Chapter 1: Stalker
The day was warm, the air was clean, the sky was a deep, clear blue. The collective desire of the students to be outside, enjoying life, free, was so strong it was almost a palpable feeling, weighting the atmosphere in the classroom. The weight wasn't heavy, but rather electric: every person in the room could feel the tension. To some, the feeling was barely noticeable; to others, it was felt quite keenly. Most of the class members were squirming on the edges of their seats, ready to run for it when the bell rang. The clock ticked the seconds.
Jounouchi Katsuya sighed, his eyes looking longingly in the general direction of the window. Seated in the far back of the classroom, on the side closest to the door, he was as far from the windows as he could possibly be—and as far from his friends, also. Yugi sat in the very front row, one seat over from the windows: he had to look past Anzu to see out. Her eyes were on the board at the front of the class, but it was clear that there would be no new material today. The teacher was every bit as enamored with the beauty of the sky as the students—as the hands of the clock moved ever so slowly around the face, the tension mounted.
Otogi sat next to Yugi, a fact he wasn't particularly pleased about, while Honda sat behind Anzu. Ryou was two seats behind Otogi. But Jounouchi's gaze wasn't fixed far enough forward for him to be interested in what his friends were up to: he stared directly to his side, casting his view past the boy who sat in the far back corner of the class, at the end of the column Anzu headed. Unlike the rest of the class, this boy was clearly not interested in the weather: his focus lay on the laptop computer on his desk, taken out when it was clear that there would be no new learning material.
Kaiba and Jounouchi had somehow managed to end up in the same class again, and in an attempt to keep them from destroying the school, they had been made to sit far out of punching range. Their ratio of fights to days had lessoned dramatically with the new system, as had the number of trips to the nurse's office. Yet nothing but nothing could keep Jounouchi's attention off of the elder Kaiba brother: he was lucky they were in the same class so that he could listen to the teacher while he stared. There was not a day when the brunette did not catch the blonde's attention.
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Seto Kaiba was like the crystallization of perfection in a human body. The way he moved when he walked, or was still when he sat, working on some intricate problem on his laptop, as he was now—perfect balance, perfect poise. Katsuya was, to say the least, completely and utterly enthralled.
Katsuya shook his head at himself, annoyed at how events had played themselves out since the beginning of the new school year. Everything had been planned. They would fight, like they always did—Katsuya would initiate the fight himself, would deliberately provoke the CEO, if he had to. It wouldn't have been the first time. Oh, how he loved the feel of the fight, loved to roll together with that man over the floor of the classroom or anywhere really, loved to not care about the eyes staring at them or the voices raised in yelling or anything at all except the act of being that close to the CEO—
Katsuya realized his thoughts had gone off on a tangent. He honestly wasn't surprised. Thinking about the brunette boy in the corner did that to him almost every single time.
He was thinking about his plan. His failed plan. His plan to get the brunette's attention, to force him to look in his direction. They would fight, and then, later, Katsuya had planned to take the taller man aside under the guise of apology, to talk to him, to confess…
But they hadn't been seated close enough. Katsuya hadn't even been given anything like a chance to challenge the brunette that first day—or the day after that, or the day after that, or… well. Actually, Katsuya had been shocked to see Yugi, of all people, take his beloved, his Kaiba, to the side at break, to speak with him privately. Was there something there? Katsuya had to wonder, but somehow he didn't think it was the case. Yugi would have told him if he had something with Kaiba. He trusted the short boy for that much, at least.
All those snarky comments he used to endure, the ones that had been the perfect opening, as if the CEO were setting him up to rise to the challenge, to start the fight, as if he liked it just as much—those comments had gone away, too. As if the CEO couldn't bother to comment across the distance. Katsuya couldn't even begin to imagine why. It was just over his head.
But the CEO…. Katsuya fantasized. The teacher wasn't doing her job anyway, anyhow. Everyone was busy staring out the window. Katsuya allowed himself to spare a glance for what had caught the attention of everyone else in the class—almost everyone, he corrected himself mentally, Kaiba was still working industriously—and was disappointed. It was just the weather, just another lovely blue day in a long string of lovely blue days. A blue day, like those blue eyes…
Katsuya was startled to find himself staring into blue eyes. He blushed immediately at the intensity of the gaze and looked away, mentally berating himself: how could he ever confess convincingly if he couldn't even look the other in the eye? His anger at his own weakness made him flush darker, but eventually got himself under control and managed to glance up again. He was afraid of what the taller boy would see in his eyes—even from across the room—so, in order to avoid coming across as antagonistic or worse, stupid, he smiled. Hopefully, wanting the boy to see all his love and joy and want, he smiled, but only briefly: he was still nervous.
The bell rang. The rest of the class had risen around him, but he found himself unable to look away, unable to stop watching the other, the perfect boy sitting across the room from him. He hadn't noticed the CEO packing up his things to prepare to leave, but he must have done it in the time Katsuya had been dazed and concerned only with the pure fact that the brunette existed, in the world, in his town, in the same school, same class as the blonde.
Katsuya realized he had been sitting in his chair staring at his classmate, and had the presence of mind to calculate that the other boy was probably expecting him to say something. It could have been the perfect chance to spill everything, except that the teacher was still in the room. He flashed an odd smile-grimace of apology and dashed out of the room.
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Katsuya closed the door to his apartment behind him and leaned against it heavily, counseling himself to breathe deeply and slowly. He had run for blocks toward home from school, eventually slowing to a quick walk. He hadn't heard his friends call him to go to the arcade with them, hadn't noticed the odd looks he got as he ran toward home, hadn't seen Seto Kaiba get into his limo and order his driver to take him home, all signs of confusion hidden beneath his perfectly smooth face.
He pushed off from the wall and walked gingerly to his bedroom, sinking to his knees before a short bedside set of drawers. Gently, slowly, he pulled open a drawer, reaching inside to take out a single small sheet of paper. It was a photograph, several months old at least, depicting a brunette boy in a blue school uniform looking off into the distance. He was standing in front of a row of cherry trees, but they hadn't blossomed yet at the time the photograph was taken.
The photo was bent at the corner and had a slight tear near the bottom. It was slightly wrinkled, as though it had been clutched too tightly in someone's hand for a period of time, and the back had the odd watermarks of a sweaty hand.
Katsuya crawled to his bed and settled himself comfortably, a small smile playing over his lips as he gazed lovingly at the photo, remembering the circumstances of its capture—Seto had been so furious with him. Katsuya had begged to keep it, had teamed up with Mokuba—promising the younger brother a copy of his too-rarely photographed sibling—and eventually the CEO had relented. The blonde stroked the picture now, with his knuckles; then his hand slipped down to his lap, and with a great sigh, slipped off to paradise.
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A/N: To all new readers, welcome, and to all returning fans, welcome back! The long-awaited (has anyone actually been waiting a long time? I guess maybe I have, because of that stupid last chapter of Signs of Flirting, took me five friggin' months) sequel/companion piece to Signs of Flirting has arrived! I hope everybody enjoys it, and I hope new readers who like it take the time to read Signs Of Flirting. It will contain spoilers, but only the ones you already know are coming, so you might as well. There will be plenty of new content in this story, so please look forward to it!
Actually, believe it or not, I've been staring at this chapter, waiting for it to write itself, for longer than chapter 10 of SoF held me up. I knew I wanted to start the same, so I had that (yes, the first four hundred and forty-odd words of this chapter are the same as those of chapter 1 of SoF) all written and waiting. But I had nothing for the rest of this chapter. I mentioned a while ago, I think, that I was nervous about it—since I don't know anybody like Jou. I hope, if I didn't get him right, I at least got him plausible. Anyway, once I finished off SoF, everything just kind of fell into place.
One last thing before I let you loose: I don't have any particular attachment to the name of the story, so if anyone wants to suggest something different, please please do.
Thanks again for reading, and don't forget to press the little "review" button at the bottom of the page. Reviews make chapters come faster, you know.