Aria: pant pant It's…done! I apologize for the VERY long delay…fact is, first I had written about half of this, before deciding I hated it and deleting the whole thing, and then we started packing up our house to move…anyway, it's done now! Huzzah! Now, before I get carried away, must thank the wonderful, amazing reviewers! You've all kept me going. Thanks are in order:
Callisto: Oh, yes I can And yes, he did. Cute, huh?
Lostlover1: Thanks for the, um…enthusiasm? laughs and holds up cliffie award Arigatou!
Darkmus: Glad you liked it! Thanks for the notice.
Kagemihari: I feel you…the uber-fluff can be way scary.
Animom: Here it is! Hope you enjoy.
Yami Hoshiko: Sorry for the delay! Here's the ending!
Macduff's Mistress: Your wish is my command.
Sakata Ri Houjun: That's exactly what I'm going for. Hope this measures up.
Kuraiko: And I wish I knew your language so I could thank you properly in it for your wonderful reviews.
Lethe Seraph: Well, he IS Kaiba…
Ember: evil chuckle Sadly, that's the writer's prerogative.
Animebay-b: Glad you enjoyed.
Amarin Rose: If it makes you feel better, I had hoped for kissage too.
Chibi-Serenity: It's a little late, but here it is.
Kujiku Tamashii: blush Thanks!
Sarasusamiga: Scared is one word for it. "Severely repressed" is probably the one I'd use, though…
Fire Dragon: Yup, Jou- and Kaiba-angst is a wonderful thing…but then, so is Joukai.
Denisse: And you'll get one. That's my next project.
Bh: Hope you find it to read this!
Tuulikki: You got the tone exactly right. Thanks for the reviews.
Imigo: Thanks for the vote of confidence!
Nyako-chan: I'm certainly glad some people do!
Haruya: It was quite easy, actually
And here we go. There will shortly be an epilogue, but it isn't necessary and will probably increase the rating, so I'll wait a little while before putting it up
Enjoy!
Vanilla
Joey wandered in the cooling evening, enjoying the brush of late-sun-warmed air against his skin, still burned from sand and salt water and the heat of humiliation. He'd walked most of his embarrassment off, but even now his cheeks flared a little at the memory—
Blue eyes were cold and unyielding. "What do you mean?"
He grimaced, a flush slowly rising, hot, over his neck and cheeks, eyes shunting from side to side while he unrolled his fingers from their sudden fists slowly, feeling them creak with stress at the joints. Well, it wasn't like he hadn't known it was going to happen like that…but still…
The park was blue in the evening, pink and orange still barely glowing along the edge of wispy clouds and tree branches, warm and soft and fading inevitably into the shades of evening. People were still walking about, only now they all seemed to have paired off…young couples still in the heady first few weeks of physical attraction; older couples enjoying a moment of solitude, quietly carrying on conversations years in the making; couples making out on the park benches; couples arguing with the heat of new-found, or long-practiced, passion; couples walking, sitting, talking, laughing.
He hated them all.
Rolling his eyes, he sat down in the cool grass, watching the blue shadows stretching lazily, and sighed. At least now it was all settled. All out in the open. Out of the closet, so to speak.
He groaned and dropped his head into his hands.
He never wanted to taste vanilla again.
The weather for the next three days was sticky and hot, promising the thunderstorm that finally rolled in during the second day's still afternoon—purple dark cloud bellies marching inevitably between hazy sun and heat-baked earth and black streams of rain pummeling down—but the third day remained just as hot, just as humid, just as oppressive and the storm slunk defeated to the east, still rumbling impotently.
The third day was reaching ninety degrees and above, languid and still with heavy air and the remnants of electricity, thick swathes of blue-gray clouds blurring the brighter blue sky above thick leaves and trite birdsong.
The third day was when Seto found Joey lying back in the grass, sweating, with one slim brown arm thrown over his face to block the sun and the other resting by his side, near the ever-present paper-back which was closed, Seto noted, with an odd sense of finality. No stem of silky green grass poked out from between the pages; no emphatic dog-ear marked Joey's place.
He felt, suddenly and with great certainty, at a loss, so instead of speaking, he merely sat down against a nearby tree and pulled out his laptop, feeling it whir into life and oppressive warmth on his lap. There was something comforting in this sudden awkwardness—somewhere old barriers had been dredged up reluctantly from dusty hiding places and there they sat, glowering, between him and the prone figure on the grass not two feet away, part of the shimmering air and the heated purring of the machine on his thighs, reminding Seto of the careful oppression he'd used up until that surprising day a few months earlier, something mechanical, trustworthy, mindless.
Safe. Never mind sweetness. It never got you anywhere, and he couldn't allow any distractions anymore. Besides, sweetness is more trouble than it was worth, he mused, just look at Wheeler---loyal, trusting, likeable, loving. Sweet like the surprising, simple sweetness of vanilla, and it did nothing but get him in trouble.
Better to be bitter, and safe.
Joey shifted.
"I finished the book," he said, not opening his eyes, not moving his arm from his face, just having shifted his body slightly from the left to the right.
Seto was watching the grass springing slowly back up, glossy, from where it had been crushed down by the weight of Joey's body, and almost didn't hear what he said.
"Took you long enough," he commented, hearing his own voice harsh in the still air. It was too hot—he should have stayed inside. He could still taste the metallic conditioned air from his office.
Joey didn't reply.
"And how did you like it?" he continued, still looking at the grass. It was fascinating, watching the dull gray-green blades flex, glimmering green as the tips rose into the hazy sunlight.
Joey shrugged, shoulder blades digging into scratchy grass. "It was good. Really good."
Silence.
Seto stared at the code on his computer screen, and didn't want to change it, sweating lightly in the heat. Funny, he'd never thought about the heat of the park before, even in these months of sun and blue skies. It must be the haze, he thought, and wiped away a bead of sweat from his forehead. Looking over, he noted that Joey still hadn't opened his eyes, and frowned. It was unnerving, this lack of reaction. He found himself suddenly thinking back to their old arguments with something that felt annoyingly like misty-eyed appreciation, before wrenching himself back to the situation at hand.
"That's all you've got, mutt? It was good?"
A quiver of thin eyelids, and a crack of brown showed between thick dark lashes, leaving Seto unexpectedly relieved.
Not that he had been looking.
The brown disappeared, rolling back up into darkness. "I liked that it turned out so no one knew anything that was going on, except for the one kid, and I liked the kind of logic that he used, that no one really needs to go to all that trouble to build something up just to tear it down a few thousand years later—it just makes no sense. And, you know, really, who knows what the hell any one is thinking or planning anyway, so, yeah…" He paused, feeling horribly adrift, and groped vaguely for the idea he was searching for. "Right. Yeah. Ineffability. I liked that. Nothing absolute except the ineffable plan. That's the way it really is."
Seto snorted, keeping his eyes on his laptop screen, darting back and forth over rows of code. "I'm surprised you could even grasp the meaning of ineffability, Wheeler," he said.
That did it.
Joey rolled to his side and levered himself up onto his elbow. His eyes were wide open and cold, surprising in his tan, friendly, familiar face, but there was nothing familiar about the expression in the deep brown eyes—they were icy, and angry, and dark. Seto felt a sudden and surprising thrill shiver up his back, and felt confused. "It shouldn't be surprising at all, moneybags," Joey spat, narrowing his eyes, "it means everything's set by someone else, and I have no idea what's going on."
He stood up, hands clenched into fists at his sides. "I guess I'd know exactly what that means."
And he walked off.
Seto looked after him, and decided against telling him that he'd left his book again.
This was going wrong—terribly, horribly wrong. The park was supposed to relax him—Joey was supposed to relax him, not exist in this ridiculous and stubbornly clinging cloud of friction. He would have sighed, if sighing was something that Seto Kaiba would or could do, but he leaned over and picked up the book instead, rifling through its pages with a sense of déjà vu. The paper was worn and soft against his fingers, the type flashing in and out of view as he flipped back and forth, until he began to notice a pattern in how they followed each other, certain pages flipping to open more easily than others, lying open for his inspection. He looked closer. No, not a pattern—the mutt was too chaotic for that kind of thing. He wouldn't have had the patience to mark themes or images down with any degree of consistency. Instead, here was a dog-ear at a paragraph Joey had found particularly amusing, here one with a scribbled note next to it, here a smudged thumbprint slightly blurring the words. Seto went through them all, flipping carefully from the beginning of the book to the end and back again, reading the most worn pages most carefully.
It was an hour later before he closed the book carefully and placed it next to him on the grass to wonder. He had never imagined that the mutt had the kind of concentration to read that carefully, but, really, he mused, it wasn't so different from the one-mindedness he showed in dueling and in his everyday life. Mutt sees something, mutt gets interested, mutt keeps at it until he wins—understands—gets what he wants.
Speaking of which.
Now he did sigh, leaning his head back against the rough tree bark. Three days. It had been three days since Joey's little explosion, and he had managed not to think about it since then—but it seemed as though his fragile haven was in danger of being wrecked over it, and he couldn't allow that to happen, so perhaps now was the time to think it over, consider it in the light of everything else that had happened, but—
No. He might not want this little idyllic, even pastoral, hour in his busy day to be ruined, but even that seemed a more viable option than actually entertaining the mutt's outburst. He wouldn't think about it. If it meant the end of quiet afternoons in the park, the end of almost-friendly companionship and the end of summer as anything more than a slightly lighter business suit, then so be it.
Reopening his laptop, he made a mental note to give Joey his book back the next day.
Half an hour later, it started to rain.
And it rained.
And Seto suddenly realized that he didn't want to wait until tomorrow to see Joey, after all.
The evening was much cooler. It had only rained for an hour, maybe less, and already Joey could see the difference in the park—the grass looked clean and new, springing from the wet ground with fresh determination, the soil was wet and warm and soft, even the pavement had been washed clean of chalk drawings, scattered pieces of gum, and the occasional piece of paper. It glistened now in the slanting late evening sun, golden and slightly hazy from dandelion and milkweeds puffs raised by the rain.
He hadn't been far away when the rain began—in fact, he'd only gone over to the next walkway before plunking down against a different tree, swearing at the heat, the hard baked ground, and Seto's damned indifference. He could have taken rejection, mockery, anything but that damned impassiveness and the unreal déjà vu of Seto sitting there, calmly typing away, when just a few days before Jou had exploded like some kind of temperamental time bomb. Did nothing faze the guy?
He groaned and leaned heavily against the rough tree bark, feeling wet seep into his hair. He banged his head lightly against the tree, trying to think of something good about the situation, and failing utterly.
Wait. Ah yes. There was one thing. "At least I have my health," he muttered, and thudded his head back against the tree.
Thud.
"At least I have my health."
Thud.
"At least I have my health."
Thud.
"Well, you won't for long, if you keep banging your head against the tree like that. I know you're thick-headed, but I doubt even your thick skull can take that for long, Wheeler."
Don't look up, Joey told himself firmly. He's not really there. He's not actually standing there insulting you after everything that's happened.
"At least," he ground out, eyes screwed tightly shut "I have." Thud. "My." Thud. "Health."
He brought his head smartly back against the tree, and saw stars flash against the red-black of his eyelids—but he didn't hear anything. Or anyone. Feeling better, he opened his eyes, rubbing the back of his head ruefully. "There," he said cheerfully to the Seto that he knew wasn't there, really, at all, "I knew you weren't really—oh."
Blue eyes stared back at him, amused. "I'm not really what, Wheeler?"
"Never mind," Joey grunted, levering himself up off the sopping grass and wincing at the cold, rain soaked jeans clinging to his skin before fixing Seto with what he hoped was an icy glare. He was pretty sure he wasn't getting it right. "Did you want something?"
Expensive material dark with rain whispered against itself as Seto pushed the ragged paperback book into Joey's chest, and Joey grasped at it reflexively. "You forgot this again."
"Oh," Joey said, looking down at the book he was clenching to his chest. "Gee. Thanks. That was awfully thoughtful of you, moneybags, but if you'll excuse me—" He began to push past Kaiba. He didn't need to deal with this right now—he didn't want to deal with this right now, and, fuck, he wasn't going to deal with it, not now with his head hurting and his jeans wet and clinging and the memory of rejection still fresh and cheerfully bouncing around the back of his mind. He didn't ever want to deal with it, so when Seto moved to stop him instead of letting him past, he turned, already angry, already annoyed, already perfectly ready and willing to fight. He wanted to argue, to push Kaiba the way he was being pushed, and then push him some more. "What, moneybags?" he asked, letting the anger come up. Anger. Ice.
It felt good. He continued.
"You've got something else to say?"
Blue eyes narrowed. "Shut up, Wheeler."
Joey could have laughed. This was what he needed—anger, arguments, fights. He almost wished it would come to blows so he could burn that perfect icy face out of his mind, replace it with fury and resentment. Instead, he straightened, and the hand holding the book fell to his side. "Don't tell me to shut up, Kaiba—"
"I'll tell you to do what I want." His voice was quiet, cold, and Joey shivered in spite of himself.
Hurry up and fight me, Kaiba. I can't last long here.
If Seto noticed any weakness in Joey's stance, any bravado in his rebellious, resentful expression, he didn't react to it. Instead, he continued, his voice still measured. Controlled. "You're avoiding me. You've run from the park twice now. Is there," his voice dropped to an intimate, coldly sarcastic tone, "anything I should be knowing about, Wheeler?"
No expression crossed the set face, no warmth of curiosity lightened clear blue eyes, and Joey, crossing his arms defensively, felt oddly hunted, and hated it. "Is there anything you should be knowing about?" he repeated slowly, eyebrows rising. "Is there anything you should be knowing about?"
Seto snorted. "I already asked the question, Wheeler, I don't need to hear it again from you. Or is that just a new trick you've learned? Very good, but sadly useless. That's a parrot trick, not a puppy one. I know it's easy to get the two confused, but really—"
He never got to finish the sentence, because Joey had closed the gap between them by the distance of one step. Then another. Warm breath ghosted across the suddenly sensitive skin of Seto's cheek, and he fought the impulse to step backwards. "I think," Joey told him quietly, "that you already know the important parts."
Seto stood his ground. You have to give him that much, Joey thought, admiring him in spite of himself. He stands his ground.
"And I'm supposed to do what, exactly, with that information?" He titled his head just slightly, narrow shoulders squared and pushed back, gaining an extra half inch with which to look down, and Joey flushed hard and dropped his eyes to the ground, burning with resentment and impotent fury. "Was the a particular reason why you felt the need to tell me in the first place?"
While Joey stood in awkward, stubborn silence, Seto pushed aside the questions crowding his mind. He couldn't really say why he was initiating this conversation, except that it had felt vaguely, uneasily wrong without Joey around for the past few days. Not that he had been looking for Joey—but it was easier to work in the park when there was someone else around. It could just as easily have been anyone, but the fact was that Joey was always there. He had gotten used to seeing the lazy body stretched out on soft green grass, had gotten used to the sudden interruptions and questions and asinine comments—had gotten used to, in the end, Joey's company and everything that went with it. And somehow, even when Joey was there now, it wasn't the same.
He wanted whatever had been broken back. And he wanted it now.
He didn't like it, but he was stuck with it now and so he had to find a way to make the whole thing work again—but it certainly wasn't because he was curious as to why Joey had exploded the way he had. He'd asked only for information, not for personal satisfaction. He didn't care. Not. At. All.
And he wasn't about to admit that it had anything to do with why he heard sudden, hard heartbeats thudding in his ears.
Joey finally shuffled uneasily. "I dunno," he admitted. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I thought you'd already known about it—it came as kinda a surprise to me, too, when it turned out you didn't."
Seto snorted. "Of course I didn't. The thought never even crossed my mind, Wheeler. Why would I possibly have known?"
Joey blinked quickly, and shifted his weight. "Well, I just thought—" He paused, and went absolutely still, his mind running over what Seto had just told him.
Somewhere in Seto's head, something screamed a brief, totally useless warning.
Brown eyes blinked, light gold hair took the dying sunlight and scattered it as Joey slowly looked up. "It never crossed your mind? What, exactly, never crossed your mind?"
Seto was aware of treading at the edge of some deep and unpleasant pit, but he straightened and ignored it as best he could. "Anything between us."
"Oh, anything between us? You never thought about it? Never once?" The sun sparked off Joey's suddenly narrowed eyes, deep behind thick dark lashes, and that something in Seto's head screamed louder. The deep, unpleasant pit seemed closer than ever. "So all these times we've met up in the park, whenever you waited for me or I waited for you or we spent hours talking when you really should have been doing work, that's not actually anything, is it, clearly nothing like friendship even if it's nothing else, and I threw myself at you three days ago and you haven't even considered it?"
Something was going horribly, drastically wrong, and Seto took a step back. He'd goaded Joey plenty of times in the past, and he'd gotten him pretty mad, too, but this was something different—this was something beyond Joey getting mad at the usual jibes. Joey seemed personally insulted that Seto had never thought of him in that way. And hell, maybe even more than insulted, because Joey was stalking towards him now, and Seto kept taking steps back because, fuck, Joey was big now, bigger than Seto had thought. He accidentally stepped back into a root and slammed up against a tree and Joey was in his face. Seto stared at him and shook his head, his pretensions vanished in the face of Joey's sudden cold fury, and Joey stepped right up against him, pressing him into the tree with his whole body, glaring into his wide-open, surprised eyes. Warm breath puffed, strangely sweet, into his face as Joey leaned in closer still and Seto wondered wildly for a moment if Joey had gotten ice cream during the rain because he smelled inexplicably like vanilla.
And Joey leaned across Seto and whispered into his ear, soft and demanding and alarmingly hot, "Well then. Consider it."
He stepped back, and Seto retained just enough of his haughty dignity to stay standing, pushed up against the tree, rough bark rubbing uncomfortably into his shoulders while Joey walked away for the second time that day, carrying his book and whistling energetically and tunelessly into the gathering dusk.
He leaned back once Joey had turned a corner and he could no longer hear the tuneless whistle or smell sweet vanilla over warm grass and damp soil, listening to his heart pounding against his ribs. And he thought, Consider it? Right.
Like he'd be able to think about anything else now.
It took Joey almost until he reached his apartment complex to cool down, and even then he stormed around the kitchen ranting to himself for another half an hour before finally collapsing into a dilapidated couch, exhausted from working himself into full dramatics for such a long period of time.
And even then, he had enough steam left to snort derisively at the ceiling and mutter the occasional annoyed comment about Seto's total lack of sense, his apparent lack of eyesight, and his complete and utter lack of knowing when a good thing came his way. It was one thing, he thought bitterly, to know himself that Seto hadn't ever thought about him in "that way"—it was one thing to despair over his own knowledge that the whole business was doomed from the start.
It was quite another to have all of that confirmed by Seto.
The ceiling remained impassive, and Joey, after eyeing it for a moment, decided to call in the proper reinforcements.
"I mean, come on!" Joey ranted, waving his arms expansively. "Is he blind or something?"
Yugi, sitting cross-legged on his bed, furrowed his eyebrows. "Blind?"
"Well, yeah," Joey plopped down next to him, only to get back up and start pacing again a second later. "Or straight. But if he's not blind or straight, then don't you think he'd have considered me?"
Yugi looked quizzical. "Considered you?"
"I mean, I'm not exactly ugly, Yug. Like I'm a pretty good-looking guy, right?" Yugi nodded quickly, glad to finally have found the right answer. "But no! Not even considered! Didn't even cross his mind! Not once! I practically threw myself at him and still no!"
He crumpled against the far wall, glaring at his socks, and Yugi cleared his throat. "Well, Joey, I have to say I find what you're telling me terribly, terribly funny. Awful," he corrected quickly as Joey looked up. "Really awful. But, honestly, Joey, I don't really see why you're getting so worked up about it. It's only Kaiba, and he topped your ten most hated people/things/ideas list from when you first met him up till a few months ago." He shrugged. "Maybe it's just not worth it."
Joey shrugged against the wall, feeling suddenly tired. "You think he's not worth it?"
Yugi thought for a moment, searching for the right way to say what he was thinking. "I don't know, Joey. You're getting all worked up about it, but really, it's just Kaiba. He hasn't changed much—he's still rich and smart and kind of a bastard, really, when you get right down to it, unless we're talking about Mokuba, but we're not talking about Mokuba, so—"
Joey rolled his eyes and thudded his head back against the wall. "I know all that," he said. "But it's like, okay, remember when we went into the game to help save him?"
Yugi nodded slowly, unwilling to give a solid opinion on a train of thought he wasn't sure he was fully following. "It's like," Joey continued, "that game, it was huge, right? And it was full of people and things and magic and legends, and really incredible places, right?"
"Yeah," Yugi said, wondering where this was all going.
"So," Joey seemed to be struggling slightly with his metaphor, "so, it's like that, right?" He looked pleadingly at Yugi, who remained politely blank, and sighed. "What I mean, is—you know, is that game—it was just a bunch of lines of code and numbers if you just looked at it, right? Just those weird pod things and lines and lines of code. That's what it was, really, but within that, there was this incredible world. This incredible, beautiful place, and he thought that whole thing up. That's what I mean."
Yugi considered this. "So," he said carefully, "Kaiba's worth it because he could make up the game?"
"No!" Joey got up and started pacing. "No, that's not it at all. Well, I mean, that's part of it, but it's not the whole thing—"
"Okay, Joey," Yugi said soothingly. "So what is it like?"
"It's the difference between that weird code you can see but not understand and the incredible world you can experience," Joey said suddenly, and then looked rather shocked at his own success.
"Ah," Yugi said. "One of those."
"I don't think I'm getting the kind of sympathy I think I deserve," Joey growled, and flung himself on the bed next to Yugi, who grinned at him and hit him in the face with a pillow.
"That," he said, "is because you're making too big a deal out of it. You've already told him, right? Twice. It's his move now, especially since you made it pretty clear that he does, in fact, have to make a move of some kind. Even," he added thoughtfully, "if it's only to run away." He oofed as Joey whapped him in the stomach with the pillow.
"Gee, thanks," Joey said sourly as Yugi laughed helplessly next to him. He pulled himself up onto an elbow and looked out the window. "I guess I do know that," he said, "about it not being my fault, or my move, or whatever. But, you know, I still wonder."
"Why he's never looked at you and said to himself, 'Damn, that Wheeler kid's turned out nice'?"
Joey pounded a fist into the pillow. "Yeah."
As a matter of fact, something not entirely unlike that was passing through Seto's mind at that moment, and if it wasn't in so many words, well, that wasn't the fault of the thought, was it? If, in fact, it was far more of a short burst of annoyance at Joey's tendency to mess everything up while being, and this was added as a reluctant qualification, fairly attention-grabbing, then that was probably a result of Seto's having sat in his office for the past three hours without getting a lick of work done. Ten minutes ago he'd looked at his computer screen and discovered that he'd typed the same line of text three times in a row without noticing.
Attention-grabbing, indeed. And then came the uncomfortable suspicion that Joey would not, in fact be able to mess everything up to the degree that Seto attributed to him were he not utterly capable of grabbing Seto's attention, and keeping it.
Seto leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together, his elbows resting on the arms of his comfortable wheeled desk chair as he swiveled to face the large windows of his office. Pale fingers wove together loosely and rested coolly against each other.
He'd been right—he clearly hadn't been able to think about anything else since Joey had left him stunned, pressed up against the rough damp bark of the tree in the park—and he resented it; resented that his perfect memory was now playing back perfect memories of Joey leaning up against him, of Joey sleeping in the dappled grass, of Joey licking slowly at his ice cream while brown eyes roved innocently up to his own; resented that his coolly calculating mind was now coolly calculating the odds of seeing Joey again tomorrow; resented, most especially, the sudden and entirely unwelcome knowledge that all his evenings and nights and mornings of hard, cyclical work only to delete it all the next day were simply yet one more defense he'd unconsciously built up against the influence of the park and Joey's damned ice cream.
Seto glared out at the bright evening that was building slowly over the city, cool and sparkling clear from the rain. In the park, light would be shunting down at an incredible slant through the transparent green leaves, and the sky, where it wasn't beginning to glow yellow and orange in the distant west would be the same bright, iridescent blue that arced over the Kaiba Corp building. All the colors in the park would take on a new richness and light from the slanting sun and shadows, brighter, more alive than they had been all through the day. A dog would trot by with nose low to the ground and short tail wagging jauntily, rich copper against thick green grass while green and yellow light sifted through lazy spinning particles and thin leaves, spilling slowly from the sparkling blue sky.
And still he thought about Joey, and the livening colors before they were bleached and chilled by incoming clouds or moonlight, and about the rich scent of vanilla he was sure he could smell somewhere.
He was curious now, that was certain. He hadn't lied when he'd told Joey that he'd never considered anything between the two of them, but, strictly speaking, he had, perhaps, been bending the truth a little. Surely cutting any thoughts such as those out of existence the moment they sprang into it counted as not considering. Anyway, he decided, he was a busy man, and had no time for such things. In fact, it would be better if he stopped going to the park at all.
Seto nodded, pleased at the direction his train of thought was finally taking. Yes, that was what he would do—cut himself away, since his policy of not allowing interactions had failed.
But he still didn't turn from the window, and his computer still sat ignored, as the sun bled out into thin night.
Seto's new plan lasted almost exactly fourteen hours.
Ten and a half hours after making his resolve to avoid the park no matter what, he arrived at the Kaiba Corp building feeling fresh and decisive, and immediately ran a meeting during which he decided to spend ten per cent of Kaiba Corps profits every year on upkeep for the city's public spaces. His PR rep loved it—she'd been trying to get a friendlier, public oriented face on Kaiba Corp for years, and every year Seto had brushed her aside, but this year she seemed to have surprised him during a good mood, and she bustled off to make arrangements while Seto rode the smooth, silent elevator up to his office, now feeling vaguely put out.
And the vanilla-flavored coffee his secretary brought in for him didn't help matters.
An hour after that, he'd given his secretary a new schedule which did not include his customary trip to the park during the lunch hours and early afternoon, and she sighed inwardly, having already made an appointment to get her nails done. He felt slightly better, and got to work.
An hour and a half after that, he sat looking at the work he'd gotten done, checking it over again and again, looking for the minute detail that needed to be changed, the tiniest word that could be rephrased.
He found himself looking out the window, and brought his mind back to earth by calling in his PR rep and canceling the public spaces upkeep plan. The mournful click of her heels on the hard wood floors as she walked away to commiserate with his secretary allowed him to concentrate fully again.
Half an hour later he was hungry, and ate a sandwich his secretary brought in to him and hurriedly left on his desk, smiling grimly at an image of Joey sitting on one of the park benches, eating a lonely sandwich. Of course, Joey hated being alone—eventually he'd pick up and move to where there was someone he could annoy, like the girl at the snack shack.
Seto frowned slightly, and put his sandwich down. On second thought, he wasn't really hungry.
Fifteen minutes after that he caught himself staring out the window, brought back to the office only by the timid knocking of his secretary on his office door. He glared as she brought in papers and a cup of coffee, and glared as she picked up the finished papers, and glared as she went back out again. He picked up the cup of coffee and, for lack of anything else to do, glared into that as well, watching his reflection shiver and bend in the tiny ripples.
Clearly, this was not working as it was supposed to.
Twelve minutes later, he packed his laptop into his briefcase with a few papers, drank his coffee, and left the office, his chair still swiveling slightly behind him, his secretary watching him leave with open surprise. He stalked all the way to the park, fuming at the growing need for sitting in an open, green space with time on his hands and a friendly, lazy body nearby.
Seto had, after the first moments of surprise all those weeks ago, begun to find some small pleasure in Joey's society, and after weeks of finding that small pleasure, they had formed a habit of each other, as though they were insidious drugs. Like a deprived addict, Joey tossed and turned in restless sleep; like someone determined to beat an addiction by willpower alone Seto had worked himself to exhaustion every night, but in the end nothing seemed to work. Seto was a creature of habits—he knew this, and he fought against them when he felt they were unnecessary while keeping those habits he found soothing and harmless, if not actually beneficial. Summer days were monotonous enough that new habits were easily formed—having once fallen into a pattern it was simply easier to keep going rather than to stop. It had become habit for the two of them to quit the usual insults and keep instead a kind of awkward silence—it became habit for that silence to return to speech, where insults were exchanged for teasing grins and jibes—it became habit to meet here, in the heat of the afternoon, under falling dappled shade to talk and read and work companionably, although no appointment had ever been made and no hint of their meeting had ever been suggested.
He'd always been dependent on habit—it had become, early on, a habit for him to be the best at whatever he put himself to; either for his own reasons, or because others expected him to be. You couldn't run a company of the breadth and width of Kaiba Corp without becoming a slave to routine—times to go into work, times to go to meetings, time to get out of work; hours and minutes and timetables all working against him. He'd become dependent on habits almost out of self-defense.
Joey was something else, though, he thought. He had never thought of Joey's wild golden personality as being a knowing, willing slave to anything, let alone routine.
Perhaps they were more similar than he had previously imagined.
It was in the heat of the afternoon by the time he got to the park, and he was already sweating lightly, though the rain from the day before had cleared the air. Bright sunlight poured down on him, flashing between graceful tree branches that rustled calmly in a sudden playful breeze that whipped at the light material of Seto's shirt and slacks, his tie already loosened and his jacket relegated to the handle of his briefcase, and he smiled, a small and slightly rusty movement of the edge of his mouth, but he felt it was the proper thing to do on a day like this, in a place like this, when he felt like this. He smiled to feel the sun on his back, the breeze teasing his hair and collar; smiled at the green scent of warm grass; smiled at Joey sitting casually on a nearby bench eating a cone of vanilla ice cream, but let it slip from his face as Joey looked over towards him. Keeping his face straight, he stalked over, and sat down beside Joey, whose long arm was draped over the back of the bench, licking slowly at his ice cream, slumped lazily in the sun. Not looking at him, Seto opened his briefcase, pulled out his laptop, and began to type.
They sat that way for a long time, Joey sitting lazy in the sun with his heart pounding, deliberately licking away at his ice cream, Seto ticking away at the work that had eluded him in the office, vibrantly aware of the warm body next to him and of the way Joey ate his ice cream slowly, licking at the dripping sides and biting delicately into the smooth coolness. There was an odd, but familiar, tenseness in his chest, a similarly familiar heat building slowly up between his shoulders—familiar because these were what he recognized as being his recent reactions towards Joey, odd because this was the first time he'd simply…let them happen.
And then Joey missed a drop, momentarily distracted by a nearby dog catching a Frisbee, he looked up and the drop slid slowly towards his hand, melting quickly in the hot sun. He didn't see it.
Seto did.
He watched out of the corner of his eye while the drop slipped down the arc of the ice cream, watched it pool at the edge of the cone, swell, then slide slowly down waffle-marks in a tiny creamy white rivulet to land suddenly, a tiny pool of cool vanilla on the sensitive golden tan skin of Joey's hand and fingers.
It was the sudden shock of cold that made Joey turn back abruptly, surprised, and pass his cone to the other hand, lifting his hand to his mouth to lick the vanilla off. It would have been nice, he thought, if Seto had done something. He remembered swiping melted vanilla off of Seto's hand and putting it into his mouth to cool the heat of sudden, violent attraction. He remembered a drip of melting ice cream falling to land on Seto's hand, and the delicate way Seto had licked if off, looking suddenly not at ease.
Seto watched him, and knew that he was remembering the other, similar times when melting, sweet vanilla and sudden awareness struck at the same moment, forcing the habit to shift, forcing the routine to change, so he reached out none too gently and grabbed Joey's hand away, bringing it to his own mouth and, delicately, licked off the small pool of cool, sweet vanilla.
Joey watched him curiously, wondering if it were, perhaps, safe to begin breathing again and unsure as to how to react, but when Seto let go off his hand and turned back to his laptop, Joey shifted the cone back into the original hand, tingling from the touch of Seto's breath on his hand, warm breath against cool skin. Heated images spun through his head at this thought of warmth and cold, sweet vanilla and violent attraction. He shifted to glance at Seto.
"If you wanted some ice cream," he told him, "you could have just asked."
Blue eyes looked up from blue screen, and moved from the melting cone of vanilla to Joey's roguish grin, and he reached out to take the cone. The scent of vanilla rose steadily through the warm air as he licked at it and took a large bit, so that when Joey leaned over and kissed him, he tasted vanilla—cool vanilla melting slowly in his mouth and in Joey's, sitting together in the park with the afternoon cooling into blue-green night.