Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Chapter 1

Pieces of wallpaper flew left and right, and the Crystal Beast duellist had had to duck three times now to avoid being elbowed in the face by the overly enthusiastic brunette who seemed to be having way too much fun stripping away wallpaper.

"Careful what you're doing, Jay; you're gonna have my eye out or something!"

Jaden only rolled his eyes in response - he may not be exactly careful, but he would never put his lover in danger. That had happened when he was young, back when they first met at Duel Academy, and he had vowed to never allow it to happen again. "It's fine! Quit worrying, will you?"

"Well, mind the knife. You're scraping the wall, look!"

"So? It's gonna be covered up!"

"That's not the point" Jesse muttered, scraping away his own patch of wallpaper more carefully. He then sighed, stood up and stretched. The two duellists were working on the fourth and final work in the room, the other three already scarped bare. "I'm gonna go work at the other end of the wall so I don't get attacked again."

"Wasn't attacking you, I was attacking the wall!" Jaden argued indignantly.

"Is that what you're calling it?"

Jaden flicked a piece of curling paper at his lover, grinning - it was an unquestionable challenge; one that Jesse could not resist. He scooped up a handful of paper from the ever-growing pile on the floor and chucked it at the other boy. Soon, the two were flying around the room, throwing discarded wallpaper around until they ran out of supplies. Then they saw the mess they had created.

Jesse made as if to clear it up but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. "Leave it, Jess. We're gonna pull the carpet up later anyway."

Jesse nodded. "Not if we don't get the walls done today."

"Better get back at it, then!" the brunette grinned, sauntering over to the wall and tugging a long sheet of paper off. Behind it was something that he had not expected to see: a long, deep crack in the wall. "Uh, Jesse? I don't think that's supposed to be there..."

"What?" Jesse spotted the crack in the wall. "Please tell me that looks worse than it is."

Jaden finished pulling the strip of paper away, leaving tendrils hanging down over his fingers as he poked at the crack; much to their mutual alarm, it released a small cloud of dust and a few small chips of the wall crumbled beneath his fingers.

"Great!" Jaden muttered, prodding it again; the same thing happened as before.

"Well, don't touch it! We'll just plaster it up, good as new."

"Right. Should we do that right now or ..."

"Nah, if it's not done any damage for this long it'll be okay while we get the rest of the paper down. Must've been there for a while now, right?"

"Yeah, right" Jaden agreed.

And so the two of them got back to work, stripping the wallpaper off in various lengths and challenging one another over who could strip off the largest whole piece; they occasionally chucked discarded lumps of the stuff at each other and tried to ignore the fact that the more wallpaper they removed, the more cracks in the wall they were finding.

/

Guided tours were patronising, the two were quickly coming to realise. Zane and Aster had arrived at the whiskey distillery after only a little under a half hour on the road and thanks to local knowledge, they hadn't got lost. Going inside the old building was at least mildly interesting, even if it did start with a typical tourist office where they purchased their tickets and had a simpering receptionist almost giddy with excitement; she may have been almost scared of Zane but she had expressed more than simple interest in Aster, much to the former's irritation and the latter's amusement.

But once they joined the small group for a tour of the distillery - seven people including them, one of which Aster had seen at a duelling arena but none that they actually knew - they found that they both became, very quickly, bored with it. Oh, it wasn't that the knowledge they were gaining was boring - on the contrary, both duellists were finding it fascinating and a little disturbing to know how this was all done, especially when they learned about some of the earlier methods.

However, their tour guide was just plain patronising; he spoke as if instructing particularly unintelligent children and asked them rhetorical questions - when Zane answered one confidently, he seemed almost put out by the fact that one of the group could answer correctly and seemed momentarily flustered.

Their small group stopped at a barrel and the guide stood up on a slightly raised platform, leaning against the barrel in what he hoped was a dramatic pose; in reality he simply looked like he was unbalanced on his own feet.

"This barrel is one of our many which we keep here in the distillery. Of course, this one's empty for obvious reasons," - here he paused, expecting laughter which never came - "but right through there is where we keep the barrels of whiskey waiting to be exported or taken to local branches." He signalled to a room behind him. "Of course, not everyone gets barrels. If you'll follow me into the next room, ladies and gentlemen, I'll show you how the whiskey's collected into bottles for shipping."

The tour guide began walking to the left, with the small group following him. Aster was initially following him, too, but stopped when he realised that Zane had not came with him. He turned around to see his partner standing before the door the guide had signalled to earlier - with his hand on the padlock. Groaning, Aster hurriedly back to him, thankful that the tour group had already passed into the next room and hadn't appeared to have noticed the diminished numbers.

"What're you doing?!" Aster hissed, glancing around warily.

"Don't pretend like this guy's telling us anything we can't find out on the internet" Zane said off-handedly. "He said the full barrels are through here, didn't he?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So we could follow him around for another hour and waste sixty minutes of our lives - or we could just sneak through here, have a few free drinks, and then sneak out."

Aster hung his head in annoyance. "We have enough money to buy those barrels, Zane. Why do we need to steal it?"

"It's not stealing if we paid for an overpriced tour with a guy who's more interested in cheap jokes than education." Zane grinned and Aster was idlly reminded of his lover's darker days. "Besides, a big corporation like this? What's a couple of free drinks?"

Aster had to smirk at that; he grabbed the padlock. "Yeah? How you planning on getting in, Zaney?"

Zane glared at him out of habit but there was no meaning behind it. "What and learn, kid."

Now it was Aster's turn to glare, and so he did, all the time that Zane was picking the lock with what resembled a bent paperclip - why Zane had such a thing with him was beyond Aster. Still, the younger of the two had to admire his partner's talent; in about thirty seconds, the padlock clicked open.

The two stepped inside, looking around the dark room. There was a single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling providing a small amount of light, but it was clear that this room was a storage facility and nothing more; people weren't intended to spend any time here. Still, it was of no matter. Neither one of them was afraid of the dark. And as luck would have it, Zane spotted a door at the right far corner to their entrance. He wandered over, felt around the handle for a moment and then turned back to Aster.

"I can open this one up easily. We'll put the padlock on the outside of the door."

Aster took the offered padlock when his lover wandered back and presented it to him. "Guess nobody'll get suspicious. Unless there's CCTV" he smirked, rather enjoying the rush he was getting from the danger of getting caught; he had always liked that.

Aster hung the padlock as carefully as he could - making it look like it was locked - on the outside door handle, closing the door and listening to make sure it didn't fall off. It seemed secure and they were safe inside.

Their company was hundreds of full barrels of whiskey. Hadn't Zane said that there was no point in visiting a whiskey distillery if not to get drunk? In here, they were practically spoiled for choice.

Zane smirked. "So which one do we try first?"

/

"It's okay, it's okay, shh" Jim murmured, trying to calm his daughter by pacing up and down the halls. It wasn't working; she screamed in his arms, but his fingers were red from her chewing on them and he wasn't about to put them back in her mouth. "Mommy's gone to get you something to teeth on. She'll be back in fifteen minutes, come on."

But the little girl had no concept of 'wait a little while and it'll all get better' - she suffered from the natural pain in her gums and wailed, wanting to father to give her his finger back as a chew toy.
With the screaming that was going on, Jim was beginning to wish that he really had a chew toy to give her - why hadn't they thought to get a dog? Kids liked dogs, didn't they? If he and Alexis ever had another baby, he was getting a dog as well. The crocodile wasn't exactly the sort of animal who had chew toys lying around the house.

"Come on, sweetie, just a few more minutes" he whispered, trying to sound patient and loving when all he really wanted to do was to leave her in her cot, go downstairs and turn the television up so loud that he couldn't hear her cries. Of course, Jim was an affectionate and pleasant man; much as he wanted to leave her here to calm herself down, he refused to let himself do it. She was his daughter, his responsibility; and this was just part of raising a child. At least she would get over this soon, unlike her weird habit of stealing his hat which he feared she wouldn't outgrow for a long time.
Giving up on the idea of comfort, Jim placed the little girl back in her cot - this she did not like one bit - and rushed out of the room and into the bathroom, where he hunted around in the cupboard over the sink until he found a washcloth. He soaked this in mildly warm water until it was good and moist and a pleasant temperature and then headed back to his daughter's room, wincing as the cries became louder the closer he got.

Inside, he found her trying to chew on a pillow and then throwing it away when it was too soft. He smiled at his own cunning plan; the washcloth would be definitely chewy and better than a pillow and as it was so big, he knew that she wouldn't be able to stuff it into her mouth and choke on it. Not that he was planning on leaving her. He set the washcloth down and lifted her up, before sitting himself down on the rocking chair and letting her sit on his lap. Now he gave her the damp washcloth to chew on, sighing happily when her cries ebbed and she seemed almost content to chew on it.

Of course, the washcloth wasn't really a suitable substitute; she needed a proper teether. But it would do until Alexis returned.

Oh, if only it had been so simple. Jim had been almost dozing, one hand around his daughter's waist to secure her, when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and answered it, wary to hear his wife's flustered voice on the other end.

"What's wrong, Alexis?"

"Okay, bad news, the store doesn't sell anything for kids to teethe on" Alexis told him, sounding exhausted. "But I asked the guy at the counter and he said the supermarket on the other side of the town would probably have them, so I'm gonna have to drive over there and have a look. Is she okay?"

Jim had been looking more and more downcast since she started talking, but he couldn't help smiling at that last bit - even when their daughter was driving them mad, Alexis was still the ever vigilant and caring mother. "She's chewing holes in our washcloth at the moment?"

"What?"

"Long story, tell you later. How long will you be?"

"Not sure" Alexis said, and she paused; there was some scuffling like she was getting herself into the car. "It's at least a forty minute drive."

Jim groaned. "See you when you get back." He hung up the phone and put it on the counter, praying that the lessened pain would be enough for his little girl to go to sleep.

Unfortunately she didn't seem to be getting tired. And even more unfortunately, she did seem to be getting tired to the washcloth.

/

"It said to turn right!"

"I turned right!"

"Then why does it say it's recalculating!?"

"This thing's useless!"

Chazz growled and resisted the urge to bang his head on the steering wheel. He and Syrus had opted to drive themselves around tonight inside of having a chauffeur do it; Syrus disliked being driven about and Chazz had, over their three years together, been slowly adjusting his lifestyle until he really only had his personal chauffeur drive him to important duels and social gatherings where he wanted it to be seen that he could afford it. But on the whole the two now drove themselves most places. Neither of the two of them were big drinkers and were planning on having a magical, alcohol-free anniversary; Chazz got violent when drunk and Syrus became weepy, so it was a smart avoidance.

But here in came the downside to their decision to drive themselves to the restaurant: neither one of them knew where it was. That hadn't appeared to be a problem - after all, they had a sat nav - and so they had not worried. Unfortunately for them, the restaurant was so newly build that their sat nav refused to acknowledge its existence. And so they had been stuck driving around in the center of Tokyo - well, much of that time was admittedly spent in a traffic jam - trying to find the place for an hour now.
"Try putting in the ... the whatdoyoucallit ... postcode thingy" Chazz instructed, watching the road while Syrus adjusted their desired destination on the gadget.

The sat nav beeped after a few moments and said that no such destination existed. Here, Chazz really did whack his head off the steering wheel, having to slam the breaks on afterwards when traffic unexpectedly ground to a halt.

"We're lost!"

"We're not lost, we're ... well, we can't be far from the city center" Syrus piped up.

"The city center's massive!"

"We're gonna miss the reservation. Chazz, why don't we just pull over and ask for directions?"

"The Chazz doesn't need directions. He needs the stupid sat nav to start working!" he bellowed at the gadget, kicking the thing with his foot as they were currently stationary.

Syrus sighed to himself, deciding that telling Chazz that the sat nav was intended to give directions would only start a pointless argument. In a mood like this, Chazz needed very, very little to set him off. This was something which Syrus had known since their first year of school together and something which had hardly changed in the years gone by; Chazz had matured but his fiery temper was a deeply ingrained part of his personality.

The smaller boy leaned against the window, wishing for once that they had thought to get the chauffeur to drive them; the old gentleman always seemed to miraculously know where he was going. They were stuck in the second traffic jam of the evening and had been out for an hour, thinking that they would have time to spare; they were only ten minutes away from the time of their reservation. The restaurant they were going to was very popular with celebrities and Syrus knew that the staff there were far from intimidated by the likes of professional duellists; they were far too used to it. They weren't going to hold their reservation.

Syrus sighed while Chazz fumed and growled and honked the car's horn; they were running out of time. So much for a perfectly planned evening.

Please R&R