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The first time Joubin saw that smile, he was young and naive. Hidden in the back of the bar, Yoshikage must have not been any older than twenty-two as he flashed a toothy grin in response to an advance he made on him. Rebellion wasn’t pretty on him, he remembered thinking. He was fresh in graduate school, and he was still clueless on things most people caught onto long before this. The cliches all seemed to work on him, and it wasn’t hard to rile him up.
A game was what it seemed to be. How far could he get this future doctor to go?
Evidently, it was further than he thought. No one could say no to him. For fucks sake, he was Joubin Higashikata. He could have anything he wanted. That was exactly what he thought as he watched this student undressing in his car while they were parked in the alley behind the bar.
“You don’t do this often, do you?” Joubin commented, sitting in the backseat next to the younger man who had just thrown his hoodie back on.
“... First time,” he muttered, covering his mouth to hide a giggle. The happiness seemed to be a new thing on him, as if he wasn’t used to it. “Why? What-”
“I’m married.”
The color drained out of his face and the smile faded from his lips. Yoshikage nodded his head slightly, brushing his bangs out of his eyes as he reached for his beanie. “Oh,” he said under his breath. “I didn’t kn-”
“I didn’t know it was your first time,” Joubin sighed. He found a thrill in crushing the younger man, licking his lips as he heard the displeased noises.
“There’s two things we should have said beforehand,” Yoshikage mumbled, his breath shaking. “But… that’s okay.”
It seemed as if anything would have gotten Yoshikage into bed. At least, that’s what Joubin thought.
Yoshikage feigned interest in everything he said- and that, much like his smile, seemed like a new thing. Behind the looks, he could tell how much he was struggling to try something new. He was trying to care.
“Will you call me?” Yoshikage asked under his breath. It almost sounded desperate, as if he was begging for him to agree.
“Yes,” Joubin agreed. The second mistake of the night. Another chance to break his naive charm.
That night wasn’t enough to break his smile. Yoshikage caught on quickly as to why they wanted to hide in the back of bars and restaurants, and he was needy enough to not need anything fancier than a bathroom for their alone time. All he wanted was someone that was there to touch him.
“Am I good?” Yoshikage asked him once while they were in a hotel room. Joubin was going to be away for a ‘trip’, and Yoshikage had ran to join him. He fucked as if he had no self esteem, but it wasn’t like that was a lie. He was constantly searching for validation. Joubin thought it was nothing but annoying.
“You’re okay,” he said softly, laying back as Yoshikage cuddled against him. The smile was there, although it was beginning to become smaller as each day past.
Mistakes piled upon mistakes, and months went past. They had a routine, and it would seldom get broken.
As the months went by, the smile proved to be nearly nonexistent.
“Since when did you start smoking?” Joubin asked him once, ignoring the rare cynical smile that perked on Yoshikage’s lips before flashing away.
“Why, does it bother you?” he asked him.
“The smell does,” Joubin told him. “For fucks sake, aren’t you a doctor…? And you’re-”
“Doesn’t matter,” Yoshikage shrugged, putting out the cigarette. “I do a lot of things that aren’t healthy for me.”
He wished he would have caught onto that. Instead, he continued to turn a blind eye to the faults in their timed illusions.
The months turned into years, and Joubin caught himself staring at Yoshikage’s face. Wrinkles had appeared compared to the babyface he held years before. Frown-lines. It wasn’t something he imagined would happen when he first met that bright eyed student, but now sat a broken in doctor. A doctor who seemed to care less for others than he did for himself.
That was what he was looking for when he met him, but he still wasn’t content with what he saw.
A new equation was placed into their perfect affair, and it wasn’t one that Joubin expected. As he sat across the bar, watching that smile appear on his lover’s lips, his heart sank. He never thought he would have missed that smile so much in all the years they spent together. That was to put it lightly. He had never seen him smile so grand, covering his entire face, nuzzling a new person in public.
The man his lover seemed so infatuated with appeared to be a mistake. He was younger than Yoshikage was when he met him, and he seemed even more clueless than Yoshikage had ever been.
Yoshikage seemed so happy to be next to him.
“Who the fuck is he?” Joubin asked in the car. His voice was level as his hands gripped the steering wheel.
“Why do you car-”
“Who the fuck is that boy, Yoshikage?” he asked him, warranting a grimace from Yoshikage.
“Someone who actually cares about me,” he spat, shaking his head at him. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re so upset about. You have your goddamn wife you never go home to.”
“You knew about my wife, though. I didn’t know about him! How long has this-”
“Knew about your wife?” Yoshikage snorted, his eyes wide as he turned to look at the elder man. “I only knew after you fucked me for the first time! You cannot play the innocence card around me! Let’s say I want to get my brains fucked out by this boy, who are you to-”
“You are not.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you love to know all the juicy details?” the doctor grumbled before he opened the door to the car. “I’m not going to be a part of this anymore. I realize what I’ve been missing out on, and you fucking ruined me, Joubin.”
“If you get out of this ca-”
“Shut up!” Yoshikage shouted, stepping out of the car and turning back to look at him. “I don’t want to be your fucking side toy anymore. I’m fucking happy for once in my life, and I can forget the damages you did to me. He’s actually helping my mother, too! What are you doing? Just making my life more difficult!”
He shouldn’t have drove off after Yoshikage slammed the door. Maybe then he could have mended their relationship.
It wasn’t fair.
Not only was Yoshikage now dating a younger man, he seemed to be taunting it in his face. Smiling and giggling with him in public, whispering pointless mutters in his ear, holding his hand.
His hand was supposed to be in his. His gorgeous, slender, skinny hand wasn’t meant to be shared. He was meant to be broken beside him.
“Yoshikage, listen to me,” he begged him, standing in the hallway of his apartment. It had taken all the fight left in him to keep him from slamming the door in his face. “Yoshikage, I need you…”
“You don’t,” the man said. Joubin could see the pain in his eyes as he looked at him. The nights he spent being pushed around, ignored, neglected. The distance between them wasn’t something that formed overnight.
“Please,” Joubin begged, reversing their roles for once. His arms gripped the doctor’s shoulders. “I need you, oh my God…”
“You don’t,” Yoshikage argued again, shoving him off of him and shaking his head. “You say you do, but you don’t. You don’t want me. You don’t love me. You’ve never loved me-”
“I love you so much,” Joubin whimpered.
A light flared in Yoshikage’s eyes, his head perking up to look at him. After all these years, and nothing even close to those words had been uttered from him. “You don’t mean that,” he whispered, trying to back down from the actions he had just displayed.
“I will leave my wife to be with you,” he replied desperately.
“You- You wouldn’t,” Yoshikage muttered, his voice getting caught in his throat. “You wouldn’t do that- You’re just-”
“Test me,” Joubin replied. “... Give me the word, and I’ll do it. I’ll run away with you. Please, Yoshikage, I need you… Decide between me or that boy… I want you so badly… I can’t live without you.”
“I can’t decide right now-” the younger man whispered, bringing his hands to his face as if he was trying to keep himself stable. “You don’t just throw that at someone and-”
“Think about it… Please, Yoshikage…” Joubin whispered. He couldn’t let him be happy with someone else. “I’ll protect you and your mother…”
“I’ll think about it.”
Although, it was clear to Joubin that this wasn’t even a consideration.
He would have recognized those lips anywhere. While the eyes had changed, they kept that glare full of fire… And that dumb hat. Without a doubt, this was his Yoshikage Kira.
But it wasn’t his Yoshikage Kira.
It was Josefumi Kujo’s Yoshikage Kira.
He had been trying to turn a blind eye to it, but there was no way to avoid it any longer.
“Who are you again?” he asked, as if he could find some sort of sanctuary in a lie.
“I’m Josuke,” the boy replied, apprehensively. Even without his memories, he would take a step back from him.
This was the cruelest form of a joke Joubin had ever experienced. He had lost the one thing in the world that he wanted. He lost something he wanted so desperately but couldn’t have. And now ‘Josuke’ was here to taunt him of what he missed. He was here to taunt him of his mistakes that he could never recover from.