A/N: Yu-Gi-Oh belongs to Kazuki Takahashi and the brands mentioned belong to their respective owners. Sorry but I have no idea what Japanese clubs are like, so I'm basing this on clubs in Canada (drinks too, although I'm not sure which are international and which aren't).

Make You Sway

Mai flashed her ID one last time and walked past the guard without looking at him. On the third week of every month, she and her three friends visited Plush to let loose, forgo any work stress and dance like there's no tomorrow. Plush, like a lot of clubs, had a rule: if you can't walk straight, you can't get in. Luckily for these ladies, it was always the same bouncer, one with a pristine memory but the work habit of an old horse. This time, he barely noticed Vivian's arm draped around Mai's shoulders when he gave his usual grunt of approval.

The ladies stepped into the semi-darkness. Body heat radiated from the dance floor as the scantily-clad, writhing bodies within moved to the beat of the newest remix. Strobe lights scattered throughout the place swung colorful beams around the room, striking through the darkness in conjunction to the music and contributing to the ecstasy already induced by the alcohol. Eerily beautiful shadows fell on various night-goers, sweeping through laughing faces, swaying buttocks and flirtatious legs. Mai and her friends would soon melt into this crowd, losing their individuality for the delirium of the masses.

Her outfit didn't deviate too much from the usual. She wore her three-inch stilettos this time, knowing her feet would kill by the end of the night but not really caring. Her purple mini skirt was the same one she always wore, as well as the white corset-like strapless. Her jacket, which she only brought because it was freezing outside, was left at coat-check. Her hair was held up by three strategically placed clips, an unusual sight for anyone who's never seen her at a club.

Tempted to head straight for the bar but having already pre-drunk, they penetrated the crowd. Forming a tight circle, they slid into the beat expertly, not completely familiar with the song playing but barely paying attention anyways. Whether it was the booze, the darkness, or the music, inhibition was left at the door. Guys glided in and out of their circle, zeroing on one girl, then another. The first one to be picked off was Vivian. Mai assumed it was because she was the tipsiest out of the bunch. With one tanned, muscular arm around her shoulders, Vivian turned her head mouthing "I'll be back" and disappeared behind a wall of bodies. Of course "I'll be back," with Viv usually meant after she'd coerced the dude into emptying his wallet, ditching him at the ATM machine, and repeating this with a string of other victims until they called it a night. The next to leave was Valkyrie, who actually made the first move out of a perceived inferiority to Viv. The duo, Mai and Ange, stuck around for awhile, doing their thing without noticing the good looks from more-than-a-few guys and the bad looks from their girlfriends. Eventually, Ange dropped off too, having noticed a familiar face somewhere across the room.

Now Mai was the last to split not because she wasn't approached (and she was definitely approached, several times in fact) but because she wasn't into that kind of thing. As a solitary figure, she'd always been judged as a brazen, imposing person, but, compared to her friends, she had certain reservations. Sometimes her friends came solely to get free drinks but she had too much pride for something like that. On the other hand, she didn't have the balls to dance alone. So, with her wallet, she headed for the bar.

She took an empty seat and slid a 10 at the closest bartender, "A shot of Crown, please."

The man handed her the shot as well as a chaser and a bowl of limes. Mai took the shot but left the other two untouched. She gestured toward the tip jar and he grinned, dropping her change there.

"Someone's trying too hard. Or are you normally like this?"

She glanced to her right and almost jumped at the sight of Seto Kaiba. Why she didn't notice before she couldn't tell. She had an idea though. His hair was a bit longer, almost purposely covering his eyes. He wore a crisp collared shirt with both sleeves rolled up, black dress shoes and a deceptively cheap-looking pair of loose jeans. Usually the long coats signalled "Kaiba" from ten miles in the sky, now she had to get right up close to tell it was him.

"Well hi there, sunshine!" she said with a pert grin, "Thought you went to America after Battle City. Didn't know you're the type to fly halfway across the world for booze."

He glared at her with noticeably blood-shot eyes.

"Whoa, how much have you had?"

"None of your business." Was the husky answer.

Completely unsurprised, she turned to the same bartender, "Two shots of Patron, Gold please."

"What makes you think I'll pay for that?" Kaiba asked darkly, sickened by her audacity.

Instead of answering, she pulled two 20s out of her clutch and politely handed them to the amused bartender, who gave a quick glance at Kaiba before getting to work. Almost as a personal joke, he slid Mai just her shot but accompanied Kaiba's shot with both a chaser and some lime. Her $10 change, again, went into the tip jar.

Mai rested her chin on her hand, watching him stare at the items in front of him, "Now you've got a problem. You either take the shot knowing I bought it for you, or you don't take it and look like a chicken. I'll leave the chaser and lime up to you."

Without hesitation, he downed the shot and slammed the glass on the table.

She wasn't sure if she expected that or not. He'd looked like he was teetering over the edge so the Patron should do some damage. Then again, psychological factors also played an important role. She downed her shot.

"If you're just going to drink, why not go to a bar?" Mai fingered her empty shot glass. There was still a drop left clinging to the bottom.

Kaiba didn't answer immediately. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and rubbed his neck, rolling his shoulders a little. He kept his gaze downwards as if she could determine his exact mental condition just by glancing into his eyes. It was difficult to tell whether he was trying hard to stay awake or concentrating really, really hard to appear sober. The Patron did some damage after all.

"I've been to all the bars in this city already." He said, almost too carefully.

"What's wrong with going to a bar more than once?"

"You get a taste of the atmosphere and the type of regulars frequenting the place. If you don't like it, you don't go again. Simple."

"So you go to a place like Plush instead??" She wasn't really following his logic but, at this point, she strongly believed she wasn't talking to the usual Kaiba.

"One can explore."

"This is your first time clubbing, huh?" In a twisted way, she thought it was kind of cute.

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it."

"Why would I imply something like that?"

"Because you're tipsy."

"I haven't even started yet."

"Yeah, that's what tipsy people normally say."

"That's what tipsy people hiding their tipsiness from other people normally say."

Mai snorted, "Kaiba, you can do way better than that but I'm not going to go through all the reasons why I think so. Just admit it, you're here to pick up chicks."

That got him looking at her again and this time she noticed a little blush in his cheeks. Resolving that the pink was from alcohol and not embarrassment, she felt a sense of self satisfaction for having done this to the man.

"You must not know much about me to say that. Either that or you think all guys care about is getting laid."

The Patron in her giggled, "I do actually, but that's not the point. Your excuse is lame, guys don't replace bars with clubs. Could be worse I guess. You could have said something like 'I'm scouting out a new clientele base for my new duel disk system,' or 'Mokuba thinks I need to get out more.'"

"Damn, that was my back-up."

"You did not just say that!"

"Because it's so out-of-character?" Kaiba scoffed, amusingly, "Because I'm a cold-hearted humorless conglomerate owner who gets off by firing people for no reason?"

Mai paused and looked him over, "Think I like this you a lot better."

Kaiba slapped his wallet on the counter, "A shot of 151 and a Jolly Rancher." This, of course, was directed at a different bartender than the one Mai so easily won over before.

The corner of his mouth twitched a little when the girl placed the shot glass on Mai's side and the drink glass on his side but she didn't seem to do it intentionally. As soon as the transaction was over, he grabbed the 151 and ever-so-gently handed Mai the "girly" drink.

"Cheers?"

"You're trying to get back at me, aren't you?"

"Trying." He said, and gulped the rum.

She sipped the bright red drink slowly, grimacing at its sweetness.

"Want some lime with that?"

"Screw off."

"You can do better."

She decided to discard the etiquette for mixed drinks. Plucking out the mini straw, she chugged the Jolly Rancher in less than three seconds and wiped her lips with two fingers. The ice left over filled more than half the glass. This was why she didn't waste money on mixed drinks in clubs. Well, one of the reasons anyway. "Not enough to let you keep beating around the bush. So what kind of girls are you into?"

"What makes you think I'm here to pick up girls?"

She laughed and slapped the counter a little harder than she intended to. This did not escape Kaiba's notice but he was also looking too hard. "That's pretty much what 95% of guys going alone to a club do! 2% get ditched by their friends, 1% think they're rebelling against something and the last 1% I'll leave as error rate."

"You've got 1% left over after that 1% error rate." Kaiba jeered.

"Fine, 2% error rate."

"How convenient. Now I know the rest of that is bull."

"You're also wearing bronzer," Mai waved a manicured finger at his arm, "Explains why both of your arms are so tanned even though you always wear long sleeves."

Kaiba flinched for about a split second but held his ground, "Which you're basing off the extremely limited amount of contact you had with me."

"And every picture, video, commercial, political cartoon, random park bench, cosplay…" Mai sort of trailed off toward the end of that, avoiding another can of worms altogether, "BUT, if you're still going to deny it," She perked up again, "We'll just do an old-fashioned test."

Mai licked her forefinger and swiped his left forearm. She held the tell-tale evidence up to him, "You know what else this says? That you're a noob at picking out bronzer too. If you're going to go to a place where you'll sweat a lot, you should've picked something more… permanent."

A host of different excuses flashed through his mind but none adequate enough to propel this conversation forward. Not in his favor anyways. Why he even cared at all was also something to consider, but in his state of mind (one he wasn't willing to admit to), he barely noticed. As the pause went on, the scorching gaze of her purple eyes became more apparent. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see her fiddling, either out of impatience or amusement. He assumed the latter and this annoyed him so much he could suck a lime.

"Hand caught in cookie jar, Kaiba?"

Mai's pet bartender grinned, trying to look busy drying a beer mug. It would have been customary to take a drink at this point, the gesture signifying a graceful way of dealing with humiliation. Unfortunately, all the glasses in front of him were empty. She was right about the sweat, but she was wrong about the situation behind it.

She slid him a beer.

"Where did that come from?" There was no way that purchase went unnoticed unless she had some sort of telepathic connection with her slave of a bartender. It was in a garish, obtusely oversized mug, however, despite the apparent volume, most of the space was taken up by glass. A joke mug? Why would they even have such a thing in this place?

"It's Stella," She said causally, trying hard to still her upturned lips, "You'll like it."

"I don't drink beer," Was the chosen reply. HHis fingers, however, were tracing the contours of the mug with a kind of zoned-out interest. For a moment he was hypersensitive to the pounding beat of the music. Or maybe, it was his own heartbeat. He blinked slowly, trying to regain clarity in his peripheral vision and decided to leave the issue indeterminate.

This time, it was Mai who took unusually long to answer. Her half-turned face masked her state-of-mind with incredible control, "I was hoping you'd catch onto the metaphor."

He watched the tiny bubbles rise to the surface, "Poetic on a certain level I guess, but illogical."

"But somehow applicable."

"Not really. Chugging a beer like some sort of Frat Boy doesn't really say anything about why I'm here. Your metaphor is flawed. And if this is supposed to be a type of pseudo-experiment, just be glad you're not going to be graded." He pushed the mug around the counter, leaving glistening wet streaks.

She bit her thumbnail, embarrassed, "You know, a more practical person would've just thought I slipped something in."

Not that such a thing didn't occur to him, it just seemed unlikely for someone with, arguably, a sense of right and wrong like Mai. The 151 circling through his bloodstream, however, chose to fondle with this idea. As the lyrics repeated the words 'shots' over and over again, he found himself contemplating the ensuing events if she'd actually spiked the drink and had he taken the bait. A collapsed Seto Kaiba, the trophy for whomever capable of reducing him to such a state. In his present company, it wasn't an entirely unwelcome idea. A less unwelcome idea would be a reversal of this situation, if she collapsed instead. The smell of the Stella prodded at his curiosity.

He slid the beer in her direction, hand wet from the condensation. "Since you suggested it, you have the honor of taking the first sip."

Mai scratched her neck, searching for an underlying meaning to this gesture. Every move was calculated thus far, and so should this one. She obviously hadn't done anything to it and she was sure he knew that too. She caught Vivian waving maniacally at her from the edge of the crowd with one arm securely attached to a clearly different man she'd left with earlier. With the man's back turned, Vivian pointed at him and flashed three fingers three times. 9 drinks, was Mai's interpretation of this sloppy sign language. At least one of them was getting somewhere.

Convinced that he was further gone than she was, she wrapped her tapered fingers around the handle and brought the mug to her lips. She wondered why she'd chosen Stella. If she really wanted to insult the CEO, she'd have chosen a beer of… lower class. Maybe a part of her wanted to impress the man, wasn't that what all the banter was about? She drank exactly half of it before roughly setting the mug back down. Unconsciously, she wiped her mouth off with the whole of her forearm. None of this escaped Kaiba's notice. How much actually registered, was a different story.

Original argument aside, he didn't want to be outdone. Grabbing for the beer, with his right hand, he misjudged the distance between his arm and the closest shot glass, sending the little thing off the edge and shattering on the ground. He froze, arm midair. They both stared at the ground between them, mesmerized.

Immediately, he wondered what she was thinking and if she was thinking what he was thinking. If, indeed she was thinking what he was thinking, he was in trouble. But Mai kept staring at the mess, wordlessly. His gaze shifted from the ground, then to her, then back to the ground, then back to her again. His impatience grew and he assumed the silence was a form of deliberate torture on her part.

"Say something." The words dropped out of his mouth.

"I won't unless you admit you're here to pick up chicks."

Even in the last round of a duel, Kaiba was not one to go down without a fight. Leisurely, he tried for the mug again, successfully this time, and covered his mouth directly over Mai's lipstick imprint. The first sip was awful, as expected of beer, but he didn't show it. He took his sweet time, as if it was the last thing he'll ever drink. She was dumbly captivated by the rhythmic sliding of his Adam's Apple, the fluid movements of his jaw line and the imagined positioning of his tongue with every gulp. Good thing his eyes were closed.

The mug eventually found its way back to the counter. "Not bad." He said monotonously.

She'd settle for that. It'd take several hours and perhaps her entire wallet to drag the exact words out of him and she wasn't the most patient person in the world. He was like any other male attendee there: threw money around to make a point, worked to impress, enjoyed beer and, therefore…

"Let's go," Impulse took the wheel as she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the heart of the dance floor. She passed by Viv, who did a double take and went right through Valkyrie and her man so quickly they barely registered what was going on. Stopping at a random spot she dropped Kaiba's hand and slid into the beat so easily the oddity of the situation was barely noticeable. At first he just stared, occasionally surveying his surroundings to see what other people were doing. No one noticed, more specifically, no one cared. The dance floor was a self-contained zone where status, class and identity were forefronted by the stimulation of primary senses and uninterrupted pleasure. Amidst the music, colors and perfume, her hands found him again, skilfully leading him into her world. For the first time in a long time, he became one of the nameless, one amongst hundreds of swaying, hypnotic bodies feeding their primal instincts uninhibited.

She drew him nearer, wrapping his hands around her waist and guiding both of their bodies until they fell into perfect synchrony. He caught a whiff of her shampoo and unconsciously leaned in closer, brushing against the golden locks for more of the treat. Their lips passed asymptotically close to one another but never touched, a vestige of the earlier powerplay that was now a hazy memory. Without any prompting, his hands began exploring and she closed the gap between them further. No matter what the challenge, or its nature, she was determined to meet it. She slipped her hands under his shirt and snaked upwards, fingering every crevice lining his lithe torso. The scent of alcohol lingered in the tiny space between them, acting as the fuel that pushed them further into uncharted territories.

"Admit it." She whispered, lips teasing his left ear.

"Match me first."

"I've surpassed you."

He part moaned, part scoffed, refusing to acknowledge the statement. To this, she pressed her nose against his, rivalling the blue eyes with her purple. "Next level, then?"

He grinned and their lips pressed, signaling the start of the next round.

-End-

A/N: $1.00 CAD = $0.94 USD at the current exchange rate. I used Canadian dollars for alcohol because that's what I'm most familiar with. I'm aware that Kaiba is too young to realistically get into a club. But, if he's able to pilot virtually every vehicle in existence before most of us get our Learner's, it wouldn't be too hard to for him to get into a club. That's my story and I'm sticking to it :)