Author's Note: Inspired by the song White Houses by Vanessa Carlton.

WARNING: First Person. AU.

I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! Or any of the characters used in this fanfiction.


The First

My eyes watch the golden mystery boy walk through the sunlight, almost shimmering, glittering in the clean air and warm weather. The way he strides with a natural confidence makes me want to greet him. He's moving into the bright, freshly painted white house across the street. Obviously, I attempt to push away the interest in the blonde logically, rocking back in the chair on my porch, I'm just curious about him. Nothing more.

My ice blue eyes observe his thin structure and his tan skin as he sets out several porch chairs. He seems small but willful, able. Wiping the sweat back from his forehead with his forearm, his body turns. And suddenly, he's smiling in my direction.

His bare feet make small slapping sounds on the heated pavement as he rocks with a powerful, full arm wave, "'Ey! The name's Joey!" His panting as he makes his way across the street reminds me vaguely of a dog.

So he noticed me, I frown slightly. Its all happening rather fast and I'm suddenly afraid. I've changed my mind, the blonde boy in his bright red shirt and shorts that sit perfectly on his hips makes my heart flutter and I'm not sure how to handle the feeling. I'm not sure if I even like the feeling. All I know is he is already up on my driveway and there's no stopping him now.

He doubles over with a glance up to me, huffing with heavy yet almost ecstatic breath. I feel so nervous I can't speak. It's one thing that he's gorgeous and upbeat but the tightness in my chest feels like it could choke me when those soft brown eyes find mine.

"I'm Seto." I manage to answer slowly as he juts out his hand to me, grinning a lopsided smile, "Nice ta meet ya, Seto."

My hand is bigger than his but I can feel his strength far exceeds mine as we shake. I can feel the experience along his skin, the scars, the cuts. I feel his warm palm against mine and a realization arouses me. I want this to be, no matter how much my chest feels tight. No matter how many butterflies I get or how many times my stomach flips.

I manage to play a small smile. And it brightens his eyes. Maybe this is easier than I thought.

He offers lightly, "Let's be friends." His head cocks to the side with a soft smile.

My heart throbs and sends my head spinning. I want to be someone more able, someone better. I pull him close and ruffle his hair, "I'll be your first." A gesture of attachment. He smells of something wonderful, a soft relatively sweet kind of smell and it helps me focus on the moment.

I let my running thoughts disperse.

xxx

It had hit off the moment we'd met. I wasn't the kind of kid to make friends. I wasn't really the kind of guy to even seem approachable. But Joey was a magnetic person. People were drawn to him, like I was drawn to him. Soon, there were other kids who hung around too. Yugi, Tea, Tristin and it became the five of us.

But I relished the fact that I was the first one Joey looked to when we got together, the one who spent the night while everyone had to walk home, the first one to get a phone call and somehow, I had become his first best friend.

And he had become mine.

Sure, we'd shared those looks that happened to be a little longer than a normal glance or ended up holding hands when we walked back home alone. But it all seemed so natural and I thought nothing of it. It was something that we had fallen into habit of.

One summer day, close to the last few weeks of the hot weather, I got a new car. It wasn't exactly the best working piece of machinery, but a car was a car. I was finally able to get some privacy, in a sense. Joey seemed baffled in amazement with the rickety thing, which had almost undone me. He was something that I had been waiting my whole life for. My first real treasure.

He'd offered to help fix it up, and I wasn't about to give that kind of a pleasure up. After hard work, and plenty of summer bound money spent, the car had become a sort of fetching looking vehicle.

Out of breath and a little overheated, we sat in the backseat, resting. The summery day had an air of lassitude for the both of us from all the work on the car. He had his legs kicked up on the back of the front seat and an open coke sat lazily in his loose fingers. His eyes flicked to mine and shot me a cocky, half grin. One filled with pride, a somewhat evocative smile in my eyes. Maybe it was just the heat getting to my head, but it also had a brilliant glamour to it.

His lips tasted slightly of coke and salt from his sweat. It was distinctive and fabulous all around. One of the best tastes my lips had ever experienced, due mostly from the fact that it was i/his/i taste.

I soon learned his body was quite lithe in my arms, on my lap. He didn't object, he didn't say anything at all. Joey just complied. And that insisted that I didn't stop. Looking back, I probably wouldn't have stopped anyway and I truly didn't want to. A heated, passionate session soon became out of it, the first and best memory of my old car. His voice in that precious, hot moment was astonishingly mellifluous. And he murmured words that still make my heart race.

"You're my first."

Later, when we'd calmed down and we were both very aware of what was happening, he came up to my room. It was all moving so fast, and it was so sweet. A kind of sweet that makes one's head spin round and round till he can't even see straight. He told me the big moment was like a big rush with a little bit of pain. The memory of him sitting in my office chair, backwards with that blue popsicle being waved around like some kind of baton was perfect. If I closed my eyes, I could will it all back to mind.

Something was igniting in my veins and I pray it never fades. What I didn't notice during then was that it was me falling fast in love and nobody told me how much it hurt when you finally hit the ground.

The initial shock was nowhere near as painful as the thought of breaking the promise we'd made. The promise of forever. I was still young, still bound to my parents. And that meant I was bound to move with them. Far from my summer haven that I held onto so desperately. The worst part was, the only goodbye I had ever gotten to show to him was nothing like I wanted it to be. I had never been good at salutations but it was dreadful.

I sat in the back of our car, watching him rush from his white house, gripping the small piece of notebook paper that read, "Goodbye. Seto." He was in such a hurry, Joey hadn't even bothered to put on a shirt as he stared after my car with wide eyes. I hadn't been able to face him in person. I was scared. And I'd hurt him.

With that expression, that image was burned into my brain, and it was the last time I ever saw my first love.

xxx

I'm now standing in front of that once beautiful, sparkling white house seven years later. Its paint has chipped, the wood is a bit more worn than I remember but I half smile into my scarf at the warm memories this little house held. Its still perfect.

The weather isn't the same as it was, its cold and the clouds are building for snow. The day has long gone, I spent it driving all the way here. I let the smile slip as I think, he's probably moved. Joey couldn't still be here, he couldn't still be waiting for a pathetic, lovestruck fool like me. A coward of the man he'd once spent only a summer with.

Reality is harsh. I spent seven years building up my strength and confidence to come back down here and apologize. I know, deep down, that it's probably a lost cause. It was only one summer, one precious summer. A memory that I held dear though.

My dark shoes grip at the concrete, shuffling along the dirt bits as I turn to go. I can't bring myself to do it, I can't bring myself to go up there and ring the doorbell. There's just too much at stake and my heart is so fragile. If he isn't here, I'll never find him.

With a bitter smile to myself, I think, you've always been a weak person. It took you seven years to come all the way down here and you can't even pull through. But of course you can't, because you only run from your problems.

"S-Seto...?" A voice asks me, a small, wispy voice from behind my back. The creaking of a door sounds second later.

I whip around, wide eyed, hoping, desperately hoping that maybe- "Serenity?" My heart skips a beat and I get the strange familiar sensation in my stomach.

Joey's little sister smiles to me from the doorway in a little purple sweater. Her hair has gotten long since I last saw her. "It is you, Seto. Its been...a really long time." She says the last part softly, her eyes darkening a bit before Serenity offers quickly, "Do you want to come in?" Her eyes glance behind herself then back to me.

Panic rushes through my body and I stutter, "N-no, I was just-"

"Please?" She whispers, "You've come here to see Joey right? Please, he'll be home real soon." Her eyes soften with understanding and she leans back into the house, letting warm light spill over my figure.

Now I'm sitting inside their familiar home, waiting for Joey to come home, recuperating the old memories once more. During those fateful months I'd wait for him to come home from working with his dad out in the fields. I'd wait for hours just to see him right before dinner but I'd always say I hadn't been waiting long when he asked me.

The excitement of waiting for him back then is now replaced with the fear and terrible, soul eating guilt for leaving him with no explanation for seven years. I want his forgiveness like nothing I'd ever wanted but a sliver of me knew, I didn't really deserve it.

From the couch I sat in, I could see the door from the side and I knew he'd always walk in, throw his stuff down onto the living room floor and then flop down onto the couch. Or my lap if I had been waiting, laying lazily and furtive across my thighs.

Minutes pass like hours but when Serenity offers me a drink, I shake my head. The nerves are getting to me. She waits with me, silent yet supportive.

The key clicks in the lock and I instinctively hold my breath while Serenity places a warm, comforting hand on my thigh.

With the familiar creak, the door slides open and I see him. He looks just the same as he did seven years earlier. His beautiful skin is just as tan and perfect as it was the first day my eyes found him and his blonde hair fell across his eyes just the way I remember. His shoulders, although seeming broad are small and thin. He has narrow hips and almost lanky legs. Only his eyes seem older, wiser even darker.

Then I'm staring into their depths and he smiles a weak, small form of his goofy grin. I can't look away. His eyes fill with all sorts of emotions, shimmering wetly in the dim light. I can see him standing there like he usually was back in that first summer, grinning and just like he used to, Joey asks, "How long ya been waitin' for me?"

While I stand from my spot on the couch, I instinctively answer, "Not too long." Habits die hard.

"Ya liar." He mutters, still smiling as a tear runs down his cheek, "I've been waitin' for ya for seven years. I don' know if that makes up for the times ya waited for me, but sure feels like it should mean somethin'." His arms rakes across his cheeks, stealing the tears from his face roughly.

A weight hits my heart, weighing it so far down, I'm afraid I'll never feel alright again. All I can do is grab him in a hug, hold him tighter as he crumbles into me with a soft sob. I feel his fingers tighten in my shirt and the same desperation I've felt the past seven years is obvious in his actions.

"Put yourself in my hands," I murmur, "I won't let go ever again."

He was my first best friend, my first love, my first heartbreak, he's my first mistake and now he's become my last. Because I'm not letting him go. And now, Joey's become my first strength.