I stood on the footbridge with Wheeler, each of us reacting to the night in our own contained way. I took my phone out to call my limo, not wanting to make the rest of the walk home in the damp chill of the night. I smelled a distinct salty note in the air and could feel humidity on my skin.

"Looks like the sky will open up any minute." I remarked to Wheeler. "You want a ride home?"

I think I had caught him off guard.

"Like, in the limo?"

"No Wheeler I meant a piggyback ride. Of course the limo."

Wheeler's eyes bulged a bit and I could see the muscles under his skin fight off a smirk. I regretted my previous comment.

"Well, sure I do!". He smiled at me then, clapping his hands together in excitement. I almost dropped my head into my hands and groaned.

Wheeler bounced from foot to foot like an anxious child as the cold night air crept in around us. I was watching him out of the corner of my eye, trying not to be obvious, knowing on some level that what I was doing was abnormal. But Wheeler became a different beast at night. The rough features of his that were so noticeable during the day had been smoothed over by the darkness. There was something almost glossy about his exterior; something about the angles of his face and tone of his skin and hair that made him metallic beneath the fragmented light of the city night. It was a bit like looking into freshly polished chrome and not being able to look away until you had the chance to fully appreciate it.

"Whatcha looking at Kaiba?"

I pretended to be looking off into the distance behind him. "I'm looking out for the limo."

"Oh. Yeah. Forgot."

And so we stood together. I distracted myself by wondering if other people looked so new and polished at night and I just had never noticed, or if it was something unique to Wheeler. I wondered what I looked like sometimes, if I was always the same icicle that I was in front of a mirror.

When my driver pulled up in my personal limo Wheeler's eyes got wide as saucers. The driver came out of his seat to open the door for us. I stood back and let Wheeler climb in first.

By the time I had sat down and clicked my seat belt in he was already fidgeting with all the nearby buttons and switches. I thought about scolding him, telling him to stop being childish, to cut it out, to at least pretend like he had some class or restraint but then I thought better of it. We had both been reasonably placid towards each other and I just didn't have the motivation to end it. So I let him play with the buttons and switches and settled on watching his fingers, battered as they were, dance about the controls.

"Give the driver your address Wheeler."

My words made him snap out of his other endeavors and he promptly leaned forward towards the front seats to talk to the driver.

"Just drop me off by the entrance of the new West End developments."

The driver made a responsive noise.

I realized shortly after that the part of the West End Wheeler was talking about was about a 40 minute drive with minimal traffic, as opposed to the 10 minutes it took to get to my home. Given the nature of night life, the streets were quite busy, possibly just as busy as they were during the day. I let my head fall and hit against my window. I hated driving in traffic.

"Do you have to live so far away?" I grumbled.

Wheeler meanwhile had gone back to causing trouble, still exploring the whole backseat. You'd think he had just landed on the moon.

"Huh, what? Oh. Yeah. Sorry Kaiba, that's where my mom and sis are"

"You commute there to the heart of Domino everyday?"

Joey looked at me, confused. "Well yeah but it's like a twenty minute ride on the Domino Rail…"

Oh. Drat. I had forgotten about that

"Right."

"Look Kaiba I can just get off here and take the next train to West End. There's a station right over there-"

"No, Wheeler. Stay in the limo. I offered you a ride and I so I will give you a ride."

Wheeler did his characteristic shrug again, happy enough to sit in the fancy car and press the buttons.

It was about 20 minutes into the drive when I started becoming ill at ease. I readjusted in my seat and tapped my fingers when we stopped moving. I found traffic to be a great torment. After all, it was the opposite of all things I valued: time, efficiency and productivity. I would habitually glance over at Wheeler, trying to time my glances just so we wouldn't make eye contact again. He had stopped fiddling and instead gazed serenely out the window, smiling just slightly at the people walking around us and the illuminated skyscrapers in the near distance. I experienced a moment of jealousy, of want. I had never achieved such peace from anything, much less something so simple, so unremarkable as the city at night from the view inside a vehicle. But Wheeler enjoyed things effortlessly.

"You must like buildings, am I right Kaiba?"

I took a minute to think about this. "Well I've designed a number of buildings and structures myself. I suppose I can appreciate the various aspects of a building, yes."

Wheeler snorted quietly to himself. "See Kaiba that's what makes you different from an architect. You can do all the designs but they won't ever speak to you. Hell, I'd leave it to you to design the grandest skyscraper in the whole world, but you'd never be in love with it, maybe you'd love parts of it. You'd love the sturdiness of the frame because you crafted the design, you'd love the materials because they're the best in the world, you'd love the name because it's attached to you, but you'd never walk by it and just feel good about it, just love it, because it's a thing, it's got a presence. You don't see the world that way, everything is face value to you."

"Are you saying that makes me bad?" I was indignant and unable to retort.

Wheeler sounded genuinely surprised when he responded. "No, I'm saying it makes you limited. You know this already, that everyone's got their limits but for most of them, those limits are coming from their brains, from their abilities. But you, you can do everything in the world. You just can't fall in love with it. That's your limit."

I looked out of my window at the buildings passing by, trying to find an answer in one of them, to see what Wheeler was talking about, but I was at a loss.

"Well then that's just how it is." I confirmed, to Wheeler but also to myself.

Wheeler leaned across his seat and put one of his hands on my arm. I flinched and tightened my jaw, surprised by the abrupt touch. "We can't talk Kaiba, never got along because well, I'm like the Scarecrow, out there looking for a brain, and you're like the tin man and you need a heart and well we're living in separate worlds but maybe one day a Dorothy will come along and we'll all go down the yellow brick road, oh but first we need a lion and then- oh god I've lost my metaphor, but anyway, the wizard-

"Wheeler!"

Sheepishness crept into his eyes and mouth. He withdrew his hand from my arm. "Sorry Kaiba, but like I said, you're smart, you must know what I mean."

"Wheeler sometimes I don't even know what language you are speaking."

And then he laughed, the sound coming deep from his stomach until his body was back against the seat, shaking with the realization of something, well, funny. I took one look at him, his red face, his shaking body, his uneven and gristly laugh and without knowing how, I laughed too.

The laughing died out slowly with lots of pauses for breathing in between. I caught my breath quickly, and then I made fast work of composing myself: I smoothed my hair back from being rumpled by the leather of the back seat, I straightened my shirt which had gotten bunched in my fit of laughter and I wiped the pricks of water by my eyes. Wheeler was looking at me curiously, making me feel uncomfortably open.

"You should laugh more Kaiba, it makes you look about 10 years younger."

I smoothed my fingers down the side of my neck, it helped me calm my pulse, kept any more blood from rushing to my face.

"I'm not so old."

"No." said Wheeler quietly, "You're stressed."

I huffed haughtily. "No shit. If you haven't noticed Wheeler, I've got a lot of things I need to take care of."

Wheeler raised his hands at me, sending the physical message that he was backing away from a verbal fight. "Look I get it, I'm just saying…"

"Saying I look old."

"No! Listen I just meant, take care you yourself." Wheeler dropped his voice down to a mumble before picking up again, lifting his head so that he stared straight at my chin. " I know you're Seto Kaiba, genius extraordinaire and all that other stuff, but you're still just well, a lump of flesh. You aren't invincible. No one is."

"A lump of flesh. Poetic really." I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. My bones were heavy, bogged down by the weight of something I couldn't name. My eyes throbbed, too tight in their sockets. I could sense my bottom lip begin to split from the dryness. I felt like a lump of flesh.

I was caught off guard when the limo pulled to a stop, right in front of a run-down looking sidewalk just by a big billboard advertising West-End housing.

I had touched my lip and saw the smeared bead of blood on my hand. Wheeler looked at me unapologetically, still in the limo.

"I'd invest in some chapstick." Wheeler remarked, still giving me an uncanny stare. I felt my stomach twist. It bothered me to know Wheeler was watching my lips, watching them bleed, knowing just how dry I really was.

"Funny to hear you give me investment advice." I did not know if I had meant to play along with the joke or meant to deliver a swift dig. I did not know which one my voice had conveyed. Wheeler was for once, unreadable.

"Like I said, you take care of yourself Kaiba." His words mixed with the crack of the door, opening up and setting him free. My mind quickly skimmed through scenarios that should not have mattered to me. I imagined Wheeler's friend asking what he did last night and Wheeler lying, saying anything except that he ate a meal with Seto Kaiba and then accepted a ride home from him. Or maybe his friend would crack a joke, something like "how did you even survive it?". I thought of how maybe Yugi would find out and say to him "Oh I'm glad you're getting along better with Kaiba, you know he needs the friends." And then maybe Wheeler would vehemently insist that we weren't friends, or maybe he would instead say "that's for sure, Yug".

We both snapped our heads to look outside the car as a second crack was heard, one emanating deep from within the sky. Wheeler had barely gotten his second foot out the door when the sky opened up, soaking him at the first opportunity. I thought about the sky as if it were my lip, split in the middle and bleeding.

Wheeler hollered to me through the rain. "Hey Kaiba, thanks for everything. Really."

And then, as the rain hit and jumped up from the ground, falling and falling again and again, Wheeler turned and began to run away from the limo, into the housing project, where he would find warmth awaiting him instead of the icy shock of rain that was five minutes too early.