Ahh, so this chapter sort of segues form seriousness into lighthearted, unnecessary nonsense, but I couldn't quiet think of anything better to write the next chapter about, lol, and I'm too in love with bending the playful chemistry between them. so. oops :)

-comment reviews-

divine. infekt: ahaha, yesss, because the idea behind Seto smoking was definitely supposed to come off as a total mind fuck moment; but for whatever reason I identify with his character a lot, and feel like he'd be a lot less uptight underneath the surface-haha plus because when people found out I smoked, like kids from school, they were like NO WAY-thinking that i was just this nerdy kid who never said anything. ahhh. but yes, I enjoy this Kaiba too (so much so that it is terribly throwing off my original plot; but like i said, I can't help it anymore lol)

Guest: well thank you for the review! it always catches me by TOTAL surprise whenever I see another review for this story; however, it always makes me guiltily happy to see that my cliffhangers have, in fact, effected SOMEBODY lol. but i'm glad you're finding this to be out of the ordinary, as i am stringing it a long in quite a drawn out, confusing sort of way-hopefully it continued to intrigue you in all its seemingly directionless progressing lol

*yay, morgan continues to probably dissuade people from liking this story by advertising such awful, unconvincing pitches about it to her readers*

-.-.-.-

Chapter Fourteen: Drunken Words and Sober Thoughts?

Joey looked up in a hazy confusion, Seto was never one to disclose anything truly personal; and yet now, in the stillness of his apartment, the youth was silenced into the sweetest, most delicate submission. Falling backward on the pressure of his palms, the blonde watched with his breath held, unable to fathom the words his adversary was beginning to form, and allowed Kaiba's shaky, yet fluid, speech continue with the soft and silent prompting of his attention.

"Before Gozaburo adopted us. Before my…well…when my parents were still alive…" the brunette paused, his eyes trying to clench shut even more tightly, "I was still just—normal," he seemed to say sadly for a lack of better words, "and my name…my name was never Kaiba either…" His body shifted, uncertain of whether to move towards or away from it as he cleared his throat, "Before all that…my real name was…my real name is," there was a slight tremor, and a soft catch, "…Hashimoto."

"Seto Hashimoto," Joey repeated softly, each syllable felt so fragile, so delicate, and yet so extremely heavy. Suddenly, the strange attraction between Kaiba and Yugi made so much sense—and he couldn't understand why, for the first time in over a month, he'd thought of his friend, but the evidence was there instantly, screaming Joey in the face. Yugi's last name is Motto, he thought, it was because of Yugi's name…it was a reference point…it was familiar…he could identify with it—but only so far…

"I think you wanted to relate to us," Joey connected the dots, "but you had no idea how."

The silence unnerved him, making him think he'd upset the boy, before hearing the brunette sigh in smoothly and exhale in rigid intervals, as if he couldn't keep his voice from catching.

"You're right. I didn't." his eyes cast downward, clearly focusing in and out of his usual cycling of conflicting emotion. "I still don't."

"Still don't." Joey repeated conscientiously. "Or still wont?"

"Both?" The other asked, seeking some sort of stable point in Joey's gaze, as if he were unsure the combination were even possible.

For some reason, the question weighed on him with a terrible pressure that began to break down something heavy in his heart. "I can't answer that for you."

Joey had hoped to come off wise or intellectual, but the only thing that Kaiba understood about that sentence was the word can't. It was rejection; it was humiliating. "Forget it."

Leaning back suddenly, Joey attempted to lay his palms flat on the bed behind his back in order to stage the authenticity of his reposition, but the alcohol had made his true movements sloppy and transparent. "No."

Kaiba's mouth had been in mid motion when the authoritative response glued it shut, and the brunette had been blindsided into revealing his vulnerability. "Ju-just forget I said anything," blue eyes became dull and downcast, as if not to watch the stutter.

Joey had seen it clear as day though, and it had betrayed every element of Kaiba's confidence. "Then why say it at all?" The question rolled unthinkingly into the air, forcing the brunette to rejoin his vocals with those that continued to draw him out.

Kaiba closed his eyes, however, leaning backward until his shirt rode up, and clenching the Manuscript Paper on top of his chest as if it were about to fly away. "Because I'm really drunk."

"Liar." The alcohol was bringing out Joey's old self as the lack of Kaiba's assurance seemed to electrify his own, and there was no conceivable trace of hesitation.

"Well…I'm drunk," the executive rephrased, revealing the piece of truth he'd spun the lie from. "Sometimes I say stupid stuff."

"That was personal, not stupid."

Suddenly Kaiba's torso rose forward again, eyes popping open, "Listen. I had a really great day today, and I don't want to ruin it." He was sitting more closely than before, shades of blue pleading as he spoke, "Can we please just go to bed instead?"

Joey simply stared at the words in the air.

"I'll sleep on the floor and everything," Kaiba added quickly.

The proximity that lacked in distance between them made the words seem more intimate than they were, and Joey shook his head softly, "No, that's alright, I'll take the floor, you sleep here."

"No, I feel bad," the brunette's voice was unusually soft, almost beckoning. "There's more than enough room."

"For both of us?" Joey asked, wide-eyed, surprised, and flushing. "Here?" He asked, pointing down at his mattress.

"Yeah," he shrugged innocently, already crawling over to the corner closest to the wall.

"Isn't that…kind of weird?"

"It's not like I'm not asking you to spoon with me," Kaiba rolled his eyes, but without judgment. "The floor is just uncomfortable, and I'd feel rude."

"Well don't," Joey shook his head rapidly, feeling an incredible rush of nerves due to the other boy's lack there of. "It's fine, you're my guest, I don't mind, I sleep on the floor all the time."

"Wheeler—"

"No really, it's not a big—"

"Wheeler," Kaiba repeated over him this time. "Shut up and lay down."

So he did.

"Now go to sleep," Kaiba yawned, pulling the covers back as if they did this every night.

Joey was staring at the ceiling, heart thumping, and limbs too afraid to move from their stationary positions. "Goodnight Kaiba,"—several words he never thought he'd fall asleep to.

"Sleep tight," the other slurred sleepily, turning onto his side, curling the lengths of his legs into an almost fetal position. "And…" then a nervous pause, "…and you don't have to call me that anymore," the brunette spoke quietly, facing the wall with his eyes wide open, "You can call me by my first name if…if you want to."

"Alright." And this time Joey turned to the side as well, with his back to the brunette's, and his stomach in knots. "Goodnight…" he breathed in and out quietly, "Seto."

-.-.-

[apologies in advance for this awfully unsentimental scene transition haha]

-.-.-

Of all the asses Joey had ever woken up to, he never thought that this morning it would belong to a six-foot-three male, who he had once hated beyond the ability of words to express; and yet, as his eyes fluttered open in a dull, pained rejection to the light, he stared at the arm against his chest rather calmly. There was a creaky draft drifting through the apartment, but it was so warm where he was laying, curled into a ball on his side, and even warmer where Seto's right hand pressed unintentionally into his shirt.

Twisting and turning respectively as the drugs metabolized and lost their lasting effects, both boys had shifted considerably during the night, their limbs bending and unfolding until their bodies recognized comfortable, less-defensive positions. Joey had somehow gone from facing the room, to facing the sensation of Kaiba's warm, shallow breathing hitting his face in spurts.

The blonde blinked a few times. It was such a rare sight to see Seto so still—so calm and unmoving—that Joey couldn't help but smile, despite the pulsating head pains of a hundred dollar hangover. Breathing in deeply, he could taste the menthol of the brunette's cigarettes mixed in with stale whiskey, and the slightest traces of left over spearmint, and for some reason it was stimulating.

Breathing in and out slowly, as well as irregularly, Kaiba's back and shoulder blades rose and fell, his stomach pressing against the sheets. He'd rolled onto his front side at some point in the night and twisted the covers all around his legs and lower body. Both legs were bent, one at the knee, crossing over the backside of the other, and creating a perfect 'four', which was intertwined with lengths of fabric.

Tracing the knot of blankets up his longlegs, and the unusual site of wrinkled pants, Joey noticed that the comforter had shifted the waistline on Kaiba's slacks down below his hipbones; but only on one side, exposing the shapely protrusion of smooth, pale skin as it melted into the small of his back, revealing the areas where his dress shirt had ridden up when he'd tucked his left arm under his head, and drawn his right to his side in an unfinished fist. However, hazel eyes were pooling into the dimples that butter-flied right below the smooth dip in the brunette's lower body, and then slipped down his side to the curving bone that exposed just the slightest slope of shadowed skin from his hips up to his abdomen.

The sun was filtering through the shades persistently, and Joey noticed how the rays had crept in so quietly and framed the brunette's dark, tousled hair in delicate, dancing beams of light as they fractured with the swaying of the blinds against the draft. It was pushed down in some places, and fanned out in others, giving Joey a perfect view of Seto, who was facing him with his own pressed into the back of his hand. His piercing eyes were closed and his mouth was open, but not obnoxiously wide or anything, just enough to breathe, with his lips parted perfectly, pressing outward just a little, every time he exhaled.

Then there was that left hand again, that left appendage belonging to the bent elbow extended alongside Kaiba's torso—the one curled unknowingly against the space on Joey's chest where his heart was. He looks so….different, Joey cocked his head to the side a little, submerging half his cheek into the pillow, while watching the other boy with one eye open and the other closed, and he's…so close to me… The idea was alarming and yet here he was, lying there, completely transfixed and thrown off by the almost angelic presence across from him.

"Way to leave out that he is beyond gorgeous," he could hear Sam repeating, imagining her reaction to all of this if she'd been there; and, as much as he hadn't intended to, he began to wonder if perhaps this was what gorgeous really looked like. If perhaps the silence and the stillness were what were stunning, and that perhaps Kaiba in his simplest form, was actually quite beautiful.

After all, he couldn't rightly find it in his chest to denounce the other as ugly, but at the same time, wasn't completely convinced that made it true that he thought he wasn't ugly. Why do I even care, the blonde tried to roll his eyes, but failed because he knew exactly why he was over speculating so much...

…He told me I can call him by his first name now, Joey remembered their closing words from the night before, only drawing his eyes forward even more, as he shifted just a fraction of space closer, feeling the rhythm of Kaiba's breathing regulate his own. He's never so much as 'allowed' me to address him before, period … and the blonde couldn't deny that a part of him felt special for it now, for the fact he was slowly becoming an exception.

Quickly transforming the room around him in quite a stunning contrast, his head and his heart were both pounding under rapid pressure, but it was somehow pleasant the way Joey could feel each knuckle compressing against him, as the spaces beneath the brunette's fingernails gathered little rolls of fabric from where they'd been periodically burrowing forwards into it. It was almost enough to be a grip—to be holding him— and yet Joey knew better than to believe it was meant to be there; no, it was merely one of the hazards of sharing a bed—people tend to-intertwine and tangle.

Joey also knew he shouldn't be so weird about it, but he didn't know if he wanted to get out of bed yet, didn't know if he'd like what cold, icy things waited for them once they left the sanctity of what'd happened the night before. For all I know, he'll deny the whole thing, Joey sighed, knowing it was all too possible, or what if he doesn't remember? What if he can't figure out why we're even a sharing a bed? The thought alone was daunting, and dragged him down another notch, that means I'll have to explain it all to him, which means he's going to get mad probably…

Joey released another sigh, deciding to close his eyes, still comforted by the presence of another person that he hadn't had, quite like this, in longer than he could remember. Instead he'd spent so many nights alone, sometimes shivering and scared, sometimes wakening up in intervals, and always curling his arms around pillows in search of someone who wouldn't ever be there. This wasn't the same as Mai though…Kaiba still wasn't the same as Mai, for many, very obvious reasons, Joey dually noted; however, it couldn't hurt to let the elder sleep in a little longer too. I bet he never sleeps in, Joey grinned softly, watching the face in front of him rising and falling in steady waves of silence. People are always saying you can either sink or swim—why can't you just float?

However, the next time both of them came to—flooded with embarrassment—the blonde remembered quiet expertly that it was because they were constantly drowning. Drowning in the inconsistencies—in the advancing—in themselves—and it rendered both of them speechless for a good fifteen minutes.

"So," Joey breathed out with emphasis, staring straight up at the ceiling before catching Kaiba sideways with his eyes, "should we…talk about… girls…or something…?"

Laying next to him, Kaiba lifted himself enough to lean over, "Shut up," he responded, punching Joey in the arm, before reverting back to his previous position to cover his face disbelievingly.

"Guess you're not used to the morning after—huh?" Joey quipped nervously, rubbing the space on his shoulder he could hardly feel. "I always pegged you for the one night stand type."

"Oh really?" the brunette re-met the room with a sarcastic sense of intrigue.

Joey shrugged, adjusting to the feeling of the mattress shifting beneath them as Kaiba turned onto his side. "Well I sure as hell never imagined you as the breakfast-in-bed-kinda-guy."

"Am I the only one slightly disturbed by the fact these are the things you think about me?" Kaiba asked blatantly, as they both strategically tiptoed around the topic of waking up in bed next to one another. "Honestly, Wheeler, your fascination with me is questionable," he grinned now, "flattering, but questionable."

"I am not fascinated with you," Joey scoffed, outwardly blushing.

"Soo," Kaiba slid a hand underneath his head to prop it up thoughtfully, "Just mildly-obsessed?"

The blonde's entire face scrunched up irritated, pushing himself into a sitting position, "You're the one who wanted me to sleep here so badly," he rushed in a desperate defense, knowing there was little he could say to justify the deepening color in his face. "So maybe you have the questionable attraction."

"Well," another infamously unbeatable grin inched into the side of his face, and Kaiba's eyes slanted upwardly into Joey's, "I never said anything about being attracted to me."

"Neither did I!"

"I don't know," Kaiba's mouth pulled into a speculating side sweep as he shook his head, "You did just try and blame the idea on me," he pointed out skeptically, "so it stands to reckon that you're trying to deny the same thing, does it not?"

Frustrated even further, Joey couldn't find a way around the wording, and his voice fell embarrassedly into almost inaudible tones, "You know what I meant," he glared at the unchanging amusement across from him.

"Of course," the brunette rolled onto his back again, gesturing with his hands as he stared at the ceiling with shifting facial features. "You're clearly trying to avoid this subject, because you are clearly quiet enthralled with me," blue eyes fell teasingly to the side, "and you think you can turn it all back on me, because I told you not to sleep on the floor… Am I leaving anything out?" he asked, as self-assured as the smart ass he couldn't help but act like at the sight of such a playful opening.

"Yeah," Joey nearly burst with humiliation, more red than Kaiba thought it was humanly possible to turn. "The part where you told me to shut up and lay down," he repeated angrily, almost smugly as he awaited Seto's reaction.

Although he simply received them as factually as they were. "So I did," the other boy turned again to smile, "but you're the one who listened."

"Fuck you, Kaiba," Joey scolded, staring him down harshly.

"Relax," the brunette redirected softly, leaning into the eye contact as he almost affectionately flicked the space between the blonde's eyes, "It was just a joke."

"A pretty long running and unnecessary joke," Joey continued unappreciatively under his breath, so god awfully embarrassed at the time he'd spent staring so taken at the brunette, before all this, when he'd still been asleep.

"But a funny joke, nonetheless," Kaiba pulled himself upward, leaning down over the foot of the bed to fumble through a jacket that had been carelessly dropped.

Counterproductively watching the arch and fold of Kaiba's body bending forward, Joey once again retraced the dimples above his backside that gave way to even more skin as the brunette's shirt rode halfway up his body. Although he snapped back into the perfect example of oblivious-disinterest as Kaiba retracted with a cigarette pack in hand.

Extending the nearly empty selection of smokes to Joey, after pulling one out skillfully with his lips, Kaiba leaned into the wall, inspecting the other curiously. "So, are you always so polite when waking up in bed with total strangers?"

The consistently cavalier, yet completely unchaste selection of jokes was making comebacks increasingly hard to find, and Joey grabbed the lighter out of the other's hand before bothering to respond ineffectually as he knew he was bound to. "One, you're not a total stranger," Joey started unconfidently, stalling in the repetitions of his cigarette, "and two, what makes you think I always wake up in situations like this?"

Kaiba leaned forward, maneuvering around the other's body in search of an ashtray. "Isn't it obvious?" he offered, reaching passed Joey's right hand side for a half empty water bottle on the night stand.

"What are you implying?" Joey's eyes narrowed.

"Well, you have seemed to make a new friend rather fast," Kaiba suggested in that painfully obvious tone he always took on, "A female friend," his lips continued to grin suggestively, "and she seemed quiet taken with you, if I remember correctly."

"Sam?" Joey asked with his eyebrows wrinkled, "No way, we're just friends."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Of course I'm sure," he sent an irritated eye-roll at the brunette as he took the water bottle out of his hands to ash his menthol into.

"Is she sure?" Kaiba continued, perpetually basking in the guilty pleasure he got out of getting a rise from the blonde.

"Why don't you ask her," Joey redirected sarcastically, "Or, oh wait—her boyfriend," he concluded the advancing of the argument. "Y'know just because I talk to a girl doesn't automatically mean I'm fucking her," he dismissed in offense, thinking back towards the memory of his father unintentionally.

"But you have, haven't you?" Kaiba prompted, "fucked quiet a few—I mean?"

The color in the blonde's face confusedly fell back into flushing patterns that flashed back and forth between infuriation and shame, "So what if I have?" he demanded, "It's totally irrelevant and none of your business."

"On the contrary," Kaiba dragged his cigarette, "I think I deserve to know if I should go and have myself tested y'know? Don't wanna catch any cooties," he employed the word humorously, but Joey continued to explode.

"Tested?" he asked forcefully, "Like you have any room to talk."

"And whatever do you mean?" the brunette asked innocently, although thoroughly amused with his self-knowing smile.

"Oh spare me Mr. I'm So Rich I Make Panties Hit The Floor," Joey sneered, shaking his head, dropping the cigarette filter into the water with a hiss, and fingering through the leftover three to grab another. "Don't even try and act like you're so pure and innocent."

"I wasn't aware that money could defy gravity," Kaiba breathed out the smoke thoughtfully.

"Don't change the subject," the blonde reprimanded, almost certain he'd secured the reverse of this ungodly argument once and for all, but unaware how awkwardly it was about to come back at him.

"I'm afraid I had no other choice," blue eyes bore no trickery, and Kaiba simply shrugged, "You see, it's a topic I can't really contribute much to."

"Ahuh," Joey nodded, not falling for the modesty, "Because you of all people are so hard up for a date, right? You, with all the smooth lines and the sly looks," Joey asked, speculating too sarcastically to notice how in detail he was delving. "With the perfect bone structure and the playboy façade? Yeah, I'm sure you're as celibate as can be," hazel eyes rolled, "not."

"Perfect bone structure?" Kaiba implored, with a tsk-tsking and the shake of his head, "You really have put a lot of thought into this—haven't you, Wheeler?"

"It was just a generalization," he shook the comment away with disregard and a lack of conviction.

"Well, I really hate to keep disappointing you," Kaiba peered down into the more than half-empty cigarette pack now too, reaching in for the second to last, "but I really can't, to the best of my ability, say that I've ever truly slept with anyone actually."

"What? Why? Liar," Joey sputtered, saying each word one after the other in a hurried train of outwardly projected logic.

"Well which is it then?" the brunette gestured, prompting the blonde to make up his mind as he continued to draw more and more attention away from last night; despite the fact the conversation was pulling even more intimately into his personal history.

"All three," Joey stuck by his original statement, "What—because there's no way I heard you correctly. Why—because there is no rational explanation. And liar—because you're lying through your teeth right now."

"Well get your ears checked then," the brunette fought the issue with little resistance, framing his face amusedly in the hung-over inconsistency of his confession, "because you heard me right as rain. Which negates the necessity of requiring an explanation," he tacked on systematically, "thus validating my claim truthfully," Kaiba concluded, flawlessly unchallengeable as always.

Suddenly, Joey felt almost self-conscious as he sat in bed next the brunette, realizing that Kaiba really wasn't trying to bullshit him—that he was actually serious. And for some reason that made him feel used and just a little desperate as he realized his own number extended well past seven...completely different people. "Well don't I feel like a regular, back-ally Sally," he released a disbelieving breath.

"And you made me feel so terrible for saying so the first time," Kaiba grinned, dodging the swat that shot out unthinkingly at his head, missing and knocking the cherry off his cigarette instead. "Oh, well now look what you've done," the brunette swatted at the smoldering mass, sinking through the sheets in an emboldening set of rings, losing his seriousness to laughter as his lips wavered into a smile, "Popping cherries all over the place," he discouraged, shaking his head, and trying to keep a straight face.

The directness and the parallel of the reference re-froze the blonde however, and the never-ending spectrum of scarlet melted the stillness on his face into scattering movements of unfixed stability. "If that was another one of your demented requests," he began, under unsure confidence, realizing the absence of his medicine for the first time as it drew the reality of the conversation more organically into mind. "Then you can just forget about it," the blonde finished, looking downward immediately and shaking his head to himself as if to reprimand the stupidity.

In a similar approach to the unprovoked atmosphere of conversing under the pretext of sobriety, Kaiba's hand slipped up and over his mouth after a moment of fumbling through his pockets once more, and swallowed dryly. "And what makes you think I'd go for you?" he asked, almost condescendingly beneath the continuously impish advances that were unable to discontinue his control over the ebb and flow of the other.

"Are you trying to make me as uncomfortable as humanly possible, right now?" Joey asked, too red in the face now to conjure comebacks at all, "or are you just secretly enjoying this, that much?"

"Eh," Kaiba tipped his head this way and that as he feigned contemplation, "I guess they go together pretty equally. So, guilty as charged," he allowed, inching forward as he scooted off the bed, collecting his jacket and standing up straight. "Now c'mon, I've got to change into something that doesn't smell like an ashtray," he yawned, leaving Joey in the same, exasperated, incredulity he always did when chasing these boundaries between them, and crossing each one just enough to draw out the tension.

"And I suppose you need me to come along because you can't dress yourself?" Joey asked, both caught up in the increase of adrenaline and anxiety, and nervously exposing his disposition uncomfortably as this whole conversation provoked his thoughts in directions they'd never quiet gone before.

"No, I'm quiet capable," he opened the door, "but you on the other hand—are not," the brunette smiled, provokingly enough to get the other out of bed. "Besides, I wouldn't mind the company."

And for whatever reason, Joey followed.

-.-.-.-

Remind me to kill Sam, he thought, half-mad with the morning as it intertwined with the previous night, tying off little knots until the comparison turned into a latter between where her words had begun harmlessly on the ground, and to the unfathomable heights they'd climbed into context. Why'd she have to say all that about us? He over speculated, having been unable to ingest his medicine under Kaiba's observation, and paying the price as he grew nervously out of character. Because of course we'd end up sleeping in the same bed the exact same night she does, he rolled his eyes, having almost forgotten the sentimental tones they'd fallen asleep to against the sensually sarcastic subject matter it'd lead to.

Kaiba yawned, lazily dropping his jacket onto the chair while his first initiative had been to begin shuffling around his countertops with the clanking of glass bottles shifting against each other, until he pulled one forward decidedly. "Drink?" he called out to Joey, who was now mindlessly encircling the apartment, running his fingers along the edges of Kaiba's piano.

"At ten in the morning?" Joey questioned, thinking uneasily to the Jack Wheeler-early bird special, "Aren't you still drunk enough from last night?"

"Less drunk," Kaiba sighed, groaning simultaneously, "More hung-over. Absolutely. Miserable," he slumped forward, seemingly more distracted by his state of being than he had been back in Joey's room.

"And straight shots of bourbon is supposed to…help this?" the blonde's eyes widened as his head cocked to the side, almost smiling at the hopelessly collapsed posture of the brunette leaning over his countertops, disinterestedly pouring the liquid into a glass that was too tall.

"Of course it is," his eyes slipped sideways, encircling Joey with that know it all narrowing of the eyes, "Everybody knows that."

"Guess I'll take your word for it," he turned away, tempted undeniably at the opportunity to mask himself in something more calming in place of the pills he'd left at home, and out of reach.

Kaiba took the credit as compliance however, and opened his cabinet to retrieve another glass, "So, two?" he asked, although Joey wasn't sure why, when he noticed the brunette had already begun to pour it.

"What the hell," the blonde shrugged, walking forward to embrace the half full container that Kaiba handed him before waving Joey through the doorway on the other side of the room, where he walked into his bedroom to retrieve a change of clothes.

Sipping the drink greedily, excited as it subdued the sharpness in his stomach into softer, dull radiations of discomforting apprehension, it hardly translated to him that he was now standing in Seto's bedroom; but once it did, the usual attention to detail that would have had him analyzing every inch of the space, had fallen fixedly around the possessive noun rather than the room itself. The lingering, left over drunk from yesterday was mixing in quite nicely to contrast the upcoming, new level of intoxication as it took hold of him with little tolerance.

Feeling the alcohol flood into his face and his brain simultaneously, both followed the toxin through his blood stream as it dissolved undecidedly, feeling his words turn to lies in his mouth as he developed quite an undeniable fascination. Gorgeous, huh? He chewed his bottom lip, trying again to wrap his head around the meaning of the word as it transposed with things he'd said like "perfect bone structure," and wondering how it was that their conversations could transition so naturally between disconnected extremes.

However, the transition had taken place, as the extremes had connected themselves in a series of mismatched instances leading to the co-existing reality that Joey could not shake from his mind. Sighing skeptically, he drew this strange shift in curiosity around in circles with his looks and glances, and tried to see what it was exactly that Sam had seen so easily.

He has nice eyes I guess, the blonde allowed, even though those eyes had changed his life, but that had never been a source of beauty before. Joey glanced backward, half-drunkenly dissecting the brunette as he undid the top buttons of his shirt. His chestnut hair fell messily around his face in a disheveled swoop that still seemed to frame his face perfectly, and his eyes had grown less blue under the glazed tint and the dilatation, while his shoulders rose up to his ears with a squeaky hiccup. Not bothering with the clothes the executive offered, Joey continued his thorough deconstruction, following the inwards curve between his eyes down to where they met on the bridge of his nose.

"Are you going to get changed" he heard Kaiba ask without ever looking up once from what he was doing. "Or are you just going to keep staring at me?"

Every visible patch of flesh flushed and Joey reached uncoordinatedly for the stack of clothes, carelessly knocking them onto the floor.

The soft impact was cause for Kaiba to disengage his buttons and walk forward, kneeling down, still hiccupping. Joey couldn't help but notice the muscular curvature down the brunette's stomach as his dress shirt hung open by several buttons.

"Take a picture," he pushed himself back to his feet, handing Joey the t-shirt and pants with a grin, "It'll last longer."

Now flushed turned to fuchsia and left the blonde at a loss of words, collecting the pile hastily and setting off for the bathroom.

"First door on the left," the brunette called out, pulling his arms out from his sleeves, and Joey hurried to close and lock the door behind him.

Not cool, his thoughts sputtered instantly, pressing his back against the doorframe, not cool, not cool, so not fucking cool, his body bounced up and down agitatedly like a child unable to constrain itself. Seriously, Joey, he addressed himself objectively, what the hell was that, huh? He demanded, instantly realizing how dangerously he was overstepping the personal boundary that they'd formed too recently to bend just yet. Are you trying to lose this bet on purpose? Because you're sure as hell slipping up, he shook his head, turning to the sink, and twisting the faucet to ice-cold as he splashed the shock of reality onto his face.

There was a soft knock on the other side after a good ten minutes of indecision had fallen over the blonde's frame and rendered him stagnant, hearing Kaiba speak out softly. "Are you ever coming back out?"

Joey didn't respond though, he was too busy staring at his own reflection, assessing the way the long-sleeved shirt hung too low on his neckline, revealing his collarbone, as he pulled the fabric downward, with his fists curled into the edges of the sleeves. The color was unfamiliar to anything in his wardrobe, and yet he thought the shade of blue was only fitting to be of Kaiba's own. However, just as the shirt had shifted unfamiliarly to his smaller frame, Joey was forced to hold the pair of pants up at the side to keep them from sliding right back off, picking his feet up undecidedly as they pooled in the legs that flooded against the ground.

"You aren't embarrassed…are you?" the tone was catching onto the drifts that weren't as obvious earlier, but the amphetamine salts were seeping into them, and stinging him ever so slightly as he dropped another octave. "…because I was only joking about all that stuff—honest."

Joey sighed, almost more offset by the consideration in the voice than he was by the contradictory things it'd been saying just seconds earlier "No, I'm not embarrassed," he answered, and effectively lied at the same time, pushing forth the door gingerly, "I just look ridiculous," he stepped into view, showing off the set of clothes that clearly didn't fit.

Kaiba suppressed his laughter as respectfully as he could, as he glanced up and down at the parachute of an outfit the other was struggling to keep up, "Do you want a belt?" he implored, unable to resist, as his lips formed a suggestive smile, "Or did you not want to keep them on?"

-.-.-.-

Yeah, lol it's one of my more inconclusive chapters, but this is all that came out when I sat down to write, hah too exhausted for in-depth analysis.

anywho.

Read, review, and yeah-you know the rest.