Story has been updated on 1/20/09. Enjoy my Valentine's Day gift to you all!
Joey's Valentine Woes-Part 1
Joey had a predicament. Joey had a very, very bad predicament.
No, he had not stumbled across a plot for some evil megalomaniac to take over the world via means of dueling adolescents with playing cards. No, he had not discovered that his teachers were, in fact, Satan spawns intent on failing him from every single class – it so had nothing to do with the fact that he couldn't be bothered to do his homework, alright? This predicament didn't even have anything to do with the fact that he couldn't locate the TV remote.
Now, the readers are probably thinking, But if it doesn't have anything to do with world domination, evil teachers from hell, or lost TV remotes, it couldn't be all that bad, right? And Joey would admit that the readers are partially correct. It wasn't the end of the world. But it was still a bad predicament. Oh yes. Yes, it was.
And all because of a stupid day.
But that was okay. Because Joey, being the incorrigible optimist that he is, was sure that he could fix this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
You see, today was Valentine's Day, and Joey – incorrigible optimist though he may be – was tired of being alone every year, and had decided to remedy that lonely fact. He was going to get himself a Valentine with his One True Love before the day was out, or so help him God.
And now the readers are probably wondering how on earth will Joey just go out and find his One True Love in the mere 24 hours – if one does not count the first eight hours that were spent snoring away, waking with a jolt to realize he almost slept in, and then primping in front of a mirror to prepare for his One True Love - that make up this fateful day?
Well. That was simple. Joey was going to make Seto Kaiba confess his undying love to him.
Duh.
Now that the readers are questioning Joey's mental stability at throwing himself to the mercies of Kaiba's wrath – Kaiba was never a lovey-dovey romance type, that one - Joey should probably elaborate on his plan.
…Well, actually, he didn't really have one. Not yet, at any rate.
But that was okay! Nothing could go wrong for him today! Joey had long ago come to the conclusion that Seto Kaiba was in love with him. Which should help immensely for when Joey would finally convince Kaiba that yes, Kaiba did want to announce to the world that he was in love with the irresistible Joey. Totally foolproof. Who needs a plan when you've got facts like those?
Now the readers are probably raising a questioning eyebrow at Joey. Kaiba? In love? With Joey? Anyone who knew the two would agree that this was ridiculously preposterous. They were on complete opposite ends of the spectrum – a happy, lovable ball of sunshine, and an ice cold bastard with a heart of stone, in Joey's most professional and non-biased opinion.
It was a known fact that Joey and Seto couldn't be within ten feet of each other without picking a fight. Teachers even had to make sure that their desks were not within strangling distance of each other during school. After one too many near-death experiences to the school's main beneficiary, the School Board decided to make a school mandate on how far away Joey's and Kaiba's desks had to be.
(Although, in a process that did not involve Joey or large tidy sums of money from his life's savings in any sort of way, the teachers always seemed to forget about that little school mandate, and usually sat the two next to each other anyway.)
They just couldn't seem to keep their hands off each other. If the teachers weren't so sure that the two teenagers absolutely loathed each other, they would have thought that the hormone-induced teenagers wanted each other.
And not in a homicidal bloodlust sort of way, either.
It was when Joey overheard two teachers gossiping about this theory behind their notorious fights that he realized his own feelings for the brunette.
He loved to pick fights with him. Lived for them. It was the highlight of his day. He began to realize that he would involuntarily antagonize him, just to be near him. To see those icy blue eyes dancing in amusement at the blonde's fiery reaction when Joey could not come up with a witty retort to whatever scathing dog insult the brunette had just uttered.
And whenever their verbal fights became physical, and Joey had successfully tackled the CEO – school mandates be damned – he would find his hands lingering just a little bit longer on his skin before he proceeded to attempt to choke off the CEO's windpipe.
As he came to the horrifying conclusion that he was head-over-heels crazy for Kaiba, he then began to realize something. The CEO was doing the same damn things that he was!
Every class, out of the corner of his eye, Joey could feel those piercing eyes watching his every move. But every time he turned around to look, Kaiba always seemed to be occupied with something else, like reading a book or working on his ever present laptop, which might have been a fifth limb if Joey didn't know better.
Even though Joey never actually caught Seto in the act of staring at him, he knew it was true. He wasn't being paranoid, dammit, like Tristan was so happy to provide as an explanation when Joey began to voice his suspicions.
Kaiba had to be in love with him. He had even created his own pet name! Seto almost never called him the annoying mutt, but instead changed to the more endearing pet name, pup.
And Joey came to the sudden realization that civilization as he knew it would never be the same. Because he actually started to like it when Kaiba called him his puppy.
He could feel the laws of the universe unraveling at the impossibility.
Well, now that today was the day of love confessions, Joey decided to help his One True Love with his. After all, it was a known fact that Kaiba had the social skills of a stump, and probably would not know how to go about asking Joey to be his Valentine. Luckily for the CEO, he had Joey.
Now all Joey needed was a plan.
After Joey had decided to make Kaiba confess his love, he had explained his situation to his friends, and asked for their help. He needed some ideas.
Yugi just smiled innocently and patted his shoulder reassuringly. The short boy told him to just be himself. Kaiba would surely follow his heart, and confess to him in his own time, without any help.
Joey snorted.
Right. Like that was going to happen.
Joey next turned to the friend he had known the longest. Tristan brandished his fist at the thought of the CEO and yelled that Kaiba was an arrogant, stuck-up bastard with no sense of decency at all.
Joey nodded solemnly in agreement. Very true. But that wasn't really any help to The Plan.
When Joey asked Ryou for tips on how to woo the blue-eyed brunette, the British boy's eyes glazed over for a few moments. It took Joey a second before he realized he was conversing with his yami. With a sudden blink, Ryou then informed Joey that Bakura offered to use his superior thieving skills to break into the Kaiba mansion to steal the top-secret Kaiba Diary so that he could read any secret Kaiba fantasies he had about the blonde.
Joey thought about it really hard. Very tempting, but breaking-and-entering was probably not the best way to start out a relationship with him.
Then Marik appeared out of nowhere, giving Joey a heart attack, and offered to control Kaiba's mind with his millennium rod so that Joey could act out all of those sexual fantasies with him. Though, only on the condition that the psychotic spirit got a chance to Xerox copy said diary.
Joey laughed nervously. Backed away slowly. And ran for the hills. No thank you.
He was obviously getting nowhere.
He had wondered aloud if maybe he should just wing it. Tristan's jaw had dropped, and furiously reminded him what happened the last time he decided to 'wing it.' Something along the lines of Joey, Tristan, and a stolen monkey from the zoo spending the night in jail with a motorcycle gang.
Okay. Maybe winging it wasn't really Joey's forte. Back to square one.
So now the Big Day was finally here, and Joey still had no Plan.
He decided that perhaps the best plan of action would be to give subtle hints to the brunette, so that Seto would think that he was not being manipulated to Joey's whim, which consisted of Seto kissing the blonde in the setting sun, and declaring his undying love. With maybe a hot, steamy lemon at the end.
So maybe that was a little wishful – not to mention getting quite ahead of himself - but he had to have some sort of goal. And what better goal than a stolen scene from some cheesy B-rated lovey-dovey romance flick?
Foolproof.
Joey was now walking to school, and not in a very good mood considering he would soon be in the arms of his One True Love. After making sure he looked as sexy as hell – it took a long time to make his hair look like a rat's nest - he thought that maybe perfecting his seductive swagger would be a good start to his Plan. He had been practicing in front of the mirror in his bathroom, taking notes on how he looked with his hips swaying from side to side.
But, being the graceful person that he is, about a minute into his practice session, he had tripped over a stray towel that had been waiting to ambush him from the floor, and fell flat on his face. Unfortunately, Joey's bathroom was rather small, so instead of falling to the floor, his face was abruptly introduced to the unforgiving porcelain of the toilet bowl.
Joey's nose was not pleased with Joey's clumsiness, and throbbed angrily.
It was not a good sign for the start of the day, but Joey didn't pay it any mind. Mainly because he has the common sense of a pile of rocks. As far as the oblivious blonde was concerned, nothing could go wrong today because Seto was going to confess to him, dammit!
He heard the school bell ring shrilly in this distance, and realized belatedly that he had spent too much time primping, which so was not a girly thing to do. It was totally normal for a boy to spend two hours, fifteen minutes, and thirty-seven seconds doing his hair. Really.
He sprinted off to class as quickly as he could. He burst through classroom door only a few minutes late, earning him a heated glare from the interrupted teacher, clutching his side and trying to gain his breath.
After the teacher told him to take a seat before she sent him into detention, Joey looked up and saw his favorite and worst brunette. Damn Kaiba for sitting there, looking so sexy like that in public, where he was unable to jump and ravish him. Damn him.
Joey straightened up quickly, smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt and double checking that his hair was perfectly unruly in a come-and-take-advantage-of-me sort of way. Now was the time to put that whole sixty seconds of practicing into action. He held his head up high and walked with an overly exaggerated sway to his hips.
Walking as smoothly as it was possible for Joey to do - meaning he crashed through the classroom with the grace of a charging bull - he stopped by Kaiba's desk, stooping down to purr a seductive good morning in his ear.
There was a whole second of silence in which Seto stopped typing and turned to stare blankly at the blonde, and Joey did an inner victory dance. Success! He puckered his lips, ready to accept his victory kiss.
Then Kaiba had to go and be his bastard self and shatter Joey's fantasy of doing hot, steamy adult things on the school desk, forever scarring his teacher and classmates.
Kaiba turned back to his computer and resumed his typing. He didn't glance back when he oh-so-rudely informed Joey that if he insisted on waddling around like that, people would start mistaking him for a duck, instead of the puppy that he was.
Joey's face burned in rage. How dare he! He didn't waddle. It was a seductive swagger, dammit! And he was much sexier than a duck!
Joey glared darkly at the brunette, but as Kaiba was already absorbed into his computer screen, it was rather ineffective. After sending a muttered 'bastard' in the other teen's direction, he took his seat next to him.
He pouted to himself, crossing his arms. Well, Plan A: Operation Seductive Swagger was a horrible failure. He frowned. He still couldn't see how it could have let him down.
Well, no matter. The day was still young. Joey set to trying to think of a Plan B. He was still sure that the brunette was in love with him, and Seto's heart would be his!