IDK if many of you will like this chapter. It's short and I have an excerpt in here that might throw you off a bit, but I think I wrote it in a way that shouldn't be too awful. If it bothers you, skip it.

Chapter 8

Katsuya gnawed absently on the leash. He didn't want to be here. Hell, he didn't want to be a dog either but that didn't seem to bother anybody. Nope, no one paid attention to what Katsuya didn't want, which in some ways he found slightly ironic. He was so used to people ignoring what he did want. Like his father. His father ignored the fact that Katsuya wanted him to stop drinking and hitting him, ignored the fact Katsuya wanted the pain to stop.

Katsuya gnawed a little harder on his leash. "This is stupid, you're stupid, Moneybags."

Seto nudged him gently with his foot in a silent jester to tell him to be quiet.

"Yes," Seto said professionally to the man across his desk. It was the same desk Katsuya was under and silently gnawing his revenge. "I'll agree to those terms."

"I'm glad we could come to agreement," the man said, standing and offering his hand. "And I must ask who your trainer is for your pup, he's awfully well behaved."

"No trainer," Seto said, also standing to shake the man's hand. "He's always been odd."

The man grinned and grabbed up his suitcase, allowing himself out of Seto's office.

"I'd appreciate it if you were to stop chewing on that leash, Katsuya." Seto pushed his chair back and squatted down to examine the puppy. Katsuya looked up at him with big, brown puppy eyes and Seto frowned.

Stupid heart strings.

"An' I'd appreciate bein' human again," the puppy said. He stopped chewing, but he had come to like the taste of the leather in his mouth. He didn't let it go. "Looks like we're even."

"You could be human again," Seto scowled. "You can't run away."

Now Katsuya gave his own form of a scowl, raising his lips to bare the small sharp teeth closed over the leather leash. "Why does it matte' anyways?" He fought. "Haven't ya told me to mind my own business? Well, mind your own!"

"I'm not fighting you on this," the human stated, pulling himself to a stand as the door to his office opened and his secretary walked in. "Can I help you?"

The secretary gave him a cool, glazed look and handed over a few folders of paper. "This just came up from accounting. They want verification."

"Good," Seto said. He took the folders, nudging his head in the direction of the door for her to leave and sat down to file through them with a quick scan before he took lunch.

The secretary didn't leave. She took a second and scanned a look at the dog under the desk and, remembering the magazine article about it and its owner, looked back to Seto. "He doesn't look vicious."

"Not vicious," Seto muttered, "too smart for his own damn good."

Katsuya's ears twitched and he looked almost deftly up to Seto before proceeding to gnaw the leash like before. He swore if he was human, he'd be blushing.

Hell, if he was human he wouldn't be here.

The secretary gave the pair a last over view before making her way back to her desk to answer the phone and take appointments.

"You don't think I'm smart." Katsuya switched his weight from his belly to his side, leash lazily held in his mouth. He was getting sleepy; he now knew why dogs slept all day, especially puppies.

"You're smarter than I had given you credit for," Seto admitted. He glanced down from the reports, as if he could see Katsuya through the thing wood desk. "You aren't necessarily book smart, but seem to have more common sense than the common man."

"Common streets need common sense. I'd like to meet the man who lived on them like I did without common sense." Katsuya grunted. Rolled up. "Except he don't exist."

Seto bit his cheek at that. He wanted to ask, he was curious what Katsuya was running away from. Or more like what he was running away to. Something bad, obviously, but something that kept him stuck. Something Katsuya didn't think he could leave.

"Mutt." Seto said in dismay, at a better lack of words.

"Asshole."

"Dog."

"Cunt crusher."

Seto actually slid back and looked under the desk. "Where do you come up with some of these?"

"Where do you get the fuck do you right to call me a dog?" Katsuya yelped. He growled and rolled over agitatedly. He stopped, let Seto shake his head and slide his legs back under the desk, and nipped at the CEO's ankles. "Ass licker."

"You'd enjoy every minute of it." Seto responded automatically. He stopped, covering his mouth in embarrassment. He hadn't really just said that, had he? He blinked, the area under him was silent, he couldn't even hear breathing Katsuya was being so silent. So Seto continued his paper work—despite the rare blush—like nothing had gone inappropriately wrong. He wouldn't let Katsuya know he slipped. "What?" He pretended to mock, "No answer to that?"

"Jeez, 'cause your smell didn't waver in embarrassment or anythin'."

Seto scowled, "You can't really smell that."

"I just did."

Seto's scowl deepened and he tsk-ed. "Stupid mutt."

"Stupid cunt."

.-.-.-.-.

Seto's secretary had been working for him for a good amount of time, if she were to say so herself. It had gotten to a point she'd learned Seto's every tick and tock as he spent his days doing his work like clockwork. She, herself, was a creature of habit and, much like her boss had often shown, so was Seto.

However, this new puppy completely threw her off.

Seto had brought his dog in everyday for the past three days. He'd carry it in and disappear with it, cursing at it loudly enough that she could hear him through the door when she came to deliver reports that had been dropped by or to bring him his coffee, and yet when she saw him look at it, he had the most adoring eyes.

It creeped her out a little.

But she wouldn't say anything. She would say anything about the way it was obvious he was cooing in his own special way, she wouldn't say anything about how boyish it made Seto seem at times—something that she admitted he needed very much—and she wouldn't say anything about how the puppy screwed up the office's inner time-table by making Seto walk him one day at two-fifteen, the next at three-thirty-three, and today at one-fourty-one.

And of course she wouldn't mention about the coos some of the clients had been saying as they left Seto's private office.

Setting the phone back into its cradle she heard Seto's office door get thumped against and open, followed by a few curses. She froze a moment, looking at the time. Four-fourty-nine. Slowly, she took a peek around the corner and bit her cheek as she watched the puppy—Joey, Seto had called him—squirm as Seto tried to hold him.

She wondered where they were going. Possibly another walk? Odd, usually Joey didn't go to the bathroom after he'd taken his afternoon break. Then again, Joey didn't seem to know the meaning of schedule.

"JOEY!"

She watched Seto dropped Joey to look at himself before realizing the puppy was running away.

"Get back here you dumb mutt!"

Joey yipped and dashed past her at her desk.

She glanced at Seto—who was dashing by, himself, covered in dog pee and three degrees more agitated than normal—as he dashed by after the escaping puppy. She didn't miss it though. She's seen those eyes when her son looked at his girlfriend with that very same frustrated light in his eyes. He was mad, but Seto really loved that dog.

Okay, so it really freaked her out a little.

With morbid fascination she witnessed the elevator at the end of the hall open as an employee walked out with his arms full of spread sheets and Joey pranced in. She heard Seto curse and watching him sprint to the elevator to only just make it.

He looked at his employee with a looked that dared the other man to say anything, but the man didn't and Seto took Joey by the scruff and made his way back to his office.

The employee walked up to her desk—watching Seto's door bewildered—and gently placed the stack of spread sheets down.

"Is the boss, al'right?" He asked.

The secretary shook her head. "I don't have a clue."

-.-.-.-.

Seto growled, peeling his very expensive Emporia Armani shirt from his skin. Why couldn't Katsuya just behave? All he had to do was not run away and Seto would have him turned into a human faster than a Christian's Jesus could do it. It even made Seto's brain hurt thinking of reason's why. There were none! Seto could do everything for Katsuya, provide for Katsuya, even if it was temporary!

That stupid stupid dog!

Seto bent his neck down to smell his chest the best he could. His nose wrinkled and he scowled as he realized he didn't have to move his head to smell the pungent puppy-pee permeating off his body. He glared at Katsuya and swore at him.

"Was this necessary?"

"Ya wouldn't let me go."

"You were trying to run away!"

"And ya wouldn't just let me go!"

"That's because you're mine!" Seto all but shouted. He grabbed his hair and was half tempted to pull it out. He was just so frustrated. "I'll never just let you go!"

Katsuya froze at that, and Seto felt like his whole world was being invaded and stripped down piece by piece. But he felt better, like the pieces being stripped away were wooden boards keeping the light from shining through his windows. It burned a little, he felt a little anguish and despair jus suddenly blabbing something he'd kept a secret for such a long while. It was worth it though.

Maybe Mokuba was right when he said getting a therapist to tell things to would make him feel better, but a more stubborn part remembered that you couldn't spell 'therapist' without 'rapist'. Though, Mokuba's scowled pictured in his mind when he remembered telling the younger Kaiba that. Mokuba obviously thought he was wrong.

"Sure," Katsuya rumbled. "But ya'll push me t' the side when ya find someone you're really in love with."

Seto turned around to face the dog, laying almost comfortable looking in Seto's desk chair, had his muscles not been so tensed and his eyes so departed and sad. Seto's heart broke staring at him and he had to force himself to look away.

"I…" Seto scowled, hating this weakness. He should have developed something that destroyed emotions. At least then he would be stuck in this mess now. But…he glanced over at Katsuya, who still looked up at him with the most pathetic, heart-melting eyes Seto had ever seen, and he knew maybe it was completely worth keeping them. "I love you."

"Ya just wanna have sex with the human me. Ya don't even know me."

"I may not know everything I want t know but, I know everything I need to know," Seto said softly. Slowly he made his way to his chair and settled cross-legged on the floor in front of Katsuya. "I know when you get made you destroy thing, when you're upset you hide, when you're happy you'll do anything to protect it, and you'll protect anyone even if they don't deserve it." Seto reached his hand up, watched Katsuya flinch and ignored it as he stroked Katsuya's head. "And I know one day you'd make a really great mom."

Katsuya lifted his head and his eyes filled with bewilderedness. "A mom? I'd be a dad, Kaiba."

"Impossible," Seto scowled, "Because I'd be a dad with two point five kids and you'd be the mother."

Katsuya retracted a little, cocked his head. "Aren't ya thinking a little far?"

"No," Seto said arrogantly. "I'm already a successful business man with the means to support a country. I will have two point five kids and you will be their mother."

"Kaiba, we ain't even datin'!"

"That's because you're a dumb dog that doesn't know how to stay."

"Ya know, I almost fell for it, but you're just an ass."

"And you're a mutt, but you're mine." Seto frowned and stood. "I don't have any more meetings today. We will go home and call Marik and Bakura."

Katsuya's ears perked up and his tail started to wag. "Ya're gonna change me back?"

"And tie you down."

I've noticed my lack of wittiness after rereading the prologue and first chapter and I'm very annoyed with myself that I was unable to keep it up. So for those of you still enjoying the story Thank you!