Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Absolutely Awful ❯ Third Mistake ( Chapter 3 )

Absolutely Awful

By Katsuya Kaiba (subaruxkamui4ever)

Valentine's Day Fic Challenge Part Three

Rated PG-13

First person, Joey's perspective

Pairing: Seto and Joey, of course!

Summary: This Valentine's Day will no doubt be the worst disaster Joey has ever caused, having chosen this day to profess his love to Seto Kaiba. Will Joey survive? Will anyone?

That night I spent racking my mind, trying to think of something that I could do to sway the affections of Seto Kaiba. The remainder of the schoolday after my mishap had been more than embarrassing, and I had served two hours in detention afterwards. I walked home alone, comforted only by my own misery over the entire situation. Not only that, but I had sown the seed of suspicion in Seto's mind, and I knew that I would be under surveillance, for lack of a more fitting term. I would have to step lightly for the remaining days that stood between my untimely end and me. The dreaded Day of the Valentine's drew near.

I sat on my bed and stared distantly at the wall in front of me, not seeing it but instead see so much more in my own mind. So much more and yet…absolutely nothing. Sighing in misery at my own incompetence, I fell backward onto the mattress underneath and my body bounced quietly once or twice from the force of my fall. I was utterly hopeless. I didn't even believe I could romance my own self, let alone a completely off-limits and most assuredly un-romanceable boy like Seto Kaiba. But I had already set the wheels in motion, and it was far too late to turn back. I needed to finish this, and I knew that I would, in the end. The only problem was taking those fateful steps in the right direction. The past of least resistance was too often where my feet tended to fall, and I knew it was time that I stood up and took something that I wanted from life. And right now, what I wanted Seto, and I intended to take him.

Making the final preparations before finally retiring to bed, I crawled wearily underneath my sheets and shivered as I tried to warm up my body. It was snowing heavily outside, but I had gone out into the cold nonetheless in order to collect a few certain things that I would need the following morning. Slowly, as my teeth silenced their chattering and the feeling came back into my hands, I began formulate a plan that would be most effective in both getting me to the target and then escaping undetected, a previously unforeseen yet absolutely necessary task. This time, I left no room for failure or capture. A repeat performance of this morning's not-thought-out antics was the only thing that could set me up for guaranteed failure at this point. And failure was not an option.

I arrived at school even earlier the next morning, a full 45 minutes before the first bell was due to ring, and not a moment too soon. Seto, in his perpetual state of rigid punctuality, always arrived at school half an hour before it actually began, for reasons I'm sure I would never comprehend. However, I would need the extra time to set up everything I had planned, and although it seemed a bit drastic, I could leave nothing to chance. I wanted the extra time to be sure I was as far away from that classroom as possible when he arrived at the door, dispelling any possibility of being caught red handed as I had been yesterday. I rushed to the classroom and took one final glance behind my back to be sure I wouldn't have a single witness to my whereabouts. Seeing no one, I opened the door, slipped inside, and shut it behind me, locking it from the inside. Locating Seto's desk in the front corner of the room, I went for it quickly, sparing no time. I set my bag down on the seat and unzipped the largest side, taking out the contents one by one gingerly and arranged everything perfectly, taking time to be sure everything was absolutely breathtaking. It had to be perfect, and I obsessed over everything until it was. Nothing but the best was good enough for Seto Kaiba, and I was going to deliver.

Finished at long last, I looked up and caught the time from the large clock I knew so well, having spent much of my school career counting the seconds until the final bell rang, signifying my freedom if only for a few hours. Seto would arrive in just under five minutes. I zipped my bag up and made a few final adjustments to the layout of the items I left on his desk, hoping that good presentation would make up for the lack of originality. Valentine's Day is a very particular sort of gift giving occasion, and in the final days remaining before the upcoming holiday, it seemed that there were only about three or four different ways available to persons wishing to ask other persons to be their Valentine. Every shop and store in the city was ridiculously overstocked with the same exact items, in about a thousand different varieties. It seemed as though the only acceptable forms of Valentine's Day gifts were one of the following: a strangely shaped box filled with chocolate, very beautiful and very expensive red roses, and tiny little pieces of heart-shaped candy that both looked and tasted like chalk, and was inscribed with unfinished phrases and sentence fragments. Which left me with not a whole lot to work with. Not being creative enough to come up with something more fitting to Seto's tastes and not knowing what his tastes were anyway, I settled for quantity over quality, and loaded up on all three. Perhaps a whole lot of nothing was more appealing then a little imagination, and my hoped were riding on that possibility. Anyway, it's the thought that counts.

I left the classroom at a brisk pace, not wanting to seem suspicious, but still wanting to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. I planned on killing a bit of time, and then coming into class maybe seven or ten minutes early, so that I could make sure that Seto had indeed gotten there before anyone else and received the pile of Valentiney things I had left for him. It seems sometimes that I am not in Fate's good graces, because that just isn't how it happened at all.

I kept up my pace and hightailed it right off campus, taking my time now since I felt that I was out of the line of fire. Not a moment after my feet hit the sidewalk, I saw Seto arrive on campus, or rather, I saw his car arrive and pull over to the sidewalk where I stood, effectively cutting me off from escape. The passenger side door was no more than a foot away from me, and it swung open in my direction and blocked my view into the interior. Just as I was about to frantically turn and run screaming away from the vehicle, Seto Kaiba stepped out and stood at his full height, slamming the car door behind him and waving it away. The car drove off into the distance and left both of us standing there, looking at one another without motion or noise. It was a strange sort of whispering silence, the kind that is filled with the anticipation and speculation of both involved parties, and rarely is broken effectively. He looked as if he were about to say something, but instead he made to move past me and I stepped aside without thinking. Just then, in the second that he passed me by, I saw him look over at me from the corner of his eye without turning his head, straight into my face and taking me by the eyes, and I started for a moment, stricken into a frozen stance. He stopped walking and stood where he had stilled, right next to the spot where I had been caught by his gaze, and he stared straight ahead, as I did. Seto faced the school directly, and I faced the exact opposite direction, but still we were no more that inches apart by the shoulder, and then he was the first to speak.

"You should come to class. Now."

But…there was no way I was going back there! After everything I'd left on his desk? That was the very last place I wanted to be, especially since I was the very person that was behind all of this. I thought quickly, and decided to fall back on old habits that had served me so well in the past.

"Hell no, Kaiba! You think I'm gonna follow you around just cause you said so? Get a clue, moneybags."

I gave him an angry glare and turned on my heel, attempting to walk away indignantly, when I felt a sharp and sudden pulling on the back of my head. Seto had seen my retreat and reached out, entangling his hand in my hair and pulling me back in the direction he had decided that I was going. With me in hand, he continued on his way to school triumphantly, a sickeningly prideful smirk on his face as I trailed behind him, yelling and screaming the whole way and clawing at his hand in my hair in a vain attempt to free myself from his grasp. I never was as strong as he was, and all my efforts were futile as I was noisily dragged to the very place I had just come from.

"Damn it, Kaiba, let me go! I'm gonna kick your ass"

We reached the classroom and he opened the door and casually tossed me inside, then afterwards turned and shut it behind him. I stood up from the ground in an agitated huff, I honestly did love him, but he really was a jerk when he didn't get what he wanted. As the thought crossed my mind, I vaguely wondered what it was that he had wanted me to come here so badly for. I didn't get the chance to ask, however, because when he turned back to face me, his eyes only met mine for a moment before drifting away to the side. Wondering what had caught his sight, I followed his line of vision until we were both staring at Seto's desk, laden with presents of a clearly Valentine-like nature. Only pausing for a single second, he brought his eyes back to mine and a slow grin spread across his face like a fog silently creeping into a vast field. He had a plan, and I was no doubt involved in it. Whatever his mission was, I had no way of knowing, but what I did know was that I in no way wanted to be part of it.

"Hmmm…I wonder what this is all about…" He gestured toward his desk with one hand.

"Would you happen to know anything about this, Wheeler?"

I knew, at that moment, that he knew as well. He knew it was me, or at least, he suspected. I had to try to throw him off. If he was just bluffing, I could still feasibly come out of this without him knowing for sure. I had to be so very careful, but there was a way out of this. I hoped.

"How the hell should I know anything about it? I only just got here…"

His smirk never faltered once, instead it somehow grew to be much more sinister, and I felt a fear deep inside at what was to come.

"Well, since you're not doing anything, I wonder if you wouldn't mind helping me open up all these little presents? Then maybe you can help me figure out who it is that left them here. You don't mind…do you?"

My life is, without a doubt, absolutely awful.