Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Desideratum ❯ Thoughts ( Chapter 3 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: KatsuyaKaiba 
Thoughts
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 04.18.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.6K | Visits: 334 | Status: Work In Progress
Thoughts
Anime/Manga: Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Drama | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 04.18.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.6K | Visits: 334 | Status: Work In Progress
Desideratum
A Seto Centric Thingy by Katsuya Kaiba
AN: I bring thee tidings of Seto! Uh-huh. This is doomed to long-ness. Why do I find myself unable to write a one shot? I always turn it into an intense novel sized thing. I am hopeless. But I will say that writing this story in particular has been the most fun I've had this year. No, really. I'm that sad. I love this story. I like Seto and his phobia of feelings. Do you think he's OCD? How hot would that be. Way too hot. Oh, yeah.
*****************
Joey, resting on his knees, refused to look up even as I began speaking.
"What...what do you mean, you like me? What is that supposed to mean?" I was shocked. I had been expecting quite the opposite. Seto, I hate you. Seto, I can't stand you. Not Seto, I like you. What was happening?
"I don't know, okay? God, I knew you were gonna freak out like this. That's why I never said anything."
Never said anything? That must mean...
I looked down at him and spoke very quietly. I was supressing something, not knowing exactly what it was. It was a threatening emotion, and that was enough. I needed facts.
"How long?" I asked him simply, and my voice held nothing but the question. I sounded surprisingly calm in comparision to how I truly felt.
His only movement was to bring his head up and warily meet my eyes. He looked so lost and alone, and the pain in his expression shook something inside of me. It wasn't enough to topple the something over, but it did stir and awaken it, and in that moment I became aware that it existed inside of me. I knew how that felt. I felt the same exact way.
"Since...since I can remember. I'm sorry." His voice never faltered, although I knew that he was in an incredible amout of pain. It showed in his expression, but it was hidden underneath, and only because I felt it as well was I able to discern it through his features. He was surprisingly strong. My mind threw thoughts aimlessly back and forth, and the first one that I was able to make out in the tangle was the very last thing that Joey had said to me. He was sorry. I wondered why.
"What are you sorry for?" I couldn't ever imagine apologizing for something so infectious. It wasn't his fault that he possessed emotions, it wasn't my fault either. The difference between us was how we handled that inevitable curse. I could imagine being angry, or simply denying it altogether, but sorrow?
"I'm sorry because...I think that you'll hate me for this. And I'm sorry to bother you with it. I've already caused you enough trouble. And...I'm also sorry that I can't fix you. I can't even look at you right now, I'm sorry..." He stood up so quickly that he nearly fell over, but pulling himself upright rigidly he regained his balance and grabbed his school bag. After one last hollow look in my direction, he took off, probably going home to cry. It was none of my concern. I supposed that must be what one might do after being rejected...
Rejected? Was that what I had just done to him? I wasn't entirely sure as to what had just transpired here, and now that I was alone again, the silence swept in and swiftly unclouded my thoughts. I was able to think clearly, and I desperately did not want to. I wanted to cast this whole episode from my mind and never come back here again.
I wanted to go Home. So I ran after Joey Wheeler. I'm not exactly sure why it was that I reacted this way, but I'm sure that I will never know. I try to make a habit of thinking before I act, and this was not what I had done.
"Wait, Wheeler!" He didn't stop, nor did he look back. This only fueled my inner panic, and I sprinted in his direction. I would not be ignored. It took me less than a minute to close the distance that lay between Joey and I, and as soon as I was within reach of him I flung my hand forward and clung to his arm determinedly. He in turn pulled his arm away roughly and tried to extricate himself from my death grip, and failed miserably. The force of his retaliation, however, was just enough to lift me slightly and I lost my footing momentarily. In a blind tangle I felt myself fall to the ground in slow motion, but I was surprised when I did not feel the rough pavement against my skin. I felt another body, another boy...
Joey had fallen as well, and now we lay in a mess on the sidewalk, limbs hopelessly entangled and forgotten in the swiftness of the moment. It had happened so quickly.
"Ow..." Joey was the first to break the silence, and he tried to sit up, although he was still a bit dazed from the tumble. Being directly on top of him, however, caused me to slide to the ground as he sat up, and I made an annoyed sound at him.
"Oops. Sorry..." He grinned at me nervously and scratched his head absentmindedly, trying to regain his bearings. I stared at him from where I had fallen on my back, my face to the sky, and I turned my head in order to see him better. The sunlight came from behind Joey's head, making it's way towards the western sky in the late afternoon, and the red and yellow streams of light the filtered through his messy locks made him seem...shinier, for lack of a better description. He watched me as I watched him, and I think he began to grow uncomfortable, because he fidgeted with his bangs and looked away from me.
"What?" he asked me, almost silently. The question was loaded, fully loaded, and I could feel a weight on my chest as my answer drifted to him across the space between us.
"...Nothing." He seemed dissapointed at this, but he did not show it. How was it that I was able to see that, regardless of whether he showed me or not? When had I become so well versed in the secret language of Joey's inner workings? It was as though I had him memorized, and the feeling I got when I was able to correctly gauge his hidden feelings gave me a certain sense of...something unidentified. Something awful, I just knew it. Something I wasn't ready to acknowledge within me, and I promptly did not. Pushing the growing suspicion away, I watched him with a cautios eye.
Joey stood and caught his balance, offering me a hand to pull myself up with. I stared at it for a moment before giving him a look of dissatisfaction and pulled myself up on my own. Both of us now stood, waiting for the other say something, anything that might give the other a clue as to what was the right thing to say next. I watched Joey from the corner of my eye and saw that he was struggling with something in his mind. It seemed as though he wanted to say something, but was having doubts as to whether it was the right thing to do.
"Wheeler, just spit it out." I was losing patience fast with each passing moment. All of the aimless wandering of the day had worn me out further than I had realized. It wasn't until we had fallen to the pavement that I felt the true soreness of my overworked muscles.
"Are you..." Joey spoke in a tone that was completely colorless, and conveyed nothing but the tenatively placed words that he spoke. "Are you...upset with me?"
I didn't even have to think before I answered his question.
"Of course I am." I didn't speak angrily, but the words were swift and executed firmly, leaving no room for question. This concept was beyond Joey's nearly nonexistant level of comprehension, evidently, because he shot me a horrified face that made me feel as though I had said the wrong thing. Which I knew was absolutely out of the question, because I had spoken the truth.
"What do you mean?" He tone was shrill and conveyed his panic and sense of justified disconnection to the situation. I had really explained this all before.
"It's really quite simple, puppy. I told you before, but I suppose that I'll have to tell you once more. You decided that it was a good idea to meddle in affairs wich do not involve you. Because of your inability to keep to youself, I have somehow ended up here," I waved my arms wide in a show of disgust for my current surroundings,"in this travesty of a living environment. Mind your own damn business next time, and quit tampering with mine. As you can see, your influence is not what I need right now."
I watched his face transform as I spoke, and as the words were falling from my lips there began to grow within me a very strange something unwanted. An emotion, a reaction rather, to the way that my words affected Joey. I never stopped, although I almost hesitated for a moment, and I immediately cursed the mishap and pushed it away. What was his problem? It was as though the things that I said to him were so important that he would carry them around forever, as if anything I had to say truly mattered to him. It shouldn't. Nothing he said to me ever mattered, I never gave the slightest thought to a word anyone said, whether near me or directly to my face. That would be a foolish mistake, to be so easily swayed by the opinions and emotions of another.
"Mutt. Why are you so upset about this? Why do care so much about what others say about you? It's foolish, to act this way."
He looked as though his tears would fall any moment now. Oh, god, now what? If he really did start crying, I would have no choice but to laugh in his face. What a weak fool.
"No, it's not foolish. You...you are foolish. I told you that I liked you, and you have the nerve to tell me that I shouldn't care about what you tell me? I don't care about what others say about me, but I do care about what you say. Why don't you get it?" He put a hand on his hip and stood rudely, waving his other hand around in a display of exasperation. "Do you even understand what I meant when I said that? You don't even know what it means, or how I feel. You don't understand what it is to like. To favor someone, to care about another person. I care about you, and what you have to say is a reflection of what you have inside of you. Of course I will listen. Even if all you have to say is a load of shit about me, and how inconvenient my feelings are for you. I know that's what you want to say-"
"How the hell would you know?" I spoke out of line, and felt the regret of it instantly.
"I don't know. I wish that I did, but maybe wishing's my problem. Too bad for me, huh?"
I looked at him, not caring about the look on my face for once, which I knew from the odd feel of it that it must be streaked with emotion. Which emotion, I could not say, and even now the feel of it is alien and uncomfortable, and I avoid it as often as I can. But it came upon me without warning, and was triggered by something inside of me. I felt an echoing similarity underneath my face that was equally unfamiliar, and just as uninvited. My face betrayed my emotions. And I couldn't help it nor hinder it in the least. The familiar feel of clenched muscles tightened in a comfortably cool and closed expression was missing, and my features sold me out after all.
I felt this betrayal and I could not fight the uprising nor the coming tide, so I turned from him and abandoned Zero at long last. I walked away, and headed home. Well, not home, but I wanted to go someplace safe and familiar, and leave this warm and grateful place that was so damned sunny and welcoming. This place that Joey lived in was filled with him, because he was there. His bright disposition was contagious, like a deadly plague sweeping the nation, and now every inch of familiar territory I went to was now under the sun and happy to see me. It was a nightmare. Even I was beginning to fall victim, I realized as I thought back to all of those questions that I had answered truthfully. I had given him pieces of my mind, real shards of it that were meaningful and important. Why had he taken them, and taken them directly to his heart? What could I do to make him see that he was mistaken, that he was no longer safe?
As I fell back into the painfully familiar pattern of walking once more, I felt my mind beginning to ramble aimlessly, and I meant to take control of it and end the nonsense buzzing shamelessly in my skull, but a pang of curiosity stopped me, for just a moment. Just thinking about it can't hurt, can it? No one knows, and I'll never tell anyone these things. Just thoughts are harmless. I scoffed at my mind, if such a thing is possible, but I did nothing else to contain it. I feigned disinterest, and secretly listened in.
Joey said that he...liked me. How plain. No, not plain. How...vague. I wasn't even sure if he and I were on the same page with that subject. So he liked me, lots of people seemed to. Lots of people liked him, as well. But what sort of like did he mean when he spoke of me? 'Like' is such a useless and incompetent word. I had assumed that when he used it in refrence to me, he meant that he...and here I blanked. What had I thought, exactly? I had reprimanded him for apologizing, but other than that my mind had made sure to steer clear of the topic altogether. But judging on the way that he spoke and acted when he told me, and combining that with the nearly uncomfortable amount of attention he had devoted to me over the last few weeks, I began to see both Joey and his situation in a new light.
It was becoming clear. Joey had a...a fondness for me. I suppose it's been termed as a crush. A crush. On me.
Oh. Well, that was unexpected. Even by me, and I had previously thought that I had Joey all figured out. Clearly I had been mistaken. And he said that it wasn't new, what had he said to me? The events of minutes ago had already begun to blur in my memory.
'Since...since I can remember. I'm sorry...' Yes, that was it. I remembered that he was sorry.
We had been aware of the existance of one another since long before Duelist Kingdom. That, I thought in awe, is quite a long while. A long while for someone to have to hide a feeling such as this one. I had heard of this feeling before, and the wide spread rumors were most unsettling. This 'like' affliction will, without fail, eventually lead into love. And Love, I knew for a fact, was a flame that I did not want to play with. I was surprised that Joey himself was not aware of this fact. Surely he knew that if he let his feelings run rampant and unleashed that he would cause himself more trouble than even I could pull him out of. And I had pulled that boy out of a hell of a lot of trouble. He wasn't so careless as to run into something like this headfirst, was he?
My mind answered itself with a resounding affirmation. Yes, Joey was that careless. That was how Joey operated, on all existing levels. Headfirst was his only option, and he strongly believed in the intensity of...feelings...or something. Something to that effect. Still, for someone as passionate and headstrong as Joey to keep silent about something I'm only too positive was very dear to him showed a great deal of strength and maturity on his part.
Too bad he lost control in the end. He always does, I thought with a smirk. That fool caved, just as he always does. He's so...so...well, he's interesting, all right. I wondered what it was that had made him crumble in the end. I supposed that a burden of those magnifications would be tiring, even to someone like me.
Me. There was a place for me in this terrible mess of feelings as well, although just the mere thought of it made me cringe. I factored into this tangle somewhere. I wasn't the cause of it, not intentionally, but I was involved, no matter how deeply I longed to be immune to dangerous games such as these. I wondered if there was any way to slip out unscathed. Probably not. Did I even care?
"Yes, I do." My thoughts escaped from their hiding place for a moment and made themselves known to me in the real world. I had to care. I was involved. But to what extent? I knew that first and foremost, I cared about whether I was going to have to care for very much longer. The entire ordeal was becoming extremely unsatisfying, especially now that I found myself reacting to it in such an extreme manner. More than once I had lost my temper, and numerous times I found myself speaking to Joey when I knew for a fact that the most logical thing to do would be to keep silent. This was highly illogical. This was a real pain in the ass.
Why was I still thinking about Joey Wheeler? I glanced upward at the solemn iron gates that surrounded my house and sighed inwardly. This whole thinking activity was very non productive. I had been thinking for the last hour, and not only had I gotten absolutely nowhere in making sense of the strange way that I was reacting to this newfound wealth of information, but I found myself unable to think of anything other than my last encounter with Joey. I slipped through the gates and made my way to the front door, wondering what it was that I needed to be doing besides this...thinking nonsense. Nothing came. Nothing, save for that very last few words that Joey had spoken before I had left. Before I had walked away from him. I hadn't even turned back to see if he had watched me go. I hadn't cared, at the moment. But I wondered about it now.
And I wondered why it was that I was wondering about him, of all the people in the world to wonder about. I was still wondering about Joey Wheeler, and the things that he felt. Wondering if I cared at all, in the vain hope of denying it for good.
AN: How fun. This is fun, this Seto thing. He simply does not understand, does he? What a weirdo. I like him, but I also really like Joey. They're so perfect for each other, aren't they? I wonder how long it'll be before Seto even realizes that Joey is expecting an answer from him. He's so lost! Ahhh... Deep thoughts are good. This chapter was filled with them. I want to see more action! But it's not time yet. I desperately want this to somewhat resemble reality, and Seto really needs time. He's not ready. Don't worry, they will kiss! I demand that they kiss, at the very least! And I'm the writer, so they'll just have to suck it up and live with it, won't they? I hope that they're in character. Your thoughts on the way that I have tried to keep them both in character would be most appreciated. Tell me what you think, and if you think that it's moving too fast. Reality is key. Thanks for reading!!!
Converting /tmp/phpBu9GC9 to /dev/stdout
A Seto Centric Thingy by Katsuya Kaiba
AN: I bring thee tidings of Seto! Uh-huh. This is doomed to long-ness. Why do I find myself unable to write a one shot? I always turn it into an intense novel sized thing. I am hopeless. But I will say that writing this story in particular has been the most fun I've had this year. No, really. I'm that sad. I love this story. I like Seto and his phobia of feelings. Do you think he's OCD? How hot would that be. Way too hot. Oh, yeah.
*****************
Joey, resting on his knees, refused to look up even as I began speaking.
"What...what do you mean, you like me? What is that supposed to mean?" I was shocked. I had been expecting quite the opposite. Seto, I hate you. Seto, I can't stand you. Not Seto, I like you. What was happening?
"I don't know, okay? God, I knew you were gonna freak out like this. That's why I never said anything."
Never said anything? That must mean...
I looked down at him and spoke very quietly. I was supressing something, not knowing exactly what it was. It was a threatening emotion, and that was enough. I needed facts.
"How long?" I asked him simply, and my voice held nothing but the question. I sounded surprisingly calm in comparision to how I truly felt.
His only movement was to bring his head up and warily meet my eyes. He looked so lost and alone, and the pain in his expression shook something inside of me. It wasn't enough to topple the something over, but it did stir and awaken it, and in that moment I became aware that it existed inside of me. I knew how that felt. I felt the same exact way.
"Since...since I can remember. I'm sorry." His voice never faltered, although I knew that he was in an incredible amout of pain. It showed in his expression, but it was hidden underneath, and only because I felt it as well was I able to discern it through his features. He was surprisingly strong. My mind threw thoughts aimlessly back and forth, and the first one that I was able to make out in the tangle was the very last thing that Joey had said to me. He was sorry. I wondered why.
"What are you sorry for?" I couldn't ever imagine apologizing for something so infectious. It wasn't his fault that he possessed emotions, it wasn't my fault either. The difference between us was how we handled that inevitable curse. I could imagine being angry, or simply denying it altogether, but sorrow?
"I'm sorry because...I think that you'll hate me for this. And I'm sorry to bother you with it. I've already caused you enough trouble. And...I'm also sorry that I can't fix you. I can't even look at you right now, I'm sorry..." He stood up so quickly that he nearly fell over, but pulling himself upright rigidly he regained his balance and grabbed his school bag. After one last hollow look in my direction, he took off, probably going home to cry. It was none of my concern. I supposed that must be what one might do after being rejected...
Rejected? Was that what I had just done to him? I wasn't entirely sure as to what had just transpired here, and now that I was alone again, the silence swept in and swiftly unclouded my thoughts. I was able to think clearly, and I desperately did not want to. I wanted to cast this whole episode from my mind and never come back here again.
I wanted to go Home. So I ran after Joey Wheeler. I'm not exactly sure why it was that I reacted this way, but I'm sure that I will never know. I try to make a habit of thinking before I act, and this was not what I had done.
"Wait, Wheeler!" He didn't stop, nor did he look back. This only fueled my inner panic, and I sprinted in his direction. I would not be ignored. It took me less than a minute to close the distance that lay between Joey and I, and as soon as I was within reach of him I flung my hand forward and clung to his arm determinedly. He in turn pulled his arm away roughly and tried to extricate himself from my death grip, and failed miserably. The force of his retaliation, however, was just enough to lift me slightly and I lost my footing momentarily. In a blind tangle I felt myself fall to the ground in slow motion, but I was surprised when I did not feel the rough pavement against my skin. I felt another body, another boy...
Joey had fallen as well, and now we lay in a mess on the sidewalk, limbs hopelessly entangled and forgotten in the swiftness of the moment. It had happened so quickly.
"Ow..." Joey was the first to break the silence, and he tried to sit up, although he was still a bit dazed from the tumble. Being directly on top of him, however, caused me to slide to the ground as he sat up, and I made an annoyed sound at him.
"Oops. Sorry..." He grinned at me nervously and scratched his head absentmindedly, trying to regain his bearings. I stared at him from where I had fallen on my back, my face to the sky, and I turned my head in order to see him better. The sunlight came from behind Joey's head, making it's way towards the western sky in the late afternoon, and the red and yellow streams of light the filtered through his messy locks made him seem...shinier, for lack of a better description. He watched me as I watched him, and I think he began to grow uncomfortable, because he fidgeted with his bangs and looked away from me.
"What?" he asked me, almost silently. The question was loaded, fully loaded, and I could feel a weight on my chest as my answer drifted to him across the space between us.
"...Nothing." He seemed dissapointed at this, but he did not show it. How was it that I was able to see that, regardless of whether he showed me or not? When had I become so well versed in the secret language of Joey's inner workings? It was as though I had him memorized, and the feeling I got when I was able to correctly gauge his hidden feelings gave me a certain sense of...something unidentified. Something awful, I just knew it. Something I wasn't ready to acknowledge within me, and I promptly did not. Pushing the growing suspicion away, I watched him with a cautios eye.
Joey stood and caught his balance, offering me a hand to pull myself up with. I stared at it for a moment before giving him a look of dissatisfaction and pulled myself up on my own. Both of us now stood, waiting for the other say something, anything that might give the other a clue as to what was the right thing to say next. I watched Joey from the corner of my eye and saw that he was struggling with something in his mind. It seemed as though he wanted to say something, but was having doubts as to whether it was the right thing to do.
"Wheeler, just spit it out." I was losing patience fast with each passing moment. All of the aimless wandering of the day had worn me out further than I had realized. It wasn't until we had fallen to the pavement that I felt the true soreness of my overworked muscles.
"Are you..." Joey spoke in a tone that was completely colorless, and conveyed nothing but the tenatively placed words that he spoke. "Are you...upset with me?"
I didn't even have to think before I answered his question.
"Of course I am." I didn't speak angrily, but the words were swift and executed firmly, leaving no room for question. This concept was beyond Joey's nearly nonexistant level of comprehension, evidently, because he shot me a horrified face that made me feel as though I had said the wrong thing. Which I knew was absolutely out of the question, because I had spoken the truth.
"What do you mean?" He tone was shrill and conveyed his panic and sense of justified disconnection to the situation. I had really explained this all before.
"It's really quite simple, puppy. I told you before, but I suppose that I'll have to tell you once more. You decided that it was a good idea to meddle in affairs wich do not involve you. Because of your inability to keep to youself, I have somehow ended up here," I waved my arms wide in a show of disgust for my current surroundings,"in this travesty of a living environment. Mind your own damn business next time, and quit tampering with mine. As you can see, your influence is not what I need right now."
I watched his face transform as I spoke, and as the words were falling from my lips there began to grow within me a very strange something unwanted. An emotion, a reaction rather, to the way that my words affected Joey. I never stopped, although I almost hesitated for a moment, and I immediately cursed the mishap and pushed it away. What was his problem? It was as though the things that I said to him were so important that he would carry them around forever, as if anything I had to say truly mattered to him. It shouldn't. Nothing he said to me ever mattered, I never gave the slightest thought to a word anyone said, whether near me or directly to my face. That would be a foolish mistake, to be so easily swayed by the opinions and emotions of another.
"Mutt. Why are you so upset about this? Why do care so much about what others say about you? It's foolish, to act this way."
He looked as though his tears would fall any moment now. Oh, god, now what? If he really did start crying, I would have no choice but to laugh in his face. What a weak fool.
"No, it's not foolish. You...you are foolish. I told you that I liked you, and you have the nerve to tell me that I shouldn't care about what you tell me? I don't care about what others say about me, but I do care about what you say. Why don't you get it?" He put a hand on his hip and stood rudely, waving his other hand around in a display of exasperation. "Do you even understand what I meant when I said that? You don't even know what it means, or how I feel. You don't understand what it is to like. To favor someone, to care about another person. I care about you, and what you have to say is a reflection of what you have inside of you. Of course I will listen. Even if all you have to say is a load of shit about me, and how inconvenient my feelings are for you. I know that's what you want to say-"
"How the hell would you know?" I spoke out of line, and felt the regret of it instantly.
"I don't know. I wish that I did, but maybe wishing's my problem. Too bad for me, huh?"
I looked at him, not caring about the look on my face for once, which I knew from the odd feel of it that it must be streaked with emotion. Which emotion, I could not say, and even now the feel of it is alien and uncomfortable, and I avoid it as often as I can. But it came upon me without warning, and was triggered by something inside of me. I felt an echoing similarity underneath my face that was equally unfamiliar, and just as uninvited. My face betrayed my emotions. And I couldn't help it nor hinder it in the least. The familiar feel of clenched muscles tightened in a comfortably cool and closed expression was missing, and my features sold me out after all.
I felt this betrayal and I could not fight the uprising nor the coming tide, so I turned from him and abandoned Zero at long last. I walked away, and headed home. Well, not home, but I wanted to go someplace safe and familiar, and leave this warm and grateful place that was so damned sunny and welcoming. This place that Joey lived in was filled with him, because he was there. His bright disposition was contagious, like a deadly plague sweeping the nation, and now every inch of familiar territory I went to was now under the sun and happy to see me. It was a nightmare. Even I was beginning to fall victim, I realized as I thought back to all of those questions that I had answered truthfully. I had given him pieces of my mind, real shards of it that were meaningful and important. Why had he taken them, and taken them directly to his heart? What could I do to make him see that he was mistaken, that he was no longer safe?
As I fell back into the painfully familiar pattern of walking once more, I felt my mind beginning to ramble aimlessly, and I meant to take control of it and end the nonsense buzzing shamelessly in my skull, but a pang of curiosity stopped me, for just a moment. Just thinking about it can't hurt, can it? No one knows, and I'll never tell anyone these things. Just thoughts are harmless. I scoffed at my mind, if such a thing is possible, but I did nothing else to contain it. I feigned disinterest, and secretly listened in.
Joey said that he...liked me. How plain. No, not plain. How...vague. I wasn't even sure if he and I were on the same page with that subject. So he liked me, lots of people seemed to. Lots of people liked him, as well. But what sort of like did he mean when he spoke of me? 'Like' is such a useless and incompetent word. I had assumed that when he used it in refrence to me, he meant that he...and here I blanked. What had I thought, exactly? I had reprimanded him for apologizing, but other than that my mind had made sure to steer clear of the topic altogether. But judging on the way that he spoke and acted when he told me, and combining that with the nearly uncomfortable amount of attention he had devoted to me over the last few weeks, I began to see both Joey and his situation in a new light.
It was becoming clear. Joey had a...a fondness for me. I suppose it's been termed as a crush. A crush. On me.
Oh. Well, that was unexpected. Even by me, and I had previously thought that I had Joey all figured out. Clearly I had been mistaken. And he said that it wasn't new, what had he said to me? The events of minutes ago had already begun to blur in my memory.
'Since...since I can remember. I'm sorry...' Yes, that was it. I remembered that he was sorry.
We had been aware of the existance of one another since long before Duelist Kingdom. That, I thought in awe, is quite a long while. A long while for someone to have to hide a feeling such as this one. I had heard of this feeling before, and the wide spread rumors were most unsettling. This 'like' affliction will, without fail, eventually lead into love. And Love, I knew for a fact, was a flame that I did not want to play with. I was surprised that Joey himself was not aware of this fact. Surely he knew that if he let his feelings run rampant and unleashed that he would cause himself more trouble than even I could pull him out of. And I had pulled that boy out of a hell of a lot of trouble. He wasn't so careless as to run into something like this headfirst, was he?
My mind answered itself with a resounding affirmation. Yes, Joey was that careless. That was how Joey operated, on all existing levels. Headfirst was his only option, and he strongly believed in the intensity of...feelings...or something. Something to that effect. Still, for someone as passionate and headstrong as Joey to keep silent about something I'm only too positive was very dear to him showed a great deal of strength and maturity on his part.
Too bad he lost control in the end. He always does, I thought with a smirk. That fool caved, just as he always does. He's so...so...well, he's interesting, all right. I wondered what it was that had made him crumble in the end. I supposed that a burden of those magnifications would be tiring, even to someone like me.
Me. There was a place for me in this terrible mess of feelings as well, although just the mere thought of it made me cringe. I factored into this tangle somewhere. I wasn't the cause of it, not intentionally, but I was involved, no matter how deeply I longed to be immune to dangerous games such as these. I wondered if there was any way to slip out unscathed. Probably not. Did I even care?
"Yes, I do." My thoughts escaped from their hiding place for a moment and made themselves known to me in the real world. I had to care. I was involved. But to what extent? I knew that first and foremost, I cared about whether I was going to have to care for very much longer. The entire ordeal was becoming extremely unsatisfying, especially now that I found myself reacting to it in such an extreme manner. More than once I had lost my temper, and numerous times I found myself speaking to Joey when I knew for a fact that the most logical thing to do would be to keep silent. This was highly illogical. This was a real pain in the ass.
Why was I still thinking about Joey Wheeler? I glanced upward at the solemn iron gates that surrounded my house and sighed inwardly. This whole thinking activity was very non productive. I had been thinking for the last hour, and not only had I gotten absolutely nowhere in making sense of the strange way that I was reacting to this newfound wealth of information, but I found myself unable to think of anything other than my last encounter with Joey. I slipped through the gates and made my way to the front door, wondering what it was that I needed to be doing besides this...thinking nonsense. Nothing came. Nothing, save for that very last few words that Joey had spoken before I had left. Before I had walked away from him. I hadn't even turned back to see if he had watched me go. I hadn't cared, at the moment. But I wondered about it now.
And I wondered why it was that I was wondering about him, of all the people in the world to wonder about. I was still wondering about Joey Wheeler, and the things that he felt. Wondering if I cared at all, in the vain hope of denying it for good.
AN: How fun. This is fun, this Seto thing. He simply does not understand, does he? What a weirdo. I like him, but I also really like Joey. They're so perfect for each other, aren't they? I wonder how long it'll be before Seto even realizes that Joey is expecting an answer from him. He's so lost! Ahhh... Deep thoughts are good. This chapter was filled with them. I want to see more action! But it's not time yet. I desperately want this to somewhat resemble reality, and Seto really needs time. He's not ready. Don't worry, they will kiss! I demand that they kiss, at the very least! And I'm the writer, so they'll just have to suck it up and live with it, won't they? I hope that they're in character. Your thoughts on the way that I have tried to keep them both in character would be most appreciated. Tell me what you think, and if you think that it's moving too fast. Reality is key. Thanks for reading!!!
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