Not bothering to cover his mouth, Joey yawned widely, a rasping groan echoing from just beyond his wisdom teeth. His eyes blossomed fresh tears under the strain, and a passing commuter gave him a narrow glare for his 'indecency'. Joey returned a watery scowl. He'd had to wake up at some torturous hour in order to fit in a shift of his job before school started. The job was only recently offered to him, and he still wasn't used to the early start. At least during summer he'd been able to finish his shift mid morning and then go crash on his bed to catch up on those precious z's, but August's belated heatwave had supplied him with an extra dose of lethargy to sleep the days away, and then he had a week, four days, one day... and suddenly it was the start of a new term.

He got to school with forty-five minutes before the bell would ring and plodded through the silent corridors aimlessly, not wanting to submit to homeroom but having nowhere else to go. He passed his old physics teacher in her office frenziedly stabbing at a laptop, but apart from that Joey didn't see another soul. The childishly decorated wall displays mocked him with their loudness. Instead of stale sweat masked by body spray, Joey could smell the dry, cheap carpet beneath his feet, the faint sting of bleach hitting his nostrils as he passed the toilets. It was weird. Joey almost felt like he shouldn't be there. Yet, never one to not take advantage of a situation, he indulged in a mental action post-apocalyptic rpg, fighting off a couple of radioactive gremlins with his schoolbag where no one could see him. After a few minutes, he then stopped by the drinks machine and tried to surreptitiously coax out a free soda. The machine didn't budge an inch, so he stepped into the nearest classroom and wrote a bunch of curse words all over the blackboard.

Glancing at the classroom's clock, he saw he'd only wasted fifteen minutes since he'd got there. Yugi'd be arriving soon. The kid always got to school early – not out of commitment to his studies, but because he got so many requests for duels from classmates that he had to cram one or two in before the bell. Idiots thinking they could beat him, take the title 'King of Games'. And Yugi's politeness would never let him say no, though Joey suspected these days there was a bit of pride there too, the confidence of rising to a challenge. Definitely the Pharaoh's influence.

Joey's eyes glazed as he absent-mindedly wandered towards his homeroom, still pondering over his friend. The little punk had been kinda... downcast for a while after the Pharaoh left. And no one blamed him – they'd had a pretty close bond, after all. He spent a lot of time with Ryou, and then a lot of time by himself. It took a while for Joey to get him to crack a grin again. Though even now, months later, Yugi was less excitable... more reserved. More mature. He didn't play Duel Monsters with the same type of vivacity as he used to. Maybe the mediocre duelists bored him. Maybe the card game was losing interest for him. Perhaps they were all just getting too old for games. This was their final year of high school, after all.

Joey entered his homeroom and slunk to his usual desk, aiming to get a few moments of shut-eye before the inevitable interruption of the outside world. He folded his arms on the desk and used them as a pillow for his head, inhaling the sticky remnants of spray paint still stubbornly glued to his fingertips. The only drawback to his new job. Sighing, he tried to clear his mind but kept coming back to images of homework planners, teachers' names in big letters on blackboards, Téa and her 'cute' note-taking gel pens all arranged in a rainbow on the desk beside him in Maths... 'One year. That's all. One more year.'

The classroom door closed with a soft click. Precise footsteps.

'They say that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, Wheeler.'

A chair's legs rustled on the carpet, one desk across and three up from him. Joey kept his eyes closed and his nose buried in blue polyester sleeves. 'They say that refusing to call people by their first names is in the first sign of douchebaggery, Seto.'

'It's more polite, and more formal.'

'Maybe in the nineteenth century, yeah.'

'So the Mutt has been listening in History class, after all.'

'You know what? Just go back to my last name.' Joey cracked open one eye. Kaiba was drinking from a large takeaway coffee cup, nonchalant as ever. He put down the cup, cocked his head backwards and caught Joey looking. They kept up the stare for around thirty seconds before, surprisingly, it was Kaiba who slipped into a sideways smile.

Joey grinned, rising from his seat and punching the air. 'I win! Damn, what's that, a run of about two hundred staring matches?'

Kaiba made a 'hmph' sound, reaching for his laptop in his bag. 'Dumb luck.'

'Keep tellin' yourself that, moneybags. Speakin' of which, is there any chance I could get a preview of that new simulator you've been promoting all summer?'

'The release date is in November. Wait, like everyone else.'

With a pout worthy of rivalling Ryou's puppy-eyes, Joey crept round to be level with Kaiba's desk. Some time after Atem's departure, the millionaire must have deemed their group to be finally worthy of his time, and over the past year, Kaiba had relaxed a little around them. Stopped acting so much like he had a three foot pole up his ass. The arrogance still crept back in at times, but Joey had been pleasantly surprised by this softer version of Kaiba, the one only Mokuba had ever seen. Yugi had been especially happy at the lanky bastard finally accepting his friendship, and very smug when Kaiba had eventually started to return it through sarcastic quips and millisecond smiles. Yugi had only grown a couple more inches over the past year, so they made a hell of a picture when walking together, with those dyed hair spikes barely reaching Kaiba's elbow – but who cared, right? Joey was just happy there was no more terrifying Egyptian voodoo in their lives any more.

Drawing closer to Kaiba's desk, Joey noticed a second coffee cup, the swirly lettering on the side suggesting some little dusky-lit, family-owned gourmet affair in the nice side of town. Of course. But surely no one needed that much caffeine. 'You up late last night or somethin'? Adding any last minute details to a new simulator that you'd definitely let a trusted friend do one last beta test on before you release it?'

Kaiba gave him the side eye.

Joey smirked, but decided to let it go. He still wasn't so sure about Kaiba – the guy had shown he could still flip like a switch into prick-mode whenever he felt like it, once going off at him for repeatedly stealing bits of his lunch as they all sprawled out on the grass last Spring. It wasn't as if Joey was giving him special treatment – he nicked parts of everyone's lunches, and it had become less of a deliberate wind-up and more of an accepted occurrence over the years with Tristan and him often winding up splitting what they had between them, and Téa not bothering to even tut at him any more. Joey wouldn't have guessed Kaiba would be the type to get possessive about his food, considering how skinny he was. Though he guessed it had more to do with him intruding on The Seto Kaiba Personal Spaceᵀᴹ . Even now, Joey sat perched on the edge of the desk next to Kaiba's, his cautiousness hidden underneath the carefree confidence he'd been carrying around with him ever since middle school. It irked him that Kaiba had the upper hand over him in this way since their pact of non-violence, but he tried not to dwell on it. After all, that pact had developed into begrudging civilities, then silent assessment of each other, then over time it had evolved into this: shallow teasing, not able to let go of past conflict but still treading the line. But it was preferable to being instantly riled up whenever he saw that haughty face. And besides, he was too tired for a fight.

'Cover your mouth when you yawn,' Kaiba said, interrupting Joey's thoughts. 'It's like being with Mokuba. Actually, no; he's much more polite in his mannerisms.'

Joey ignored this, having found himself hypnotised by Kaiba's hands tapping at his keyboard while he typed. They were like big, pale spiders. He'd always tended to end up watching Kaiba's hands, especially during a duel. They were as slender as the rest of him, and seemingly double jointed, judging by the contortions of his fingers. The sound of typing was oddly soothing too. Kaiba always seemed to have perfect nails. Not like his own, which were bitten ragged and constantly ingrained with dirt. Joey wondered if he booked himself manicures- no, he probably had his secretary do it for him. Nah. It was probably just the orderliness attained by never touching anything but books and modern technology. A rich kid's hands.

Kaiba paused to rest his wrists, to rub away the primary twinges of repetitive strain injury. He glanced at Joey. 'You look like you haven't slept in a week.'

Joey's head snapped up from his reverie. 'That's the threat of school for ya.' He sighed. 'Just one more year though, and then I'm outta here.'

'Have you got any plans?'

Strangely flattered by this unexpected show of interest in him, Joey's mouth started working before his brain did. 'Nah, not really. Try and pass more exams than I fail and then... well, Tristan and Yugi and me are talkin' about sharing an apartment, but... I got a job, but...'

Joey pressed his lips together, feeling a trifle awkward about revealing his lack of forward thinking to someone so organised. He tried to displace the attention. 'S'alright for you, having basically the rest of your life laid out for you and your own job as stable as you make it.'

It was fifty/fifty over whether Kaiba would antagonise him for making estimations about him – he still was six feet of gleaming pride, no matter their relationship.

Kaiba took a sip of coffee and looked at Joey squarely. After a moment and with typical insight, he said, 'I doubt you'd find that situation very reassuring. Your whole life already printed before you live it. If someone else were in my position, they might feel rather constrained.'

Joey rolled his eyes. 'I'd still rather have it like that.'

Kaiba raised an eyebrow fractionally, then turned back to his laptop screen. 'Take the other coffee, Mutt. You look like you need it more than I do.'

'Huh. Thanks.' Joey accepted, taking the cup by the cardboard sleeve and mentally 'tsk'-ing at the hidden insult. He removed the lid and inhaled the warm steam. Black. Of course. He blew on the surface and took a sip. His tastebuds cringed, scalded by the heat and the bitterness. 'Damn. No sugar!' he exclaimed with disgust.

Then Joey remembered who'd given him the drink without asking a fair trade for it (yet), and his long term memory flashed up the mental image of Kaiba's hand slapping his own as he reached out for another piece of ripe fruit wilting beneath the sun in a KaibaCorp brand plastic box...

Grinning sheepishly, Joey continued, 'But I'll be in detention by eleven for sleeping in class without it, so-' He took another sip and tried not to outwardly grimace. Maybe he'd go see if the lunch ladies'd give him a dash of milk. He'd been on good terms with them all since he'd got his first job and started buying twice as much lunch as everyone else every day with his earnings, with a consequence of making the ladies' own wages increase on account of no wasted food. Well, he was a growing boy (no he wasn't; he was a young man with no confirmed dinner at home, taking advantage of the cheap school prices).

Right on cue, the door opened and Yugi stepped through the doorway. 'Good morning Joey, Kaiba!'

Joey rose from his perch as Kaiba responded with a warm, yet overly-formal, 'Hello Yugi, how are you?'. Yugi simultaneously replied to both the textbook greeting and Joey's fist bump, but Joey didn't know much of the events after that because he was catching the door before it closed and heading swiftly to the school kitchens, coffee in hand, before a teacher caught him with food/drink in the corridors. Heaven forbid. The mighty Seto Kaiba might be able to bypass that rule, but not him.

The rest of the day passed like all others had before it: a crushing whirlwind of new textbooks, overly-aspirational teachers, and freshmen clogging the hallways with their backpacks. Joey's final class was American Literature, which he had the delight of sharing with Kaiba - a not-so-sarcastic comment since they'd been on friendlier terms because if Joey played his cards right, he could get the guy to print out an extra copy of meticulously organised notes for him. It wasn't like Joey didn't understand Am Lit. Some of the books were crap, yeah, but he'd always found it interesting to think about a character, try to figure out what made them the way they were. In fact, he actually paid more attention to the teacher now that he wasn't seething over Kaiba's presence in the same room as him. Joey just preferred talking. Writing all those damn essays, having all the ideas in his head but having to waste time forming them into eloquent sentences. By the time he'd written a paragraph he'd forgotten what he'd been thinking to write next.

The end of day bell signaled freedom soon enough and students started immediately shoving their things back in their bags. Joey lingered, waiting for Tristan to meet him so they could go grab a successfully-survived-first-day victory burger. Kaiba was also still present even after the teacher had skedaddled, because he was annoyingly pretentious about making sure his notes were filed properly and his laptop secure.

Tristan's head appeared around the edge of the door frame. 'Yo, you coming?'

'Yeah, just a sec'.'

As he hoisted his bag on his shoulder, Kaiba spoke. 'If you drop by my office tomorrow afternoon, there might be a simulation preview demo in it for you.'

Joey half wanted to reply by asking what the world was coming to if Seto Kaiba was offering two unexpected acts of kindness in one day, but instead he simply grinned and said 'Cheers, Kaiba,', and continued on his merry way out of school and into the fading summer air, wondering what had inspired this almost Scrooge-worthy alteration in Kaiba's generosity.