It was a true surprise to be greeted by Mokuba when I arrived home.

"How long have you been here?"

He gave me a funny look. "Hours. Where've you been?"

I felt a little pang in my gut. It figured that the one time Mokuba was home for more than 15 minutes at a time had been while I was out. I questioned in the back of my mind whether or not this was intentional on his part.

"I was out having a meal."

Another suspicious stare. "It's a bit late isn't it? I thought you didn't like to eat past 11."

I tried to choose my words carefully. "I was invited out."

Mokuba was relentless. "Where did you go"

"Oh" I took a moment to consider whether or not I should lie and substitute in the name of a high-end place to imply it had been on business but it did make me dully uncomfortable to lie to Mokuba, partly because of the brotherly guilt but also because his uncanny stare made me feel like he could see through me and was merely waiting for the opportunity to confront me. "Just that burger place. The one you like sometimes."

Mokuba made a face, almost like he was both surprised and impressed, like I had solved a clever riddle. "That's not like you. Who'd you go with?"

I felt like I had been caught in something although the feeling didn't make any reasonable sense. But I realized that trying to skirt around his questions would betray me as furtive, some sort of sneaky teenager coming home past curfew. "I ran into Wheeler at that event I went to."

Mokuba's eyes betrayed only the tiniest spark of surprise. "That's who you went to dinner with? I should have figured, your usual company wouldn't exactly be swarming around a burger joint." He made a noise somewhere between a chortle and a sound of disbelief. "What, did you guys kiss and make-up and become buddies or something?" and then, knowing this was a ridiculous question, he broke out into a wide grin, not unlike the Cheshire cat, a little menacing, as if he were challenging me to say yes.

Again I tried to be cautious with my words. "I don't think it works like that. He's grown…more tolerable over the years." I took a long breath, trying without much success to quickly piece together a coherent explanation, trying to use just a few words to explain, just explain what it was like to pretend- what it was like to look at someone and see your past in unclear snapshots that made you feel like a life was something tangible in front of you, something simple that could be categorized by the characters that drifted in and out of it. "Sometimes you need to see someone you haven't seen in a while, you need to look at his face and ask yourself if you've changed in the same way. Sometimes you need an anchor and you need to know that your life is moving forward."

Mokuba looked at me skeptically, but with a distinct empathy around his eyes. "In a few years Seto, I'll understand."

I nodded, knowing that I was older , and this was the hard part of being older. No one ever warned you. The monsters were still under the bed, sure, but they were different in form now. They were more fragile things-nostalgia, scars, bad habits. They terrified you, yes, but there was that other dimension now. The one where you needed monsters to exist, needed them to remind you where you slept at night. I was at a loss.

So I thought confusing things to myself and without anything else to say, nodded a second time and didn't meet Mokuba's eyes. I shuffled off to bed, where I slept poorly and thought about the monsters under my bed taking form in various people who had passed through my life, never noticing that it was in shambles.

….

I began to seek Wheeler out more actively two weeks or so after that night. This was the time it took me to cut through all that had happened between us, slight as it was from the outside. He was no longer a phantom so much as an objective. He was a stimulant, something that made me behave and think differently.

I went to some of the more minor parties that I usually wouldn't have bothered with in the hope that he would be there with the caterers. I would look inside taxis hoping to see him behind the wheel. I didn't have a sold rationale for why I was doing this, I knew only that his physical presence made me feel still. My life didn't churn, I wasn't being propelled so far into the future. I was stagnant, Wheeler was stagnant, we were a moment in time, created and created over again. It was ironic this was the effect he had on me considering how much we had both changed.

It seemed that the harder I looked for him the less success I found. On some level I was embarrassed. I felt like a school-girl looking for her crush in the hallways. But on another level I was shameless. I had a need, a deep need that was surfacing more than ever before and this was me fulfilling it, this was me advancing my survival.

I had tried to statistically calculate the odds of me running into him at any given event. The slimmer the chances, the more determined I became to find him. All to no avail.

Finally, well into the winter season, he found me.

It was the first snowfall of the season and I had taken the opportunity to walk by the nearby park, to watch as everything became hidden, blank. I enjoyed the cold more than the heat. There was something I savored about the prick of cold, the way it shocked my mind into working even faster, the way it made everything seem sharper, less languid and more alert. I liked the way that fresh snow looked so clean, so uniform. I valued simplicity and clarity in aesthetics. To me, snow embodied this better than anything. It took away confusing things like color texture and instead streamlined all things into simple shapes and dimensions. As I walked along and took it in, I was reminded of the comment Wheeler had made to me about buildings earlier in the year. It felt something jerk in my stomach at the memory of his words that was unpleasant. I wanted him to see me in that moment, walking outside, breathing clean winter air and appreciating things for their presence.

I almost got my wish. He found me a few moments later once I had walked through the park and was back onto a city sidewalk. After I turned the corner I pulled the collar of my jacket up to shield my neck from the wind. When I brought my face back up, Wheeler was in sight, staring at me dumbly. For a moment we stayed positioned as if we were in a showdown, both waiting for the draw.

"Kaiba?" He yelled to me, his voice jumping through the wind. I lifted my chin, trying to look into the distance even though I already recognized him. I don't know what else I expected to see. I took a few tentative steps forward before Wheeler started taking long strides toward me, arms wrapped around his middle against the elements. I found a panic growing in my throat. I was prepared all other times, but not now. It upset me.

He stopped maybe three feet away from where I was standing, looking cold.

"How you been?" He asked, his voice strained over the outside noise.

"Fine."

He looked at his feet and shivered.

"Hey you want to catch up inside somewhere? It's uh, it's pretty cold and-"

"Okay."

"I know a place. Up here." And he pointed straight ahead, already walking.

Wheeler took me into a tiny café, packed full of cold people with hot drinks. Most of the people in line still had their arms crossed, and every time the door swung open the entire crowd would look over and glare.

"Go grab that table over there and I'll order something hot," Wheeler instructed me.

I grabbed the last empty table, a tiny wooden circle that bumped against two thin chairs. The intimacy of the setting unnerved me, making me feel claustrophobic. Wheeler came back after a few minutes carrying two mugs filled to the brim and in danger of sloshing over.

He set the mug in front of me and I sniffed it. It wasn't coffee.

"Wheeler is this hot chocolate?"

He answered matter of factly "Well what else are you supposed to drink when it snows outside?"

I got a sudden burst of memory, an image of pouring hot water into a mug for Mokuba's cocoa on our first Christmas by ourselves. I suddenly felt very feeble, and I looked into the mug of hot chocolate the way someone might look at a photo album at the end of his life.

I heard the drag of the chair as Wheeler moved it backward to sit down. "You got a problem with hot chocolate?" he demanded.

"I haven't had it in a while."

"Oh. Well, drink up." And he took the first sip of his.

We sipped in silence for a while as the rest of the café buzzed and bunched together.

Wheeler spoke up again, a chipper note in his voice. "Been a while since we saw each other hasn't it?"

"Usually I see you catering at parties." I did not betray my cloying curiosity, but the question hung in the air. Why hadn't I seen him?

"Actually-" Wheeler took another sip, a little too fast and made a face as he burnt his tongue, his eyes watering for a few seconds and making him look misty-eyed. "You remember what I said, about the cooking school? Well I finally put the money together. I was in Paris for a while, learning how to make, you know, French food and stuff. S'probably why you haven't seen me around." I didn't like the apologetic tone to his words.

But I was not expecting to hear that Wheeler had been in Paris, probably learning under the instruction of culinary masters. It impressed me, and for an instant I think I felt proud, yes, unfoundedly proud.

"Well, Wheeler, that's quite interesting." We looked at each other and then both quickly looked away. "Impressive even…"

"Yeah well, lucky break I guess." He shrugged. How was it that someone could be so modest with one thing and yet, I recalled him talking a big game before every duel when we were teenagers.

"I don't believe in luck."

Wheeler raised the left corner of his mouth, looking a little smug. "Wouldn't expect you to."

I tried to imagine Wheeler with his ratty clothes and inner-city accent parading through the most upscale parts of Paris. It was comical in some ways yes, and I realized my curiosity had been ignited.

"Well I suppose that makes you slightly less uncultured now. How was it?"

Wheeler opened his mouth at the backhanded compliment, but closed it when he realized that I hadn't put enough zest into it for it to really be offensive. "It was ok. Beautiful sure, I learned a lot, lots of cool shit. All this fancy food that people pay out the ass for but-"

His pauses maddened me. "But?"

"Well, truth is I'd just as rather cook for my friends at home."

I shook my head a little. "Of course you would, Wheeler. You finally get the chance of a lifetime but it still doesn't appeal half as much as everything you left behind. You don't know it, you can't understand it."

Wheeler cocked his head at me. "Are you trying to insult me or are you speaking from experience?"

. "Neither Wheeler, I'm just hypothesizing. Besides, I've only known one thing."

"Kaiba Corp." Wheeler's voice thudded. His eyes searched around me thoughtfully. "It's funny, you know. Paris is beautiful, really. But something didn't click, couldn't imagine myself staying there much longer than I did."

"Well it's hard to just go into a foreign country cold. Of course you won't feel at home."

"It's a little deeper than that." He trailed off while gazing out the window behind me.

"Maybe. Did you learn any French?" My question made Wheeler smile.

"Only the important stuff."

I looked at him dubiously.

"You know. Voulez-vous couchez avec moi? That kind of thing."

"Use that one a lot?" I asked, more dubious than before.

Wheeler stared into his hot chocolate. "Nah." His face looked pink. "The whole time I was there I thought about how Mai had gone to Paris before. She's not like me, you know. She's always running around. I spent years scraping up money to chase that girl around the world."

His voice was low now, lower than before.

"And what happened?" The question fell from my mouth before I could pick it back up. I doubted that I even needed to ask the question. Wheeler spoke so easily, unafraid, unguarded, a fool, appealing in his own way but so very different from myself.

I heard the last slurp of hot chocolate coming from Wheeler and he looked up at me, maybe a little wistful in the corners of his mouth and the slight lines around his eyes. "I couldn't keep up."

"And the new boyfriend?"

"Ah" Wheeler waved his hand dismissively. "He's probably long gone by now. I could see he wasn't built for her. Her was her new boy, and after that there would be another boy, and another, and another, until she's got all the men in the world on her heels, just trying to make her slow down long enough to look her in the eye. But she don't want that. She wants her life."

"I see."

"But, she's a good girl."

"Oh."

Wheeler looked at me then, his heavy eyes scanning my face, trying to put something together. "You're a lot alike, you know, in a weird way." He laughed awkwardly.

"Me and who? Mai?"

"Well yeah. You're tall-"

This made me gasp in disbelief. "For the love of god Wheeler you wonder why I call you an idiot-"

"I wasn't finished!"

"Alright, Wheeler, make your far-fetched point."

"Well" he started again, his voice more metered and cautious this time. "You're both assertive, aggressive even, kind of a take-no-shit attitude. You're both insanely competitive. Attractive." He glanced up at me. "Hungry for power. Hungry for something." He looked up to the ceiling, ponderous. "And you both make duck-face too much."

"Excuse me?"

"You know," Wheeler sucked in both his cheeks and pushed his lips out. "That face girls do when they're afraid of looking fat in pictures or trying to be sexy. You do it when you're angry or thinking too hard."

"Don't be an idiot. I never make that face."

"Hey whatever you say Kaiba". Wheeler was patronizing me. I clenched my hands and snarled at him.

But he just smiled at me, eyelids seeming to hang lower at every second. "There's one way you aren't anything like her though. You don't run. You've got the world at your fingertips and you're still a homebody. You're like me in that way." He leaned forward in his chair, face close enough that I could feel his breath on my nose. I could see the dry lines of his lips, every little dip and crack. It was the first time I had ever been truly afraid of him.

I was bothered. I liked to exist as a singular entity with no branches extending to anything else, floating alone somewhere in space. I did not like being compared to anything, I did not like to be reminded that I was human. "I do not think that I am much like you, Wheeler." My voice was soft, resolute. I might have even sounded kind to someone else. In truth it was a kind thing of me to say.

The longer Wheeler looked at me the more I could see my face reflected into his. Something about the subtle emergence of fine lines, the droop of gravity, the thin cheeks and furrowed brow. There was more similarity than I could come to terms with. I remembered him being very, very, unbearably young. I had thought myself so much older, with the weight of the world on my shoulders. That weight was still there, but I could see it bearing down on the both of us. As we sat in the café, not like friends and not like enemies, the burden rested on both of us, on the other people in the café, on the city and on the world. No one would talk about it, all would bear it in silence. I felt very close to Wheeler and also very afraid of him. The closeness gave him power, more rare than gold and much more of a liability.

His eyes scanned up and down my face, stopping somewhere around my hairline. I felt awful, I would rather he go back to staring me in the eye rather than that. "Maybe not. Maybe you can draw a line between any two people and say they're the same. I mean, people are people, aren't they?".

"Fair enough." I took my last sip of hot chocolate. "I should be getting back to the office. It gets even busier this time of year."

"Oh. Right. Well I guess I'll uh, see you around then."

I looked into my empty mug. "If you stay in the country this time."

Wheeler grinned ear to ear. "I'll be around."

We both rose from the claustrophobic table and shuffled out through the front door where people were still pouring in. As we squeezed out, Wheeler's shoulder brushed hard against mine. I looked to him and could see his jacket was wet from all the snow. He smelled clean and cold. I shivered as the gust of wind met us outside.

Once away from the crowd, we turned to look at each other and give a redundant goodbye. Wheeler stood closer than he normally did.

"It's not so bad, you know." His voice was syrupy, warmer than I wanted to hear.

"What?" I asked, my voice dropping even lower without meaning for it too.

"These grays…" He reached up and touched part of my hair by my temple. His fingers were too warm, searing even against the stinging weather..

"Wheeler.." I cautioned, shrinking away.

"I said this before" he whispered "But take care of yourself".

"Ok" my voice crackled like a fire while Wheeler's seeped out like smoke. "You take care of yourself too."

And then he came so close that my breathing hitched, terrified, so terrified. When I thought I wouldn't be able to stand it anymore, the physical contact, Wheeler broke away. "I'll see you later, Kaiba". He turned and walked away, giving me a flippant wave and marching into the snow where he was lost among other people and the whiteness that bore and floated down around all of them.