Kaiba dropped by Joey's apartment around one in the afternoon on Saturday. He found himself staring at the door for at least five minutes, weighing his options carefully. He could turn away and never know what could happen, or he could knock and prepare for the worst.
The whole situation was Mokuba's fault – all because of his advice: it was an outcome of a chance that Kaiba should have passed up. In fact that very moment tied into Mokuba's idea; whether or not he knocked on the door was another chance, another risky outcome.
The web of connections was mind-boggling, even for Kaiba.
Finally he brought his hand to the door and knocked. Thirty seconds passed; the silence went undisturbed. Kaiba frowned and knocked again. Nothing. "Son of a bitch," Kaiba swore under his breath. So Joey must have been toying with him, seeing how far he could push Kaiba… Quite crafty of him, but amateurish; Kaiba was hardly bothered by the false invitation. In fact, to hell with him – Kaiba had better things to do than wait around. He went to the elevator, and he wasn't acting any more cross than usual…
But he was fuming.
He waited impatiently for the elevator, staring at the elevator door as though it was to blame for his new state of agitation. After a few moments it opened to reveal Joey with the kid sitting on his shoulders and McDonalds bags in his hand. For a minute they just stared at each other. Well, Kaiba glared, and Joey gawked in surprise.
"Hi," Alex said, leaning down onto his father's head.
"Hello," Kaiba replied. Joey shook his head slightly, seeming to finally come to his senses. He opened his mouth to speak…
And the elevator door closed.
Kaiba reached forward to press the button again, hoping the door would open, but no such luck – the elevator was headed up. Kaiba mentally did the math in his head of how many floors there were in the building, estimating how long the elevator would take based on which floor had called for it… He sighed and leaned against the wall, tapping his foot impatiently. So it hadn't been a false invitation… Or did Joey come back too soon? Kaiba's foot hit the ground a little harder than he meant to, and he stared down at it. He quit tapping and focused on the elevator doors. After another minute they popped open again, and Alex ran out, laughing and holding one of the brown paper bags. Joey followed at a more sedate pace, smiling sheepishly at Kaiba.
"I didn't think you'd actually come," he admitted.
"I can leave," Kaiba replied tersely, still slightly frustrated that Joey hadn't been there to begin with; he hated bad manners.
"Don't." Joey's tone was simple: not a plea, not a demand, but just a request. Kaiba nodded and followed to the apartment, taking his usual seat in the armchair while Joey dug some food out of the bags. Kaiba didn't take his jacket off – he didn't expect to stay long.
"You hungry?" Joey asked.
"No." Kaiba even made a face of disgust, one of the few faces he didn't mind making in public. "How do you eat that junk?"
"We don't usually, but the only thing Daddy hates more than cleaning is cooking, right Alex?" Kaiba stared at Joey, surprised by the sudden change in tone – playful, loving. Kaiba hadn't paid much attention to Joey's tones, but that was one he had never heard. It was sort of…
Cute. Kaiba grimaced at the thought.
"Yeah!"
Joey laughed and set some food on the coffee table for Alex; the toddler stood in front of the table and grabbed a handful of fries, shoving them in his mouth. Kaiba raised an eyebrow. "I'm starting to see the family resemblance," he said evenly.
"Holy shit," Joey commented, mocking awe as he dropped down onto the loveseat and took a burger from the bag in his lap. "Kaiba's hidden sense of humor sees daylight."
"Go to hell."
"I'll work on that. Are you sure you're not hungry?" Kaiba shook his head, and Joey shrugged and stretched his legs out over the loveseat, taking a bite of his food. A moment passed, and Kaiba found himself watching the kid; Alex was playing with his fries, making them talk to each other. Without warning the boy looked up at him, smiling. "Bite?" he offered shyly, holding out one fry. Joey laughed again.
"See, even he thinks you should eat something; we have plenty."
"I ate earlier."
"Earlier when?"
Kaiba had to consider that question. "Last night."
"Are you always like this?" Joey asked, his voice a mixture of awe and annoyance. "How are you still alive?"
"I have better things to do than die," Kaiba said. He was going to hit Joey if he didn't drop it – he didn't like people fussing over him like his life was anyone else's business.
"Well eat now; I don't need you dying of malnutrition in my living room."
"You're overreacting," Kaiba snapped. "Why don't you police your kid and leave my eating habits to me?"
Joey sighed. "Fine. But for the record, I don't need to make sure he eats – no matter how much he plays with his food, it'll always end up in his mouth." More silence passed, and Joey finished his food. Kaiba was beginning to wonder what he had been thinking when he decided to visit.
"So tell me about yourself."
Kaiba looked at Joey; what seemed to be genuine curiosity painted the blond's face. He shrugged. "What's to tell?"
"I don't know… what'd you do while you were gone?"
"The same thing I do now, just from a distance."
"Then why come back at all?"
Kaiba leaned back in his seat. "Rumors, disorder, people trying to take over in my stead. They were saying things like I was really dead, and that monkeys had taken over Kaiba Corp. I decided to come back after that."
"Oh."
Kaiba didn't find a response to that – not even an insulting one – and fell back into silence. Another minute passed.
"Why are you so hard to talk to?" Joey demanded in frustration.
"I don't do idle talking."
"Well, OBVIOUSLY, but it doesn't hurt. C'mon… what about your first kiss? Every guy has that story."
Kaiba stiffened, but Joey didn't appear to find the topic at all awkward; perhaps that was due to some density on Joey's part. They glared at each other for a minute before Kaiba relented. "My first kiss was when I was twenty, and Mokuba set it up."
Joey whistled, "Harsh. You'd think girls would be lining up to let you in their skirts."
"They were," Kaiba answered sardonically. "I just had better things to do than them."
That must have been amusing, because Joey was laughing so hard that he couldn't talk right away. "I see," he finally managed. "So was she hot?"
"He was alright." There: that was in the open, and Kaiba took some pride in seeing Joey nervous for a second, shifting in his seat. Then the moment passed.
"I see," he repeated.
"Is that a problem?" Kaiba challenged.
"Not at all," Joey answered. "In fact, I…" He flushed but grinned, and the blush quickly faded. "Alright, I have Domino History 101 for you. So it was Serenity's twenty-first birthday, and she wanted to go drinking – everyone wants to when they turn twenty-one. Well, the last thing I want is my baby sister getting trashed in some bar, so I told her we'd invite everyone to my apartment and throw a party, alcohol included."
"I thought you didn't drink," Kaiba interrupted.
"Not usually – I did for the party. She was dating Tristan… it hadn't been more than a few weeks, but given how long they'd been 'friends', it seemed like forever. Well, Bakura, little queer that he is, offered to save everyone some money and bake her cake, and Tristan wanted to play good-boyfriend and help. So I left them alone, went to buy some alcohol, and when I come back the cake is in the oven, and those two are on my couch finding creative uses for frosting."
Kaiba smiled at the irony of it – good boyfriend indeed! – but didn't laugh, not like Joey was. "Was it that funny?"
"Not at the time – then I gave Tristan the black-eye of his life. I mean, the last thing I wanted to say was 'Happy Birthday, Serenity; your boyfriend is cheating on you with another guy!' I dunno, he swore that the frosting thing just happened… So I made him promise to tell her the sugarcoated version of the truth and break up with her. I'll be damned before I see my little sister strung along, no matter how much I like the guy. But you know, it went okay – my sis is great; she wished them well, no hard feelings. Sometimes I wonder if she just went out with him to spare his feelings, you know?
"The next day Bakura and I traded furniture – he got the couch and I took the loveseat you see here."
"Was there that much damage to that couch?"
"No damage, but every time I sat down I got the mental image of Bakura licking frosting off Tristan's–"
Kaiba interrupted, "I get the idea. Yugi told me that your sister's engaged now."
"Yup," Joey said, obviously less than thrilled. "To dice-boy himself."
"He's charming."
"Oh, yeah, CHARMING, and a womanizer, and an asshole. If Serenity didn't love him I would've kicked his ass by now." Joey snickered. "Anyway, that's another something you missed. Your turn."
"My turn what?"
"Tell a story," Joey said simply. "Any story."
"I don't have any stories."
"Well… what about sex?"
Kaiba shook his head to make sure he heard right and stared at Joey disbelievingly. 'What?" he demanded.
"You said your first kiss was at twenty – have you gotten some yet?"
"My sex life is none of your business!" Kaiba snapped, ready to stand up and walk out. The kissing conversation had been uncomfortable and personal enough, but sex? Was that the sort of thing his friends talked about? Even for friends that seemed a little too personal, and considering that he didn't actually consider Joey much of a friend, it was well beyond their comfort zone.
"Okay," Joey replied, holding his hands up in surrender. "Too personal, I get it. So… Do you play games still?"
"Of course," Kaiba responded as though it was the dumbest question anyone could have ever asked. All things considered, it probably was.
"Nintendo!" Alex called out happily, looking at Joey hopefully. Kaiba's mouth formed silently around the word – almost like a swear word to him, outdated as Nintendo was – and he looked towards the TV instinctively; that was where Mokuba had always kept his games. Sure enough he saw an old Nintendo system on the floor. "That… THING is older than us," he said, distaste filling his voice. "And I don't even want to START with the graphics."
Joey laughed, slipping down onto the floor and moving to sit in front of the TV, setting the old game system up. "Yea, but you can't duplicate some of these games and I have a lot of memories attached to the old system. When I was little we got it when it was new – fresh stuff – and when I got older… well, it kept me out of some trouble. Not enough, but a little." Joey's lips pressed into a firm line for a minute, but the spasm seemed to pass, and he turned to grin at Kaiba. "So I got a few fighting games down here; wanna come get your ass kicked?"
Kaiba raised an eyebrow in question. "You? Kick MY ass?"
With a conspiratorial grin Joey nodded. "I play this all the time, and you don't. I have the advantage."
That sounded like a challenge if Kaiba had ever heard one. It was a pitiful excuse for a challenge, but it had been too long since he'd had one at all… He finally slipped off his jacket, leaving it in his seat as he went to the ground, picking up a controller.
"You're on."
An hour passed, and Kaiba grinned smugly. Joey hadn't stood a chance.
"How?" the blond demanded heatedly. "How the hell?"
"I have stuff like this down to an art," Kaiba explained, tone as arrogant as his expression.
Joey just fumed. "Damn it, and here I thought I had a chance."
"Not with me," Kaiba said. "No one has a chance with me."
Joey stared at him. He blinked a few times and then said, "Yea, that's probably true."
Without a clue why Joey's tone was suddenly subdued, Kaiba looked to the clock. "I should get back to work; I didn't intend to stay long."
"You work too much," Joey said casually. "I don't know how you do it."
"It's my life," Kaiba responded with a shrug, standing and brushing off his pants… completely unsure of where the crumbs clinging to the fabric had come from. He wasn't so sure he wanted to know. He turned to retrieve his jacket – only to find Alex sleeping on it.
"Oh. Nap time," Joey said quietly. Kaiba shook his head – what a forgetful parent. He had never forgotten when Mokuba needed to sleep, or do homework, or anything of even the mildest importance. He reached down, picking the toddler up, off his jacket. He smiled; the task of lifting a sleeping toddler had been much more daunting when he was younger.
"This is yours," he commented softly, offering the toddler to Joey with a slight nod of his head. The blond nodded and moved to take him – for a moment they were too close, and Joey's hands brushed his forearms by accident. Odd, the tingle that simple touch sent through Kaiba's nerves...
Once Alex was safely in his father's arms Kaiba backed away, pulling his jacket on. "Thanks for coming by," Joey said; he took a small step forward, then looked down at the boy in his arms and seemed to think better of it. "It was fun," he admitted. "I should challenge you to a rematch someday."
"Hmph. Maybe."
"See you Monday morning."
Kaiba nodded and left. He made it to the elevator before he had to stop focusing on how many steps it took him to get there, and was instead faced with the strange occurrence of that sensation in his forearms. He stared at them. Could he still feel that faint tingle, or was he imagining it?
Foolish.
Any 'tingle' he might have felt was purely his imagination, nothing more. His imagination hadn't overacted in a long time – strange time to start up. Once he was in his car Kaiba looked up at the apartment building, almost instinctively to where he knew Joey was.
"It was fun."
Kaiba uttered a short string of creative curse words. Joey was right.
It hadn't been bad at all.
- notes -
Everyone tip your hats to Sarasusa, who was super!kind and offered to beta this for me. *dance* It makes me happy. Yay!!
You might be doing a jig or something... I am; this chapter was fun to write!
Okay, so who remembers the notes for Chapter Four, where Joey's line was that the TristanxBakura story involved a package of cherries? Yea, well, we changed our minds, lol. Just squaring that away -- I forgot about the mention of the cherries in the notes. I suck, lol.
Am I the only person who found Joey's questions & stories in this particularly suspicious? lol.
Nintendo! I worship the Super Nintendo, lol, and somewhere along the line I got to comparing Nintendo technology and Kaiba Corp. stuff... and just laughed and laughed and laughed. XD
OH! Quick note: the rough draft is (almost) done -- it comes out to 22 chapters and the epilogue (which what I'm currently grappling with). So we're about halfway through the story right now, unless I do some serious reworking.
..::responses to reviewers::..
shadow-demon18b, barbedwire23, ren-chan581, colycarissa, shadowfire, lightning_sage, darkmus: domo arigato! *shall not sing, shall not sing, shall not sing...* =D
Tanya Maxwell: hey, can I have a cookie? I'm hungry. ^^ lol, anyway, thanks. There were about three different scenes with that line in it before it finally settled on that one. :)
Angel-Belle: like writer's block; life LOVES that twist. > Ebony Opium: lol, I do that a lot with pens too. When I'm not chewing on them. Or throwing them. Thankies. :) Tadashi: at least we're all not having special thoughts equally, lol. ^^ thanks.
((ashes apologizes for any and all corny jokes involving 80s music. XD))