Summary: Two lonely persons, so different, yet so alike. They accidentally meet in a newly opened café. So, how do they help each other to cope with life? A Mai/Joey...
Disclaimer: As far as I know I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or any parts of it. Poor me! However, I do own my original characters should their be any!
A/N: And here's the second chapter! I just finished it and wanted to post it. Still I've to say I'm kind of sad… ,~.~,
I got exactly three reviews for my first chappie. However those were really nice ones and I thank you guys for being so friendly. (Kisses and hugs go out to Seto's Magician Chick, moonman and Loona)
Oh well, I've to admit I've already started a new story. But that one won't be posted until this story's finished. I just tell you it'll be a Yami-Bakura/Tèa story, but with some Mai/Jou in it, too. I just can't resist those two.
They're sooo cute together, though I think my Mai and my Joey might be a little bit out of character. BUT after all they both have been through a lot.
Anyway, please read, enjoy and I beg you review *makes puppy eyes*. Everyone who does will get…. Um lemme think… how about a cookie? *hehe* (Read my bio and you know what I'm talking about… o_o' *tehe*) And now, on with the story and I'm sorry if this chappie is a bit shorter, I expected it to be a bit longer, but… aahh screw it…
Note:
- '...' - a person talks to him- or herself
- "..." - actual speaking
- I know that Mai is probably older than Joey, but in this fanfic she isn't. Both of them are seventeen and should I mention that they wait for their next birthday desperately?!
- As I said I'm German, so I really don't know Japanese café's prices. Whenever there's price mentioned it'll be 'Euro'!
1 Euro = 1,13 US Dollar
Last time:
Mai had heard the door getting opened about two minutes after she had seated herself.
…
Not really thinking she blurted out the young man's name, who stood a few feet away, contemplating where to sit down.
"Joey?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
He obviously hadn't seen her until then and his eyes widened in surprise as he turned around to her.
"Mai!" he exclaimed smiling and walked over to her.
"How've you been?" he asked, still standing and seemingly uncomfortable.
Mai on the other hand was at least as much surprised as him.
"Quite well!" she lied and continued, "and what about yourself? Why don't you sit down, Joey? I don't bite, you know."
Shifting again so she'd have a better view on him, Mai wondered why Joey suddenly walked back to where he had been standing before. But she understood and sighed at her own stupidity as he got out of his jacket and hung it over a hook on a wall near the door. She then watched the young man sit down in the arm-chair beside hers and frowned as she saw him flinch slightly and grab his right side as he did so. The mask of happiness he put on only seconds after that incident was perfected though and Mai sensed that it wasn't her place to ask him any questions she didn't want to be asked as well.
"Good," Joey replied then, breaking her out of her trance and she briefly wondered what she had said that deserved an answer.
'Oh dear, yeah I asked him how he was... dear me, who would have thought that I'm already that fucked.'
"Mai? Mai?" Joey asked as he realized that the young woman didn't notice the waiter, who had arrived just then with her breakfast.
"Yeah, what is it?" she asked, smiling sweetly and looking kind of confused at the man next to her.
"Your breakfast!" he replied, grinning and trying to keep from snickering. Mai on the other hand was embarrassed and blushing madly while she thanked the waiter and asked him for some milk for her tea.
"Right away!" the gray-haired man said and smiled kindly at the young woman, before turning to the male.
"May I take your order?" the old man asked and watched Joey as he eyed Mai's breakfast suspiciously and then looked up with a glint in his eyes.
"How much is that?" he asked and pointed at the pancakes.
"The small breakfast, which includes three small pancakes, marmalade, coffee, tea or cacao and one glass orange juice, is 4 Euro. That's our special opening price. But," the man leaned down to Joey and whispered, "since you two lovebirds are our first guests ever, this is for free."
Smiling the man walked away to get Mai's milk and left a dumbfounded, flushed Joey to stare out the window. Mai had started with her breakfast, oblivious to Joey, who tried to not look at the old man again as he brought the milk.
It was a little while later that he brought Joey's breakfast and only about ten minutes after that when both, Mai as well as Joey finished.
"You're one fast eater." Mai said and watched the young man who looked peaceful and sleepy, with dark shadows around his eyes.
"You look like crap!" she continued to state the obvious.
"Geez, thanks a lot, Miss Perfect." Joey replied frowning and closed his eyes after he looked her over but didn't find one flaw in her attire.
'Damn it! Even when she's without make-up she looks great, no come-back for me that is.' He rubbed his temples and felt that soon he'd have to deal with a bad headache.
Hearing Mai sigh he popped one eye open again and saw the young woman looking not like her usual spunky self.
"You know," she started, "that's not true!"
"What are ya talking 'bout?" Joey asked and looked up to see Mai hunched over and looking like a lost child. He was worried to say the least and hoped desperately that she'd speak up and tell him that she had lost her favorite lipstick but not what he believed almost intuitively.
"It's my parents!" Mai whispered more to herself than to him.
"They're always arguing and since my mom slapped my dad a few months ago both of them have started to become violent against each other." Mai leaned forward and hugged her knees as a lone tear made it's way across her cheek.
She didn't know why she'd told this guy what had happened and she wondered why that guy had to be Joey Wheeler, whom until now had never done anything to earn her trust.
'He's stupid, insensitive, violent himself and now he'll make fun of me for crying over something like that. The jerk, he'll pay if...'
But her thoughts ended abruptly when she felt a pair of arms around her, pressing her to the man's chest whom she'd just called insensitive.
Mai opened her eyes but didn't see much more than his blue sweater, though she felt his left hand holding her tightly and his right stroking the base of her neck.
"I wish I could tell ya it's alright, Mai... but that just wouldn't be true."
His voice broke her out of her trance and the shock the feeling of his arms around her had had evolved.
As more tears started to flow, Mai chuckled at the same time, slightly amused despite the serious situation. Joey who had heard the small sound escape her looked down at her quizzically, wondering if the girl had lost it.
"It's just strange," Mai said when she felt him loosen his grip on her and while she searched for the right words to explain what she meant, she brought her arms around the man in front of her as well and hold him tenderly for she remembered his pained features earlier, when he sat down. She was happy to feel him not moving further away from her.
'Yes, a man...' Mai mused, 'He's grown up it seems. I wonder, I really wonder what has happened over the last year and a half...'
"You know, woman sometimes you speak in riddles." She heard him mutter and smiled slightly.
"I've a name, Joseph, so use it and by the way, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's weird that we meet here in this café, early in the morning when half of the people in town are still asleep. We haven't met each other for over a year and yet it seems like we've been... good friends for a long time. Actually I do believe we've had the first, real conversation ever and there I already go and tell you all of my problems."
Mai sighed when she finished with a bitter tone in her voice but at the same time leaned back into the warm body holding her.
'It just feels right, like it's okay...' she excused herself.
Joey on the other hand thought about what she had told him. Of course he had have the same feeling, from the moment on she had called him when he had had entered earlier.
Not loosening his grip on her, he looked out the window again.
It had started to snow. Big snow-flakes drifted down to the earth where they slowly started to build a white, cold blanket, covering everything beneath under it's beauty.
"Wanna go for a walk?" he asked the woman in his arms and looked down, for even kneeing on the ground he was a bit larger than her.
'I didn't notice that she's that small!'
Suddenly afraid to break the blonde he loosened his embrace and vowed to himself that he would never hurt her, physically or mentally and everyone who dared to hurt her would pay dearly for it.
He felt her shift and then look up at him smiling.
"Yeah, let's go. But we still have to pay for the breakfast." Mai replied, as she hadn't heard what the old waiter had had told Joey, who know couldn't keep from grinning from ear to ear.
"Nah..." he said, "That old guy told me that we could eat for free, since we're the first guests he's ever had. Seems this place just opened today."
Leaving the part with the lovebirds out Joey stood up, taking Mai with him. Both of them pulled out of the embrace and Mai smiled even wider.
"That's good! I don't have much money left, anyway." She confided and watched Joey fetch his jacket.
"Neither do I." he told her and then looked at her strangely.
"Don't you have a jacket with you? It's freezing out there, you can't tell me you went out with just your sweater on." He said and noticed that she didn't dare look into his eyes.
"You ran away, didn't you?" he groaned that he hadn't noticed earlier and at the same time got back, out of his jacket, pushing it into her hands. He didn't even look back as he strode out, knowing she wouldn't take the offer if he gave her a chance to say no.
Waiting in the cold, Joey thought of his father.
'I just hope he sleeps until evening, then he won't even bother with me and go back to that bar where he meets his drinking-comrades.'
A few seconds later the door to the café opened once more and out came Mai, wearing Joey's jacket, which was way too big for her.
'Damn, she looks cute like that.' Was all the blonde male could think as she stood there in front of him.
"Could you stop staring, Joey?" Mai snapped as she saw him looking at her with glazed eyes.
She wasn't angry at him, actually kind of flustered which confused her even more.
'This is Joey! Okay, he isn't a stupid, insensitive jerk, but the real question is what is he to me...?' she realized and turned away from him to walk into the center of Domino City, she knew Joey was walking next to her.
A long time neither spoke a word. None of them knew where they could go to and just kept walking while they thought about each other.
Joey was trying to find a way he could help Mai out of her depressed state and Mai was wondering how Joseph Wheeler could have become a mystery to her, something he had never been before.
It was Joey who broke the silence finally, after about an hour of walking around aimlessly.
"We should head to the shopping center, it isn't far from here." He said and looked at Mai, waiting for a reply. She nodded her head, stopping anymore thoughts of Joey, deciding that the original was way more interesting than what she could come up with in her thoughts or memories for that matter.
"Yeah, let's get inside." She told him and turned her head to look at him.
Hands in his jeans-pockets, his hair full of white snow and chattering teeth he walked next to her. And Mai cursed herself for forgetting her own jacket and taking his.
Blushing slightly, which went unnoticed as her cheeks where already a rosy color from the cold air, Mai grabbed Joey's arm and giggled as he looked down at her startled.
"What?" she asked defensively and looked sure of herself, but inside she wondered why she was doing this.
'He is Joey after all and it has been him who wanted to give me his jacket but the main question is why does he has this kind of effect on me. I feel like I'm some innocent girl again, who has never had a boyfriend and now doesn't know what to do...'.
That she had just called him her boyfriend didn't even grace her mind.
The teenagers hurried over the pavement as fast as they could without risking to slip on the slightly frozen snow and in less than three minutes they reached the shopping center, stopping in front of it to look at the Christmas decorations.
Everywhere they looked where lights, on top of the building stood many Christmas-trees and a mechanical Santa Clause waved at the customers with a smile on his thick plastic-lips.
All in all Mai and Joey were in awe but as the young woman caught sight of Joey, by now tinted lightly blue, she dragged him along into the big building.
Inside it was warm and smelled like Christmas-cookies, which brought a hopeful gleam into Joey's eyes. After all he still had his money.
The pair walked through the palace like building and while Mai stopped almost everywhere to look at a new dress, the latest perfume or jewelry, Joey let his nose lead them nearer and nearer to the food-hall.
A/N: Soooo… second chapter done… I've a feeling it should have been longer. *sigh*
Oh well…
Hmm… anyway, I decided that I want to have an online-diary myself. I just don't know where to get one for free. You guys have any idea? If so, please tell me.
Okay, I' gotta do something else now...
*laughs insanely while looking over to her plans of taking over this world* eh right...
*smiles sweetly while watching the little Bakura and Malik plushies sitting right next to those plans and her cookies*
Qamenka: Why you two little plushies??? Did you dare to come near my cookies????
... ... ... ...