badly he must want to crawl back to the slums, to his old, daydreamed imagining of freedom.
“I don’t know who made you this way, and I don’t care,” Jack slides his hand up the side of Yusei’s face, cupping his jaw. “But they did it because I told them to.” Jack tilts Yusei’s face up, appraising his features. “I have that kind of power here.” Jack’s other hand sneaks around Yusei’s waist, joining his thin hip with a subtle smile. “How does that feel, Yusei?”
Yusei’s throat grinds out a pathetic, wide-eyed sound, and Jack doesn’t try to interpret or understand it. He already has his answer.
The sickening feeling in Jack’s pants has long tightened into an erection—an angry one, the type that twists pain up through him if he doesn't take it out and stick it somewhere warm. But the long, lonely nights of abusing his dueling hand are over, and he knows it, because Yusei is here, and he isn’t going anywhere.
Not as long as he keeps doing what he’s meant for.
“Did you cry, Yusei?” Jack slides his thumb over Yusei’s cheek, and Yusei doesn’t move—Jack isn’t sure whether out of his last little bit of stubbornness or the placid, motionless attitude written into his body by his nameless trainers. Jack traces a finger down from the corner of Yusei’s eye, a parodic tear track in line with the criminal brand that runs the length of his face. “They told me you did. Did it hurt that badly?” He lowers his voice. “Did you like it that much?”
Jack’s fingers brush the edge of Yusei’s mark, and his cock jumps in excitement, beside itself with ecstasy and adrenaline. This, he realizes, is the fate he escaped two years ago; Yusei’s marked flesh feels like a thick stripe of vinyl under his finger, and the soft skin of his cheekbone buckles under it, twisted like a wound. Jack wonders if it’s still sensitive, if it still hurts to touch. He squeezes his thumb into the cleft between Yusei’s cheek and the mark and bites back a groan at the sound Yusei makes, indescribable and almost inhuman.
The flesh around the mark is still the slightest bit inflamed; Jack almost feels like he could pull it off Yusei’s face if he got a good enough grip, if he really tried, taking with it sheets of skin soaked in Yusei’s raw, enslaved blood.
Unable to hold himself back, Jack reaches into his pants and takes out his cock.
Yusei’s breath runs dry and ragged at the sight; he starts fidgeting again, and the fidgeting quickly turns into messy, unsightly writhing—as much as it can through his restraints. Jack notices, again, the way Yusei strains away from the metal support shelf, struggling to push himself up by the restraints around his ankles so as not to press down against the ledge.
It looks painful, Jack thinks, nudging his dick against Yusei’s waist.
Yusei, giving up on pushing himself up by his ankles, tries to use his arms to twist away from Jack’s too-close body, the heavy look in his eyes. He turns his face away, as if doing that will take the rest of his body with it, straining against the ties around his wrists as they crown his face on either side. His breath comes hot and fast, clouding into panic between their bodies. Yusei’s eyes dash up to the ceiling as though searching for one final route of escape, one final card with which to save himself; but he is deckless and without recourse, trapped at the center of a universe of immovable planets.
Jack watches him, watches the fever slowly die out of Yusei’s heavy limbs and body, light leaving his eyes with each heavy breath. His preordained fate settles over him anew like a sheet, his body remembering all at once where he is and how he got here—something Jack can’t read the details of, but captivating nonetheless. The sight is intoxicating, more so than brandy of any proof, and Jack can’t help but hiss through his teeth at the way Yusei’s thin clothes feel against his cock. He thinks about reaching between Yusei’s legs, going straight for the kill, but something else inside him wants—needs—to draw it out as long as possible.
After all, he thinks, he’ll only get to do this for the first time once.
Jack reaches into his coat for a pair of pliers—Godwin’s attendants had left them in his care so he could cut Yusei’s restraints when he was ready. As soon as Yusei sees them, however, he swings his knee out, possessed with terror, fighting to push Jack off-balance. He nearly succeeds, but Jack grabs onto the dolly to steady himself; without a word, he screws up his fist and punches Yusei in the stomach.
All the wind leaves Yusei’s body, and Jack thinks from the way his eyes roll back into his head that he might go unconscious. He hangs on—barely—as Jack cuts the first restraint. Yusei buckles and pitches forward, not sure what to do with his free arm, but Jack cuts through the second tie before he can decide. Yusei hits the floor with a loud smack, failing to use either arm to break his fall, and Jack catches a strangled cry of pain as the side of Yusei’s face cracks against the amber floors.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Jack almost laughs, weak with adrenaline as he clips the restraints around Yusei's ankles. He turns Yusei onto his back with the tip of his boot. “I only cut you down because I couldn’t stand to watch you move like that.”
Jack watches Yusei’s muscles slacken just a bit as he tucks Godwin’s pliers away; even in such a position, amazingly, he still finds things to be relieved about.
Yusei’s tongue twitches in his mouth, and Jack notices his lips are dirty with blood.
“Look at you,” he crouches over Yusei’s crumpled body, one foot on either side of his heaving ribs. “Pretending to hate this.” Jack bends down on one knee, cock in hand. “It makes me sick to see you act like that.” He grabs Yusei by the jaw, turning him so their eyes meet. “Do you really think you would be here if you deserved anything else?” He does laugh this time, shuffling all of his objections away deep inside himself. “Don’t you think you should be thanking me, Yusei?”
Jack smiles—just barely—but it’s more of a display of teeth than anything else. “You’re welcome,” he says, leaning closer. “You finally have what you’ve always wanted.”
Yusei gazes distantly up at him, eyes turned to bleary, hateful mirrors, and a sense of disgust boils up through Jack’s chest. He coils himself up, ready to spit down into Yusei’s face, but he answers Yusei’s look instead with a fist in his hair and a commanding scowl.
“Go on,” Jack growls, jamming two fingers against Yusei's lips, “show me what you’re made for.”
Yusei's mouth splits around Jack's fingers, and Jack hisses at the sudden wetness, probing across Yusei's tongue. His movements are clumsy, but rough enough to make up for it; something about the way he handles Yusei seems to mold him into a different person. Yusei struggles for a moment, fighting to turn his face away, but he doesn't bite Jack's fingers or try to push them out with his tongue. Jack, all at once mystified, disturbed, and hard, shoves his fingers in deeper, and Yusei's muscles turn wet and slack beneath him. At the final knuckle, Yusei’s eyes slide shut again, lips wrapping around Jack’s fingers and giving them one long, steady suck.
Jack is surprised, at first, but as he watches Yusei move it starts to make sense. Each time he gets mean or coarse with Yusei, a piece of Yusei's mind seems to break away and recede, temporarily being replaced by something ready to tend to Jack’s needs. Jack presses down a bit on the back of Yusei’s tongue and shivers at the sound Yusei makes, the way his throat opens for the intrusion. Jack’s stomach twists, and he pulls his fingers back out as quickly as he’d forced them in, scrubbing them dry against Yusei’s cheek. He nips back a groan as they graze against the criminal mark.
Yusei looks confused, almost, and strangely dejected at the sudden emptiness. He half-opens his eyes, tongue sticky and pliant between his teeth, jaw still slack from whatever poison he’d been fed earlier. Jack, woozy with overwhelm, needs to get away—but Yusei needs to come with him, to keep doing what he was doing before—just a little bit differently.
“Couch,” he says, and stumbles off Yusei’s supine body. He pants as he straightens himself up, head whirling as he stares down at Yusei, swallowing air. “Move,” he barks, more at himself than at Yusei. “If you make me drag you over, I won’t be happy.”
Yusei struggles to turn onto his belly and brace his palms against the floor. He moves like he’s piloting an unfamiliar vehicle—a strange sight to Jack, who has only ever seen Yusei at ease among machines. Yusei wheezes as he struggles to follow Jack around the bend of the couch, head swimming under the pressure of the drugs, but he manages. He collapses at Jack’s feet as Jack, in turn, falls against the couch, breathless and frozen with anticipation.
Jack lets his cock drop onto Yusei’s face, desperately freeing his balls from his pants in hope of relief. They’re tighter than ever with arousal, spilling over the bridge of Yusei’s nose, and Jack groans as Yusei quietly presses his face into them with a heavy, winded sigh. Yusei licks at them, fighting against gravity to try and keep himself upright beneath the force of the drugs. He reaches for Jack’s cock with a leaden, crooked hand, bracing himself on his knees to slip the head into his mouth.
Jack, once again, can’t believe this is Yusei at his feet—Yusei, who always fought to keep himself clean on the streets, even when survival would have been easier on his back—because he’s sucking Jack’s cock with the skill of someone who's done it for years. Jack jerks his head back reflexively, unable to choke back a moan as Yusei’s tongue slips beneath his foreskin. Jack nearly pushes him off, mortified for just a moment before remembering that Yusei is only somewhat himself, that he must follow Jack’s lead. He looks down at Yusei, entranced as he watches Yusei suckle at his foreskin, eyes shuttered, face flushed, movements loopy and dizzy.
“Slow down.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out as a moan, but Yusei yields to it, pulling back to lick at the head of Jack’s cock.
“No, I—” Jack bites his lip. “Do what you were doing before,” His hand settles at the back of Yusei’s head, urging him closer. “Just do it slower.”
Yusei’s tongue creeps back under Jack’s foreskin, hunting for all the sour, profane dregs of Jack’s cock. His brow twitches as he works, and he makes a sound as he swallows something. Jack squeezes his eyes shut and hisses a sigh through his teeth.
“That’s it,” Jack whispers, hand settling into Yusei’s hair, “take care of that cock.” He takes a deep breath, cock twitching in Yusei’s mouth, his footing as the King regained. “Clean it good.”
Yusei swallows again, and something seizes Jack as he feels Yusei’s mouth shiver around the head of his cock. It feels good—too good—but he needs more. He pulls Yusei’s head down, pushing the envelope, seeing how far he can get before Yusei chokes. But Yusei doesn’t choke, and Jack doesn’t stop until he feels the tip of his dick press past the soft, fleshy gate at the back of Yusei’s throat. This, he thinks, should be enough, but it’s not—on a whim, Jack twists his fists in Yusei’s hair, yanking a gritty, strangled gag out of him, and Jack feels a horrible, wonderful lurch in his stomach at the sound, at the feeling. Yusei’s throat trembles around his cock, like it’s trying to swallow him further, and Jack keeps his hand steady behind Yusei’s head, fucking Yusei through a low, throttled cough until his balls are seated against his chin.
“You can do better than that, can’t you?” Jack whispers, caressing Yusei’s cheek with his free hand, reminding him once more of the criminal mark. “They did teach you how to suck cock, didn’t they? I know I told them to.” He pinches Yusei’s nose shut, using his other hand to keep him pinned where he is. “I’m not letting you back up until you show me what you learned, so do your best, alright?”
Yusei whines, but it comes out muffled and garbled. His shoulders jerk, but he doesn’t bite or try to pull back, tongue struggling around Jack’s girth. Jack sighs, reclining back into the couch, eyes closing to savor the feeling. Even desperate for air, Yusei keeps his teeth off Jack's cock. He squirms, but he doesn't push back against Jack's hand. Yusei presses in closer to Jack's body as though begging to be penetrated deeper, and Jack watches as he starts to twitch, desperate for air, tongue writhing in his mouth.
As Yusei sucks, he starts to wilt against Jack's body, eyes darkening. Jack finally pulls him back up to breathe, cock smearing thick, tacky strands of spit over Yusei’s face. He keeps one fist in Yusei’s hair to keep him upright, tapping the side of his breath-starved face to wake him.
“Come on,” he rubs his dick against Yusei’s lips, “we’re not done yet.”
Yusei latches to the head of Jack's cock again, but this time, Jack presses him to the base a little bit quicker before drawing him back up by the sides of his head—and again. His hips tilt up to meet Yusei's jaw each time until he’s fucking Yusei's throat again, this time with all the force he can manage. Yusei moans as Jack’s balls smack into his chin, and Jack growls, responding with harder thrusts, smacking dizzying sounds out of Yusei’s struggling throat. His eyes sag shut.
Jack doesn't want to finish so early into the night, but Yusei is warm and malleable beneath Jack's touch, and far too good with his mouth—Yusei realizes what's happening before Jack does, and before Jack can remember to pull him off, he does something with his lips and tongue that ruins Jack’s composure; Yusei welcomes Jack’s cum into the back of his throat, balls flush against his chin as he does his best to swallow.
Shit. Jack wrenches Yusei away from his sensitive cock, head spinning between raspy breaths. He looks down at Yusei, who seems unsure of what to do now that Jack has spent himself. I'm not done with you, he thinks, reaching to pinch Yusei's tongue between his fingertips.
“Did you swallow it all?” he asks, voice hoarse as he looks down on Yusei. “Show me.”
Yusei opens his mouth, tongue peeking out over the bottom row of his teeth, and Jack presses his fingers in again, using them to pry his jaw open. Yusei winces as Jack runs his finger over Yusei’s teeth, tracing the curve of his mouth with an exhilarated sigh. “Good,” he says, closing Yusei’s mouth gently. Then, “I want to see you.”
He doesn’t mean to say it, but his cock isn’t satisfied yet, and Yusei is in no position to object.
Jack tells himself they can make it up the stairs to bed, but Yusei’s limbs are far too heavy and enervated to hold him upright, so Jack settles for the floor instead. Yusei's gown is unsightly and cold, but it shreds easily in Jack’s hands, leaving in its wake a smooth wash of skin—Yusei’s chest and belly are darker than Jack's hands, and somehow softer too, despite years of toil in Satellite; but what truly catches Jack's breath in his throat is not this, but the last scrap of clothing left on Yusei's body, something Jack didn't get to see before.
As promised, something about Yusei’s body is different—something vital, something central.
At first, Jack had thought that maybe—just maybe—the mentioned difference had been in reference to Yusei’s malleability; the openness of his throat; his listless extremities; his mute lips; but between his legs, veiled in ornamental lingerie, is Neo Domino City’s gift to the King of Games.
Jack’s mouth runs dry as he reaches to smooth his hands across Yusei’s waist. Everything Godwin hadn’t explained in words falls instantly into place as Jack’s fingers roam across Yusei’s body—now stripped of his cock, his power and agency, each stolen and replaced with a new orifice designed only to receive whatever Jack chooses to give it.
The mesh underwear itself feels somehow expensive under Jack's fingers; it's probably worth more money than Yusei has made throughout his entire life, soft and elegant in strange, disorienting contrast to how Yusei conducted himself when he was still a person. Still, Jack is captivated by the visual, delighting in its oddness and its luxury. The lace details that border the mesh make it feel almost bridal, patterned in flowers that look like hearts.
“Yusei...” The name rolls off Jack's tongue as he smooths his hand over the front of the fabric. His thumb slips farther down, dipping into the curve between Yusei's legs—the place where his cock used to be. “Show me how you've changed for me,” Jack whispers, stroking circles into the fabric, “Yusei.”
Yusei's hips twitch under the stimulation, as though trying to flinch away before remembering their place. Yusei turns his face away, but he doesn't protest, flushing red. He bites his lip as Jack’s fingers sneak under his panties, petting a soft line down Yusei’s groin until they find what they're looking for, sinking against Yusei’s plush flesh.
With his other hand, Jack hooks his fingers into Yusei's panties and pulls them to the side.
Yusei has healed so well that Jack almost can't tell the procedure happened at all. If not for knowing Yusei for so many years, he might have assumed Yusei was born with this soft, inviting hole—that he had never had a cock in the first place.
Jack had seen it, once. Accidentally. Even soft, it was nicely sized, and just a bit darker than the color of Yusei's thighs and belly. The image had never left Jack's mind, though of course he’d tried to bury it. In the bubble of that tiny memory, Jack is struck even more by the bizarre truth of what lies before him—another reminder of his safety, his absolute power. Something fundamental to Yusei, something he had carried with him since before birth, had been taken from him and changed, inverted, perverted into a toy—a sleeve for Jack to abuse.
What would Yusei’s cock do, Jack wonders, if it were still here to respond to his touches? Would it be just as hard, just as ready to tear through Jack's body?
Jack draws his finger back from the slit, breath hitching as it comes away wet.
“All this?” he whispers, fingers trembling. “You’re this wet just from—” he swallows, “just from sucking my cock?” He slides his finger against Yusei’s soft skin again, breath stopped in his chest. “Is that really the kind of person you are, Yusei?”
The pain-stricken, narcotized expression on Yusei’s face twists into something unreadable as Jack presses the tip of his index finger inside; Jack feels Yusei squeeze around him on all sides, tighter than he ever could have dreamt he’d be, warmer than any fantasy. Jack shivers as he pushes in deeper, overcome with silent reverence for this act, this moment. Yusei clenches down around Jack’s knuckles with a pained sound, as though trying to push him out, and Jack groans, mind wheeling into the distance.
This never should have happened, Jack thinks, in a moment of clarity, but the weight of the transgression makes his cock heavy with blood. In this, a piece of who Yusei used to be has been sacrificed, dissolved for the sake of Jack’s pleasure, his comfort. For stress relief. He twists his finger inside Yusei, whose thighs tilt together around Jack’s hand—but not to expel him, Jack realizes as he looks up at Yusei’s face—out of pleasure.
You like this, he almost says, incredulous and dizzy, but his mouth is too dry and his mind is burning. You love this, he presses a second callous finger in with the first, and you’re going to love it even more once I’m done with you.
Yusei’s body twists under the force of the intrusion, and Jack realizes all at once how hard he’s breathing against Yusei’s face as he descends against him, how damp his brow is; but Yusei is a doll for him now, a tolerant plaything to mistreat with his cock, so he relaxes again, free from shame, and he smiles.
“Open your legs,” Jack murmurs, fingers working deeper inside, and Yusei’s body obeys. Jack slides his way between Yusei’s knees, cock angry and red and hard enough to make Yusei squirm as it presses against his thighs. “Come on,” he whispers, drawing his fingers back out. “All the way.”
Yusei spreads his legs as wide as he can, and Jack climbs aboard him like an animal, starving but uncertain where to begin. Without thinking, he shoves his fingers between Yusei’s lips again, forcing him to taste himself, and the disgusted sound Yusei makes stiffens his cock further.
“Clean them.” Jack stares down at him, and Yusei does as ordered, sliding his tongue between Jack’s fingers and clumsily sucking them back into his throat. Jack withdraws his hand, grinding down against Yusei’s body, and Yusei shifts under him, uncertain and skittish.
Jack leans down and—surprising himself—licks his way into Yusei’s mouth, cock twitching at the way Yusei jerks back, the sound he makes—the way that he doesn’t bite or push back with his own tongue.
I own you now, Jack realizes with an ecstatic rush of blood, licking at the roof of Yusei’s mouth. You’re mine for life.
Yusei groans under Jack’s weight, flushing and stirring in Jack’s hold as he feebly offers Jack his mouth, sucking at Jack’s tongue with plastic, infirm lips.
It’s too much—too good. Jack pins Yusei by his wrists with a snarl, teeth sinking into Yusei’s clavicle as he knocks Yusei’s knees apart again with his body, rubbing the head of his cock between Yusei’s legs. His breath spills and whirls from him in great, heavy surges, billowing over Yusei’s chest and shoulders as heat twists up through his groin. Yusei’s flesh is sticky and hot where their bodies meet, slick and ready to accommodate the steep invading force of Jack’s desire.
With one slow, shaky-breathed press of his hips, Jack sinks into Yusei’s body.
The heat is the first thing to hit him. Yusei’s body sucks him in with an impossible warmth, unparallelled by anything Jack has used in the past. His breath shakes in his throat as he presses deeper, confronted with how tight Yusei is, how small a window he’s passing through to fill. Yusei doesn’t hold back a strangled, overwhelmed moan—or maybe he can’t, Jack thinks, which only feels better to imagine as he forces his way deeper. Yusei’s thighs shake around Jack’s hips, and he squeezes his eyes shut with a defeated sound as Jack seats himself inside, pressing his brow to Yusei’s as he settles into the deepest place he can reach.
Deluged by pleasure, suffocating under his new wealth of flesh, Jack starts to move.
He can’t figure out what to do with himself; all at once, his body feels far too large and unwieldy, anything essential long funneled into the ache between his legs. Jack’s hands wander across Yusei’s chest, his shoulders, his sides, but nothing can hold his attention for long—not until he finds Yusei’s knees. Jack presses them closer to Yusei’s chest through a painful whine, and it feels like Yusei’s body is trying to crush him on all sides with deadly heat, twisting Jack into something deranged and unstable—wringing out every vestigial piece of self-control he has left, eroding him into a faceless wraith consumed by the impossible, illicit rapture under his hands.
Yusei sags under Jack’s weight, mind emptying further with each thrust; Jack can see him just barely alive behind his face, bandaged in sickened ecstasy, hands grasping for Jack even as his eyes mist over in pain.
The force of Jack’s thrusts send Yusei’s eyes rolling back into his head, lashes fluttering as Jack presses the backs of his thighs down harder into his chest, losing himself like whirling snow into the sound of skin slapping against skin. Yusei is vacant flesh, open and ready to be consumed, to be destroyed, to be absorbed by the greater power that now masters him. The King grabs a fistful of Yusei’s hair and squeezes it, groaning as he feels Yusei tighten around him further still—an impossibility, he swears, chest heaving as he pounds Yusei into a mindless shell, but a reality nonetheless.
Of course, none of this can be truly real. The King is a mirage, a spirit beating against the walls of a glass penitentiary, but he can live for hours at a time in the arena, in the colors of the city lights, in fleeting moments of twisted sex. Jack’s body aches under the force of his own movements, under the weight of his actions, but he never slows, never steadies. His fake world— their fake world, now—shimmers faintly around them, a spinning box with no holes for air as they grind each other into nothing, the friction of their bodies warping into barren, blistering heat above Jack’s glittering kingdom.
Real or not, the feelings whirling around and between them cannot be denied.
With a shuddering expletive and a deep band of pain in his abdomen, Jack releases everything into Yusei’s body, and his mind washes out into white.
For only one night, untold years ago, they had shared a bed.
It could hardly be called that, really. In Satellite, when scrounging for D-Wheel parts in the dead of night, there were no beds; somehow, though, Yusei had found an old cot for them to sleep on, prying its rusted metal frame from a nearby alley wall. He had unfolded it, wincing at the grind of old metal as he straightened it against the ground, and they had slept there, crammed together on scratchy, threadbare cotton until morning light.
Jack had told himself he wouldn't think about it again. What was there to think about? Survival could have meant almost anything in the world they had shared all those years ago.
It wasn't a world worth going back to.
Still, Jack had curled around Yusei like a spine under the dreary smog, slipping guilty fingers into his hair once Yusei’s breath had mellowed into sleep.
He had smelled motor oil on Yusei's jacket and gloves—on the weapon clamped between his sleeping hands. Their feet had scuffed together at the foot of the cot, both still clad in heavy boots for fear of the worst.
And still, Yusei had shown him his back. He had fallen asleep first, and he had covered both of their bodies in the same worn sheet.
Even long after settling into this new world, Satellite’s dirty night air feels like yesterday’s weather—Yusei’s renewed presence in Jack’s glass castle makes forgetting their lifetime apart far too easy.
For the King, tonight is just like any other night; for Jack, it is yet another strange marriage between two incompatible worlds. He’s dressed in pajamas more expensive than some of the furniture in his room, and Yusei is dressed in nothing at all; he still smells like oil, although not in the same way. His skin is downy with expensive soaps and creams, each meant to keep him soft for the King’s hands. His expression is still as conflicted as on that first evening, body motionless until called to action, and his hair shines in the dusky lighting, lit halfway to blue by the electric world below.
“Come here,” Jack growls, twisting one of Yusei’s puffy nipples between anxious fingers. He needs Yusei, his medicine—Yusei, his great tool of forgetting. And Yusei obeys, slipping one hand through the wash of silk to fish out Jack’s cock, bowing his head and parting his lips as Jack pulls him into a bruising kiss.
“Well,” Yeager drummed his fingers on the table, “since we’ve covered the fundamentals, do you have any special requests?”
Jack swallowed, refusing to look away from Yeager even as he struggled to form words.
“Forgive me, King, but I don’t have all evening.”
“Can you—” he cleared his throat, “can you really do anything?” Jack clenched his fists. “Make him feel anything? Think anything?”
Jack sinks his teeth into Yusei’s lip, pulling him closer by his hips until Jack’s cock is flush against his belly. He digs his nails into Yusei’s flesh—he’s already wet, and Jack spreads Yusei open with one hand, keeping him in place with the other.
“You know what to do,” Jack whispers, and Yusei’s breath flutters in his throat as he sinks onto Jack’s cock.
“As I’m sure you’re aware,” Yeager said, “there is nothing that we the people of Neo Domino City cannot accomplish.”
Jack seizes Yusei by his sides and pushes him down, rolling on top of him and holding him down, gritting his teeth as Yusei’s ankles hook together behind his back.
“Then…” Jack tried to mask the tremor in his breath. “Then I want him to love it, too. Just as much as he hates it.” Jack looked at his hands, folded in front of him on the table. “Even if he doesn’t know why. I want him to feel all of that.”
Just like I do.
“My, my, King,” Yeager snickered. “I had no idea you were so…” he covered his mouth with his hand, “twisted.”
Jack’s balls press between the cleft of Yusei’s legs, unacknowledged tears wetting the space between their bodies.
“Does anyone else know this is how you really are?” Yeager steepled his fingers into a prism just below his eyes. “Then again,” he smiled, “I suppose that means you’ll fit right in here.”
Jack opened his mouth to protest, but all of his words failed him.
“Well then,” Yeager’s voice lilted oddly as he stood. “So may it be,” he dismissed himself with an uncanny smile, “King of Games.”
Before Jack could think to ask what he meant, Yeager was already gone.
Jack presses his face into the slope of Yusei’s neck as he finishes, hips jerking as he spends himself inside Yusei’s warm body once again. He pants into Yusei’s soft flesh, collapsing against his heaving chest before rolling into the delicate sheets again, slipping out of Yusei with a pained, exhausted sigh.
Yusei braces himself on weak arms and begins to recede to his spot at the foot of the bed.
“No,” Jack says, and Yusei stops, frozen by the order.
Jack doesn’t want to say the word stay, so instead he pulls Yusei’s body down into his arms, steeping them both in the still silence of the penthouse. He peers out over the top of Yusei’s head to look out the window. He can’t tell if Yusei’s eyes are open or closed, if they share the same view—if Yusei can see the thin film of black smoke rising from Satellite any better than he can.
“Go to sleep,” Jack says, blear rising in his eyes, and Yusei goes slack in his arms, breath quiet in his chest.
And the King says nothing at all.