It's that time again. The interval between when I update my regular fics which means…new ideas erupt! I always get inspiration in the most unpropitious times, like when I'm supposed to be updating my other stories. But hey, you can't look a gift-horse in the mouth, right?

Don't be too harsh on your reviewing (assuming, and hoping, that you do), for this is my first YGO fic not centered on Anzu/Tea. Instead, it revolves around… (Drum roll please)

Joey and Mai! (Yes, I'm using the American names for this fic because it has a very un-Japanese feeling to it for some reason. If that makes any sense).

This is a three-part AU fic with a prologue and two epilogues: a "good" ending, and a "bad" ending. The lyrics that appear at the beginning and the end are what birthed the whole idea to this fic and are to The Cure's "Strange Attraction", and keep in mind that I altered some of them to fit the story.

So, fans of JoeyxMai, or maybe people who were just curious and took a peek inside, read, enjoy, and give your honest opinion in a review, and hopefully this will whet your appetite and you'll come back for more!

Disclaimer: Kitty doesn't own Yu-Gi-Oh, nor does she own any of the lyrics that wind their way in here.

"Strange Attraction"

Part I: Prologue

strange attraction spreads its wings
it varies but the smallest things
you never know how anything will change
strange attraction spreads its wings
and alters but the smallest things
you never know how anything will fade

It was hot. Unbearably hot. And not just the kind of hot that just makes you thirsty and sweaty, but the fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk, start-to-see-mirages-of-shimmering-oasis's-and-scantily-clad-women sticky kind of hot. So when Joey Wheeler hugged and kissed his roommate, his younger sister Serenity, goodbye and stepped out of the apartment building, he wanted nothing more in the world than to march right back in and call in to his employees at work with the measles, malaria, mono…anything! (Though, being a member of the male sect, and therefore having that animalistic need to prove something to no one, mono would have been the ailment of choice).

But if he had done that, the twenty-one-year old baker and coffeehouse owner would have been missing an opportunity of a lifetime. Well, that and Tèa would drop by with soup or some scary-smelling homemade remedy and Yugi, Tristan, Duke and Kaiba would be calling incessantly to check up on him. Okay, maybe not Kaiba, but he would grunt at him the next day which only a mind-reader could tell was an "I'm content that you're better. Not happy, content."

Yeah, so making cakes and breads and peach cobbler might not have been the most masculine job, nor glamorous, but ever since he could remember (which, depending on whether or not his friends dragged him out to find his "soul-mate" and ended up getting kicked out of not one, but several, bars, he was sometimes limited to remembering events spanning from now to five minutes ago), Joey had always wanted to please people. It was in his nature. (That must've been where the "Puppy" nickname came from, he mused). He could remember standing in the kitchen with his mother's apron and a spatula in hand, howling and roaring until he was able to stir something, anything.

Nothing that threatens your manhood more than remembering wearing your mother's frilly, bubblegum-pink apron. (Except, of course, the home-video of him having a tea-party with Serenity's dolls…only without Serenity. It wasn't until he was older that he realized why his father suddenly put him into after-school sports like football and wrestling).

So Joey, on the receiving end of nonstop ridicule from his friends (particularly Duke and Kaiba, the icy, harder-to-read-than-your-girlfriend-during-"that-time-of-the-month" man who refused to acknowledge the rogue group as "friends" but hung around with them anyway), took home ec. during school and came out knowing jack-squat about the civil war or the Mayans and Aztecs or how many lines there were in a Shakespearian sonnet.

But man-oh-man, could that boy make the meanest cinnamon rolls you ever tasted and tell you faster than anyone you'll ever meet how much change Suzie would receive if she had a purchase of 3.28 and handed him a twenty dollar bill. (16.72, if you were wondering).

So the thoughts of his smiling customers chatting amongst themselves and the smell of brewing coffee were what filled his head as he marched down the street with hands shoved in his blue school trousers (which he still wore much to the exasperation of Serenity…but he found them comfortable and practical in one stylish package; no matter if he was carded in every club he went to), and raised his head to dreamily gaze at the cloudless, infinite summer sky that was so bright and blue, it looked just like a watercolor painting of sapphire.

Bad boys. Rebels. Those who "lived on the edge". These were the types of men Mai found herself inexplicably drawn to, just like a person to an unmarked, unopened package that just sat on their porch silently screaming "open me and find out what's inside!"

Unfortunately for the foxy blonde waitress, there never was anything to uncover other than more hormones and testosterone than she could bear and an outlook on life that they called "devil-may-care" but in reality was nothing more than self-centered, irrational, and shallow.

But still, breakup after breakup, she never quite learned her lesson. She prided herself on being a strong, independent woman, but she was so very lonely and desperately sought human companionship. She never really had any female friends; they all thought her an air-headed bimbo.

And after working the nightshift at "Zeik's 24-hour roller disco" (not a job she was ecstatic about having) and hanging up her roller skates with a heavy sigh at five in the morning, she was beginning to think if those nameless girls weren't too far off from the truth.

"King of the Cinnamon Roll" was what Joey's swirling cinnamon-brown custom-made apron read (It was a birthday present from Serenity and originally, its color was white, but years of haphazardly spilling flour and cinnamon down his front and a stubborn refusal of washing it changed that). And "King of the Cinnamon Roll was not in understatement. In fact, if it wasn't for their sweet, delectable gooey goodness, as it said on the menu, Yugi Motou would never have found his wife. Boasting that fact wasn't too shabby on the sales, either.

However, said friend's wife was currently being just a bit more than an irritant pest, in the matters of bugging Joey about finding a woman while he was desperately trying to simultaneously fill three muffin tins with cran and blue berry muffins as well as unload five trays of cookies out of the oven. Didn't help at all that she had a killer sweet tooth and her roaming fingers seemed to mindlessly find their way straight to a newly unloaded cookie tray and to her watery, waiting mouth.

It could be left unsaid that working in a hot bakery in the middle of one of the hottest mid-summer days and having your chocolate-chip cookies suddenly disappear on you could wear your temper a little bit thin, and patience most definitely was never one of Joey's strong suits. "Tèa!" He barked, sounding more like the chained ferocious dog in your neighbor's backyard rather than a sweet, chocolate-eyed puppy.

She stopped her gabbing momentarily, a cookie held in her fingers halfway to her mouth and gave a sheepish, if not guilty, look. She set the cookie back, idly took a look at the clock and mentioned something about having almost forty minutes till her shift out front started (after becoming so very addicted to Joey's neighborhood-famous cinnamon rolls, she insisted he hire her, for the good of both of them. It didn't bother him in the least; her genial and bubbly presence brought life into his bakery/coffeehouse and he was shorthanded on staff anyhow). Prancing out (but not before sneakily, or at least what she thoughtwas sneakily, snatching one last cookie), Joey was left alone in the sweltering hot kitchen.

Ha. Alone. You were never alone when you worked at "Joey's" whether you liked it or not, for there was always another manic friend right around the corner. Maybe he shouldn't've hired them, he thought.

But after about ten minutes of kneading and pounding dough until it finally conceded defeat and became the cinnamon-roll-shape he wanted, he realized, though surrounded by many employees/friends (with the exception of Kaiba who neither worked there nor let himself be granted the title of "friend") and a loving sister, that at twenty-one and wifeless, girlfriendless, he truly was alone.

She lay sandwiched between her lavender-colored and lavender-scented satin sheets, in her lavender satin nightgown in her lavender-painted apartment, thinking. She was dead tired after working the night shift on an evening with particularly…lively customers, but she just couldn't seem to fall asleep.

Mai had had a pattern of this lately. Have her boss call to tell her that her schedule's been changed and once again she worked those unholy hours (it wasn't that he didn't like her, it was just that he seemed to like her too much), then trudge home with nothing more in mind than a nice cup of jasmine tea, maybe a bubble bath, and then crash.

But she couldn't. Her mind wouldn't let her. Thinking deep, philosophical thoughts had never really been her forte, but lately her brain was swarming and buzzing rather loudly with them. Okay, maybe not philosophical, but they certainly made her stop and take a look at her life. Her mechanical, humdrum, dreary, routine, stuck-in-a-rut (shall I go on?) life. Her life where the only human companionship she has is the drunken pervs that whistle and make fox-calls and "meows" every time she walks by.

Her lonely life. Mai suddenly sat up. The revelation hit her like spaghetti suddenly and harshly splattering on your face during a sixth-grade food fight; it was sickening, made her stomach turn and…shocking? No, she couldn't quite say it was shocking for there was always a whisper of "you're alone, you're alone" in the back of her mind, the back where the icky three-eyed, bumpy and green monsters from your childhood nightmares like to hang out.

She glanced over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. Seven-thirty. Those deep, philosophical thoughts had been swarming and buzzing loudly for about two hours, considering it took her half an hour to walk back to her apartment from Zeik's. That was one benefit of her job. The others…? Well, it kept her from standing in the unemployment line with the drunks and the people who were just too damn lazy to work for their living. But that's about it.

Oh such joyful thoughts you're thinking today, Mai! What next? A bomb falling on the apartment? Getting hit by the manic ice-cream man? Fluffy white bunnies with red eyes and a shiny axe in hand? Er, paw?

The blonde heaved a sigh, something she was not so used to doing until recently, and slinked out of bed, stretching her sinewy limbs. She made a cup of tea and an egg sandwich with spinach on rye. She never really liked meat too much. She wandered aimlessly around, her slightly obsessive compulsive nature demanding she tidy up anything out of kilter (though her definition of "slight" may be drastically different than anyone else's…). Then she sat and flipped through magazines she had flipped through a hundred times over. Then again she paced.

And finally, she flopped back into an old oak maroon high-back chair her grandmother had given to her. And that's when her eyes caught it. It was like one of those entirely-too magical moments in a movie for young, whimsical children. Loving the way the outdoor air ventilated her stuffy apartment, she had left the windows open, curtains (you guessed it, lavender and satin) flapping and flitting in the breeze. The breeze that came suddenly, and then passed. The breeze that fluttered the newspaper open to the restaurant reviews.

It was too tempting to pass up. Feeling like she was thrusted into that children's movie, she glanced nervously around, feeling like it was the right thing to do when you're in a whimsical, magical children's movie, and tiptoed to the coffee table where the paper lay there silently, but oh-so loudly.

With shifty eyes, she picked the newspaper up and for no reason, at least noreason she could find rational, dashed back to the chair and planted herself in its cushiony depths, squashing herself up with her knees to her chest like she did when she was a young girl.

And she read. The critic gave the place 4 and half out of five stars; the only downside he noted was the presence of a few "eccentric" people, which he honestly didn't find too terrible. It was a bakery and coffeehouse in a rather small, quaint town called Mapleoak that was actually on the other side of the state. It was simply named "Joey's", and she found it inexplicably endearing, as much as she did the eccentric people the critic "didn't find too terrible".

She thought. How many days would it take her to get to Mapleoak, especially considering she was vehicle-less? One? Two? Two-and-a-half? And then she thought again. It didn't matter. She so desperately needed a break from her scheduled life. A vacation…

A bright smile bloomed on her face, lighting up her lilac eyes beautifully. Her mother always said she looked best when she was smiling, but that was unfortunately not something she had been doing often lately.

So it was decided. She would pack a couple changes of clothes, enough money for a hotel room plus some spare change and perhaps a book then buy the earliest train ticket to Mapleoak and enjoy some blissful and much-needed "Mai time".

He suddenly stopped pouring the coffee and knitted his thin brows. "'Dat was…odd." Yugi, whom arrived around seven to work on the till, gave a curious look and asked, "What was odd?" Joey blinked. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. He resumed pouring the coffee, brows still knitted, however. "Eh, er, it was…nothin', I just…I just felt this sort of weird…" He searched around for the right word, "Fluttering in my chest. T'wasn't bad, just…odd." He said again.

Yugi merely shrugged and went back to working on the till.

Joey let out a small laugh, confused but anything but bothered by this out-of-the-blue feeling of…euphoria.

So Joey went about the day like usual, baking cinnamon rolls and pouring coffee, only with a fluttering in his chest that was almost magical and a bounce in his step, unaware of the golden bird that was about to crash-land her way in his life, and possibly change it forever.

To be continued…

So? So? What do you think? Is this little project worth continuing? I really hope a few people review; I think it would be fun to do a MaixJoey fic. I weaved the other characters into the fic for the purpose of enhancing the characters of Mai and Joey. And just because it wouldn't be as fun without them.