KD: At last, another chapter up! Sorry for the wait. We're going as fast as we can, honest. Hopefully since it's christmas break, we'll be able to crank them out faster. So enjoy!

Chapter Eleven: Just Coffee?

Songs for chapter:

Crush - David Archuleta

Seto watched Joey leave the house; he looked down on the ground, and picked up the collar that Joey had thrown to the ground. He clenched it tight in his hand, heading to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. What was Wheeler's deal? Seto looked at the collar in his hand and started to lightly tap the dragon tag, watching it shimmer in the light. "That idiot makes no sense; if he hated it so much then why did he agree? I don't treat him like some pet." Seto grabbed his coffee and headed to the living room, dimming the light and sitting in his chair. He grabbed his laptop from the side table. He started to work on some programming, but kept getting coding errors because he couldn't concentrate. Abandoning all hope of work, he opened up his itunes and Bach, Mass in B minor started to resonate in the room, and Seto's eyes and mind began to drift away from the world.

"Seto, wake up." Seto's eyes wearily opened, his neck stiff from falling asleep on the chair. "Seto, were you here all night?" Mokuba handed him a cup of coffee that was still steaming.

"What time is it?" Seto grabbed the coffee while rolling his neck.

"It's six thirty-seven." Mokuba looked at his watch. Seto sipped his coffee, not getting out of the chair, looking dead tired. "Seto, what happened last night?"

Seto's eyes shot up for a minute. "Nothing happened last night."

"Liar," Mokuba lightly pouted. "Don't treat me like a child, Seto. I heard you two arguing last night." Mokuba snatched back the coffee cup from Seto.

Seto got up from his chair and stretched his legs. "Nothing happened, Mokuba, so just drop it."

"Fine…" Mokuba said watching Seto leave the living room. "Guess I have to do this the hard way." Mokuba pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.

"Wheeler residence," Joey said after his house phone rang a few times. "Mokuba!" Joey exclaimed, "How did you get my house number?"

"I hacked into the employee registration system and got it from there, but that's not the point. I was going to beta a new Kaiba Corp game today, would you like to come with me?"

Joey smiled. Some alone time playing video games would be the perfect medicine. "Ya sure. Would love ta."

"Great. Meet you in an hour- I'll wait in front of Kaiba Corp for you." Mokuba hung up before Joey could say goodbye. "Now to get brother…"

Seto stepped out of the shower, drying his hair while picking out which gravity-defying coat to wear today. "Brother, we have an issue!" Mokuba said, opening Seto's door without knocking.

"What's wrong, Mokuba?' Seto said, noticing the urgency in his brother's voice. He clasped his hands on Mokuba's shoulders. "What is it?"

"Seto, I just got a call from the office. Someone is trying to hack into the Kaiba Corp computer system to play the new game."

"Someone thinks they could get past my firewall," Seto started. "Well, let's go see them try." As soon as Seto finished dressing. he and Mokuba left to Kaiba Corp. After getting out of the limo, Mokuba looked around to see if Joey arrived yet. His heart was still afraid that his plan would fail if Joey was in site. "Something wrong, Mokuba?" Seto knew his little brother all too well. Seto could tell by Mokuba's body language something was off.

"Just worried about our hacker," Mokuba lied. "I've got to use the restroom, Seto. I'll meet you upstairs in a minute." Seto looked at him, with serious eyes, knowing that something was wrong, but walked off anyways without his brother.

A few minutes later, Mokuba saw Joey weaving through the crowded streets. "Hey!" Joey jumped and waved at Mokuba making sure he noticed he was there.

Mokuba waved back with his best fake smile. "Hi, Joey! Ready to play the game?"

"Sure am. What kind of game is it? I'll beat them all," he said, doing a lame victory pose.

"Uhhh….I want to surprise you?" Mokuba said, trying to think of something fast.

"Oh, ok. Let's go!" Joey walked into Kaiba Corp, following Mokuba. Joey walked down the hallway he knew all too well, the hallway to Seto's office. Joey's face soon turned quite serious. "What are we doing here? This is Kaiba's office?" Joey exclaimed.

"Seto's not here Joey," he said, all too quickly, "I just need to get something for the game in his office."

Joey looked at him suspiciously. "Ok, Mokuba, if you say so." The two walked into the office, and Seto's gaze snapped up as the door opened, and both teens stiffened in recognition. Mokuba could feel the tension in the room, and it was worse than he could have imagined. "You lied to me, Mokuba," Joey finally said, attempting to leave, but Mokuba wouldn't let him.

"No, you can't leave." Mokuba said his arms spread wide trying to block the door to the best of his abilities. "I know something happened between the two of you last night. And I'm not leaving until the two of you talk it out. You are both important to me, and it hurts me that you two are acting like ten year olds. So no one leaves this room until something is figured out." Seto and Joey still said nothing to each other, but their eyes were doing all the talking. After ten minutes past of eye glaring and silence Mokuba left the room. "Fine I'll leave, but you two better talk, and I'll be standing in front of the door to make sure you don't leave." Mokuba closed the door behind him. "Those two better talk."

Mokuba's exit did nothing to ease the pressure between the two stubborn boys. Seto eventually got tired of the pointless stare down and went to his desk, pulling out his laptop. If he was going to be stuck there, he could at least try doing something productive. He only managed to open it about an inch or so when Joey's hand slammed down on it.

"Don't even think about it, Kaiba," Joey said. "If I gotta suffer then so do you."

Seto's glare was borderline homicidal. "Wheeler, I'm going to say this only once. If you touch my belongings without my permission again, there will be consequences."

"Yeah, yeah, fire will fall from the sky, puppies will die, I get it," Joey said sarcastically. "Look, it's obvious neither of us is getting out of here any time soon if we just ignore each other, so let's just hurry up and get through this so I can go home."

"I have no interest in having a therapy session with you, Wheeler," Seto said, folding his arms across his chest. "As far as I'm concerned this is a waste of my time."

"Well, that's too bad, cuz I got several bones to pick with you, rich boy," Joey said, pointing at him. "I still haven't forgotten about what you did to me, and I don't think I'll ever understand why. All I know is it's driving me nuts."

"I don't see why it should," Seto replied bluntly.

"You molested me, you ass," Joey seethed. "And for what? Were you just trying to prove how friggin superior you are?"

"I don't have to explain anything to you," Seto replied.

"Oh, lemme guess. It was some sort of test, right? Well, Kaiba, I hope I surpassed your infinitely low expectations of me," Joey said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Don't forget who you are talking to, Wheeler. No matter what the situation, as long as you are working under me, I am your employer."

"I don't care anymore," Joey said. "I'm speaking my mind. No job is worth this much humiliation."

"What makes you think I was trying to humiliate you?" Seto asked soberly.

"Well, let's see, ya dress me up in a dog bondage outfit, but before that ya helped me out when I twisted my ankle, then you did… THAT to me, you insulted my family, but you let me have a job…." Joey rubbed his hands against his head ferociously. "Ngh! I don't understand!"

"Understand what, Wheeler?" Seto snapped, growing impatient and waiting for a point to be made.

"Anything!" Joey exclaimed with exasperation. "These past months have been so screwy I can't even wrap my own head around it."

"So why stick with it for so long?" Seto demanded, though not so harshly. "Just give up and find something else."

"Oh yeah, that's what you WANT me to do," Joey fumed. "But I can't do that. I can't just give up, it's against my nature. But I don't understand why you're always making things so hard for me."

"How have I made things difficult?" asked Kaiba. "If memory serves me, I have not once asked you to do anything impossible or unreasonable."

"Our definitions of unreasonable are clearly at odds here," Joey thought, aggravated.

"You said you were going to say what's on your mind, Wheeler," Kaiba said contemptuously. "But I can tell there is still something else bothering you that you seem to have troubles expressing."

"I just…" Joey started strong but his words caught in his throat and he turned red with what looked to be embarrassment. "I just… don't know how to see you anymore."

"Why should it make any difference the way you see me?" Seto inquired.

This statement made Joey confused and a little hurt. It was like no matter what he said, Seto just didn't care. "Ya told me to be honest, why can't you return the favor for once? Mokuba wanted us to do this for a reason, so if nothing else, do it for him."

Seto's face looked rather disgruntled at this, knowing Joey was tugging at his one weakness. But he was a master at turning things around. "What is it that you want me to say?"

"I wanna know why you hired me, why there are days when you're not as big of an asshole as you usually are, why you've been putting me in all these awkward situations," Joey listed off.

"I hired you because I needed a competent employee," Seto ended it like that, not even recognizing the last two questions being asked.

"Gah!" Joey exclaimed with a sigh. "Fine Kaiba, I give up." He raised his arms up in surrender while plopping down in a chair near the corner of the room by the window.

It figured. Joey knew that this plan of Mokuba's wasn't going to work the moment he stepped through that door. Kaiba was a selfish, overprivileged narcissist who just didn't give a damn about other people's problems. Why couldn't he see what Joey was going through right now? Sure, Joey wasn't great at articulating his thoughts, but still… As much as he didn't want to, ideas of quitting kept rising up in his mind. Being around Seto was driving him crazy, and he wasn't sure how much more of it he could take. The worst part of it was, it wasn't the sort of crazy Joey was used to. He couldn't remember turning red so many times, feeling so awkward, or his body acting weird when Seto looked him dead in the eye.

Before, Joey had always seen Seto as just a rich snob. However, he felt that in these past couple months he was able to get a glimpse of something more, something different. He wasn't sure when he had started seeing it. He tried to backtrack to the time when he had started seeing Seto differently. The first thing that came to his mind was the day he had twisted his ankle. Seto, rather than humiliate Joey, actually came to his aid. It was like all the hard, sharp edges around the great Seto Kaiba had softened and he was almost human.

That didn't matter though. He could not forgive or forget what had happened in that very office. Joey hated how vividly he remembered it, all of it. Seto's hands on him, his tongue against Joey's neck, and the feeling of helplessness that Joey had felt throughout the entire thing. He had wanted so hard to fight back, but he had unknowingly fallen into submission. What bothered him the most though, more than letting the blue eyed jerk rule over him, was a fact he'd been trying to ignore this whole time; he wanted to experience that feeling again, from the Seto only he knew.

"It's no use," Joey thought staring at the window at the darkening city below. "I don't know how it happened but, somehow… I'm… Kaiba and… but there's no way I could tell him that! He'd laugh at me, or worse yet he'd kick me out of the country. He could do it." Little did Joey realize, his thoughts were projecting loudly through his body motions and from Seto's point of view it looked as if he was having a seizure.

"Don't die on my floor over there, Wheeler." Seto said, causing Joey to stop his spazzing. "Think fast," Seto said, throwing a pink object at Joey. It startled Joey, almost dropping the object, but he instinctively caught it in both hands. Joey looked down and saw a bubblegum pink flip phone. Joey opened it and saw the wallpaper was a Red-Eyes Black Dragon, and three numbers were already installed in the phone, Seto cell, Mokuba's cell, and Seto's private office extension number. Joey really didn't know what to think of this action. It was making his head spin again; Seto actually did something nice, again.

"What's this phone for?" Joey said, still staring at it with confused eyes.

Seto lightly laughed, "It's Mokuba's old phone, there is still six months left on it." Joey was confused why Mokuba had a pink phone, but decided it was best not to ask.

"What am I s'posed ta do with this? Am I s'posed ta keep it?"

Seto looked at Joey incredulously. "You use it to call people, Wheeler, and whether you keep it or not is up to you."

"Thanks for the phone," Joey said pocketing it. "But something is telling me we still haven't finished Mokuba's request yet." Seto shot him annoyed look, but Joey still continued, "Listen Kaiba, I think well...um…I might be seeing you…well…differently." Seto's head peaked up slightly in interest. "Well maybe, um…you are not as big of a jerk I always took ya for…..I don't mind being 'round ya so much, when you're not treating me like your dog." Secretly though, all the dog references didn't bother Joey so much anymore, as long as they were from Kaiba alone. Joey thought he saw a genuine smile from Kaiba, but it disappeared as soon as it was made. Seto walked over to Joey and Joey was not sure what to expect, so he planned for the worst.

Much to Joey's surprise, Seto placed his hand on Joey's head. "I guess we can both agree on something after all."

Joey felt his cheeks heating up. Normally he would want to smack Seto's hand away for once again inadvertently treating him like a canine. He also noticed that his heart beat had become somewhat irregular, but he did his best to ignore it. It was still a little vague to him, what it was that was going on between the two of them, and he was sure Seto wasn't going to help him figure it out any time soon. Joey wanted to give this a try though. It was the only way he believed he would be able to work through his confused emotions. Plus… maybe Kaiba wasn't such a bad guy after all. I mean, he did give Joey a phone for no reason at all. So Joey wanted ot return the favor somehow, so as not to feel indebted.

"So, listen, I was thinking…" Joey began, retreating out from under Seto's hand. "Since it was your birthday recently, I thought maybe I could take ya out somewhere. I mean, I know you're not big on celebrating but a birthday isn't something ta be ignored. It's an important day for everyone."

"Where would you be able to take me, Wheeler?" Seto asked skeptically.

Joey said, doing a front fist clench and grinning confidently. "I'm glad you asked."

Roughly thirty minutes later, the two were sitting in Seto's limo in front of Burger Land. "You've got to be joking, Wheeler," Seto said, looking disdainfully at the low class diner. "If you think that I'm going to step foot in that place, then you obviously are dumber than I took you for."

"Hey, I'm trying ta be nice. Ya could at least try and accept my offer. Besides, this is really all I can afford," he admitted sheepishly.

"I refuse," Seto said blatantly. "However, if you insist on this pointless endeavor, there's a coffee shop a few blocks down from here that even you should be able to afford."

"Just coffee?" Joey asked. "Are ya sure? Couldn't I still treat ya to a burger on the side?" Seto glared at him and you could almost see his imaginary puppy dog ears droop. "Okay, you win," Joey said, but then pointed at Seto and boldly stated, "But you're getting a sandwich with that coffee."

Seto folded his arms and turned away from the other male. "Whatever, Wheeler."

KD: Hooray! Reconciliation is a beautiful thing. So, now that Seto and Joey are a couple, things should get easier, right? BWAHAHAHAHA! :P Hope you enjoyed, and stayed tuned! ^_^