Author Notes: Please review and enjoy! Text in bold denotes quotes from/allusions to the musical Hamilton.

At lunchtime, Seto was working on his homework for Monday in an empty classroom when he was interrupted by a granola bar being dropped on his calculus book. He glanced up, and Ryou offered him an apple as well, wearing an expression that told him he wasn't allowed to refuse it. He accepted it with a mumbled "thanks" and took a bite of it.

"Yugi told me what happened between you and Joey this morning," Ryou said before sitting precariously on the back of the seat in front of Seto's desk, taking a bite of his own apple.

"What about it?" he asked defensively.

"He said you got hurt," Ryou answered calmly. "If you got hurt, you should see the nurse."

"I'm fine," he answered, and Ryou grunted in response.

"Would you tell me if you weren't?" he challenged, raising one eyebrow as he dared Seto to say yes.

"No."

"At least you're honest about it." Ryou didn't seem angry or upset by this. "But you know that it's safe to change your mind, right?"

Seto took another bite of his apple to avoid answering, and Ryou rolled his eyes.

"I've been asking Mokuba about home life lately." Seto looked up from his homework, trying not to let alarm register in his expression. "He says that you told him he wasn't allowed to talk about it."

"Why does that matter?"

"Because you lied to me."

"About what?"

"Your mom. You told me she was sick. Mokuba told me the truth."

Seto grunted noncommittally as he went back to doing his homework.

"I get that you don't want to talk about it. That's okay. But don't lie to me again, alright?"

"Why does it matter if I do?" Actually, Seto hated lying, but there were some lies that had become a necessity in his life: lies about his job to keep people from getting involved, lies about his mom to keep people from pitying him, daily white lies about being "fine" so that maybe one day it'd actually be true.

"Because friends don't lie to friends."

"We're friends?" Seto feigned indifference, but deep down, he liked the idea of having Ryou as a friend.

"I think I'm the best friend you've got, if I do say so myself." After a few moments of silence, Seto glanced up.

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?" Ryou became confused.

"That's your mind-reading look." Seto scowled faintly. "I don't like people reading my mind." This surprised Ryou into a light laugh as he realized that Seto had just kind of made a joke.

"Nobody can read your mind, Seto, but I'm flattered that you think I can."

"Did you get a chance to talk to him?" Yugi asked as he panted alongside Ryou during gym class last period.

"Yeah, he said he's fine, but… I don't believe him," Ryou answered. He wasn't that athletically inclined, and neither was Yugi, so they ran at about the same, comfortable pace as they completed their assigned laps. Seto was faster than both of them, and he never half-assed anything, so he was farther ahead, competing with Joey for the lead.

"I think he's mad at me," Yugi admitted, feeling ashamed. "He told me I should… learn to fight my own fights… I wish I had some way to make it up to him, to thank him for all he's done to help me."

Ryou felt sympathy for Yugi; being the target of bullies was one of the several things Ryou and Yugi had in common, and Ryou tended to handle it the same way that Yugi did: keep your head down and your mouth shut until they left you alone. Seto wasn't the only one who criticized this method, though; Anzu would often tell them to grow a spine so that they could stop being taken advantage of. Although, she did tend to be more concerned with Yugi—and rightfully so, for by now, Yugi attracted more bullies than Ryou. Besides, Ryou was better at assuaging his bullies with words and peace offerings than Yugi, thus talking himself out of many potentially-nasty situations.

"Bakura! What did I tell you about that hair?!" Ryou let out a low groan, ducking his head as his face began to turn red. Coach Trudge was the one bully Ryou had never been able to ameliorate with mere words. "Get over here!" Yugi wished his friend luck as Ryou sighed and went over to where the coach stood with his clipboard and his whistle. Yugi winced as he passed them, trying to tune out Coach Trudge's harsh criticism. He was only a quarter of a mile further down the track when he heard Seto shout.

"Coach!"

"What is it now?" Trudge shouted, looking even angrier at being interrupted.

"You have no right to do that."

Yugi stumbled and came to a halt as he stared in awe. Seto was challenging the coach himself, and all the other students, even Joey who was only a few feet away from them, stopped to stare in equal shock.

"What?!" Coach Trudge was livid.

"The state of Ryou's hair does not fall under your jurisdiction as the gym coach. So long as his hair is within school regulations, which it is, you have no right to tell him to cut it." Seto stood tall, the set of his chin defiant as he crossed his arms over his chest. A few of the other students, mostly from the far side of the track, started to cheer for Seto, which made him smirk. That was the last straw for Coach Trudge.

"Shut up, all of you!" he shouted at the rest of his class. "Five more laps!" Then he turned to face Seto. "And you, smart-ass? Drop and give me eighty!" Seto scowled, but obeyed, having done his job, for Ryou had been quick to return to running laps, throwing Seto a grateful glance as he passed him. Joey was the only student who was still standing instead of running.

"He's right, you know." Joey remarked casually, running a hand through his blond hair which had been dampened down by sweat. "It's really not your business what his hair looks like."

"You, join him!" He pointed from Joey to Seto, who was faithfully doing push-ups on the grass. "No special treatment for you just because your parents are donors. Nothing could get you special treatment in my class." Joey sneered but joined Seto on the grass, beginning his own set of push-ups. After a few moments, Seto was smirking again.

"I would beg to differ, sir," he called out. "I would say that you give Ryou special treatment in the way you harass him about his hair."

"That's twenty more, from both of you!" Coach Trudge shouted, trying to intimidate them with threats and added punishment. Little did he know that it wouldn't work.

"I have to agree: you're also showing us special treatment with this punishment," Joey added. Both he and Seto were shouting their protests for the benefit of the class, and the coach was growing to be not only angry, but vengeful.

"Twenty more! I can do this all day, you two!"

"Do you think he could do as many push-ups as he's assigning to us?" Seto asked Joey as he stared at the grass beneath him, a smirk tugging at his lips despite the circumstances.

"Twenty more each!"

"I seriously doubt it," Joey shouted back, and some of the students snickered.

"Twenty more!"

"I'd have to agree. After all, they say those who can't, teach."

"That's it, forty more each!"

Ryou and Yugi, who had resumed their laps side by side, looked at each other in amazement. The two rebels kept up the back and forth, pushing coach's buttons relentlessly, while the rest of the class finished their five extra laps. The two rivals were actually collapsing with laughter at their own jokes at one point, and Seto couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed so hard. They didn't look at each other the whole time they kept it up, but it looked for all the world as if they were actually enjoying each others' contributions to the coach's misery.

By the time everybody else was done, they'd piled up five-hundred-eighty push-ups, and were still going at it. Ryou paused by the two of them at the end of class to thank Seto for sticking up for him. He couldn't say anything more before Coach Trudge yelled at him. Ryou walked away then, but it was with a smile as he gently tugged his white hair out of its ponytail.

Twenty minutes after school was let out, an administrative member from the school came out and thoroughly reprimanded the coach for keeping students after school and employing corporal punishment for insults dealt him. Seto and Joey were let go, and while Joey high-tailed it out of there, Seto limped to the boys' locker room to shower. He normally would have just gone home to do so, but since nobody else was around, he felt confident that nobody would see his marked body. He was safe. For just a few minutes, he was safe.

Joey cursed himself for taking off without his gym bag. He didn't need to give Seto any more of a reason to believe him to be an idiot. He'd only driven two blocks away from school when he'd remembered and turned around, doing a shoddy job of parking his car in the parking lot before hopping out and running back to the locker room to grab his bag. Seto was in one of the showers when he entered, but Joey was in too much of a rush to care. He was already late picking up Serenity, and his parents hated it when he wasn't on time to get her. He shouldered his gym bag, his arms already getting sore, and turned to leave when something caught his eye against his will. Through a small crack between the shower curtain and the tiled wall of the shower, he could see vivid bruising on Seto's torso. It took a fraction of a second for it to register in Joey's mind what he was seeing before he dashed out of there as quickly as he could. The image stuck with him for the rest of the day and well into the night.

Seto, whose eyes had been closed and his ears filled with the sound of running water, didn't even know that Joey had come back to the locker room. But he did find a small gold puzzle piece on the floor that had, unbeknownst to him, fallen out of Joey's bag when he'd scampered out of the locker room only minutes ago. He'd put it in his pocket before leaving for home, deciding that he'd find whose it was on Monday. Thanks to his little stunt, his arms were incredibly sore and his body was aching all over again. Perhaps standing up to the coach had been stupid of him, but he couldn't stand going one more day without standing up to the gym coach about his constant harassing of Ryou. Seto couldn't stand injustice; that was why he was always getting himself involved in fights that weren't his and standing up to bullies. He used his anger at the world to fuel his fire when he fought, which was why he always came out on top. Except for that morning.

He checked his watch with a sigh. He had just enough time to change out of his school uniform, drop off his backpack, and maybe sit down for a few minutes to rest, before he needed to leave to meet his first client. He'd gotten two calls on his cell that day from other clients wanting to hire him for some period of time that night, so his night was going to be even longer than he'd anticipated that morning. He wasn't sure how he was going to survive the night. For once, he didn't think that sheer force of will was going to be enough.