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The thing between her and Kaiba wasn’t new , and even when it was, it hadn’t felt that way. They’d known each other so long, survived by the skin of their teeth together so many times, saved the world together so many times -- there were some things, Joey figured, that just irrevocably melded you to another person. And, whether they’d liked it or not at the time, Joey Wheeler’s life had been intertwined with Seto Kaiba’s since they were punk-ass kids flying by the seat of their pants.
“It’s just Yugi’s,” Joey whined, sprawled across the expanse of Kaiba’s overly large, unbelievably lavish bed -- she was tall. Like, tall tall. Like pointed-comments-about-how-she-could-never-wear-heels-on-a-date tall, and she still couldn’t touch both ends at the same time-- she’d been ready to go half an hour ago; she’d taken a shower, ran a brush through her hair, and tugged on her least ratty pair of jeans, “ya’ don’t have to be runway ready for game night .”
“You’re the one who insisted I go,” Kaiba’s voice floated out of the bathroom, flat and dry, “now you get to suffer the consequences.”
Joey scoffed, consequences her ass, “Just hurry it up, dollface. We got places to be.”
“Call me dollface one more time, Wheeler,” heels clicked on the floor that might be marble, Joey had always been too afraid to ask, and Kaiba appeared in the doorway, cocking one hip out and raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow, “and you can sleep on the couch.”
Any reply Joey could have shot back dried to ash on her tongue; Kaiba had always been beautiful, like one of those goddesses the Greeks were so fond of depicting in their statues, long limbed and ethereal, and she’d aged like fine wine.
If Kaiba had been beautiful at sixteen she was stunning at twenty-three. And she was stunning in Joey’s t-shirt. Sure, she paired it with jeans and heels that probably cost more than the rent of Joey’s shoebox apartment and the bakery beneath it, but still. This was Kaiba, Seto Kaiba , and she was wearing Joey Wheeler’s ratty, faded t-shirt that bore the name of the modest university where she'd gotten her bachelors.
A university that Kaiba had turned her nose up at in public but very quietly donated a very large sum of money to when she thought Joey wasn't looking.
"If you want me to stop calling you a puppy," the woman in question drawled when Joey's stunned silence had carried on just a smidge too long, "you should maybe pull your tongue back into your mouth."
The clack of the blonde's teeth was audible and the heat of her cheeks could have seared a steak, but she still couldn't stop her helpless smile.
"Eh," she shrugged, pushing herself up onto her elbows lazily, "after so long I gotta say it's kinda grown on me, Money Bags."
Kaiba sighed, that over dramatic huff of air that meant she was actually valiantly pushing down a laugh, "You're going to be the death of me," she said, crossing the room in several long strides so she could tower over her girlfriend properly.
"But what a way to go," Joey sighed back, and who would ever have thought she'd end up here?
She was just a loud-mouthed idiot with more brawn than brain and an accent that got her stared at no matter where she went courtesy of her American side of the family.
She was brash, rude, and poor. There were, even now, healing scrapes across her knuckles because she'd picked a fight with someone bigger than her and these days all of her problems couldn't be handled with ridiculously high stake card games.
But she was soft and blurry around the edges, unsure of where she ended and Kaiba's blankets began. The sun slanting in through the blinds behind her sent shadows playing across the brunette's face that she just wanted to trace with the tips of her fingers and then, maybe, her lips.
And the best part was, she thought as she wiggled fully onto her knees, using Kaiba's ever steady shoulders for support, she was allowed to do just that.
These weren't the incoherent, impossible ramblings of a horny teenager with an ardent crush on her frenemy. These were just the things she was allowed to do on any given Saturday night.
Kaiba caught Joey's wrist when the other woman lifted her hand towards her face, "What are you doing?"
"Touchin' your face, stupid," Joey rolled her eyes and jerked her head back towards the window, "Sunset looks good on you." Kaiba wasn't holding her with any amount of strength, she'd simply curled her long fingers around the limb that had the audacity to approach her uninvited, but Joey wasn't about to move to break the grip.
They had that in common. They were jumpy in the same ways, considered strange in the same ways. In all honesty Joey was appalled it had taken her as long as she had to recognize the parallels and put two and two together.
Slowly, Kaiba's fingers slid down the length of Joey's forearm, light enough to tickle and the blonde's grin widened.
You didn't surprise a kid who had been abused -- the instinct to flinch never really left. But the quiet understanding between them made it easier to bear.
"You're one to talk," Kaiba murmured softly, leaning down so the soft hickory of her hair dragged against Joey's cheeks and surrounded them like a curtain, "Do you even know what you look like right now?"
"Like a dirty street urchin who made a nest in your impeccable sheets?" No, she wasn't breathless because Kaiba was so close to her. Or because her hair smelled like bergamot and she knew, she knew , that it was Joey's favorite scent in the entire world and she was evil .
Even Kaiba's snort was infuriatingly elegant. Her nose brushed against Joey's followed by her lips across the blonde's cheekbone.
"You look like fire ," she whispered, "Your hair glows like faery lights and your eyes… the average person would think they were brown but they're not. In this light I can see the green and the gold . It's like the sun made a home in my bed."
And she always did that; pressed impossibly sweet somethings (because Seto Kaiba had never said nothing in her life) into Joey’s skin until she was flustered and overwhelmed, using her hands on Kaiba’s shoulders to launch herself away, landing flat on her back to grumble at the ceiling.
“Oh, no,” Kaiba drawled, knees settling on either side of Joey’s hips as she finally crawled onto the bed herself, “now she’s laying in my bed,” there was a wicked glint in her eye that meant they were stopping at the Good liquor store for Apology Wine when they strolled into game night incredibly late, “what ever will I do?”
“Knowin’ you?” Joey managed, even around the way her heartbeat was thumping away in the general vicinity of her trachea, “First, you’re going to raise your left eyebrow,” because it was always the left one and it was already creeping steadily upward, “then, you’re going to lean down,” Joey’s grin widened when Kaiba lowered herself obligingly. The corners of her mouth, painted that vicious, dangerous red that she preferred, were twitching from how hard she had to press her lips together to not laugh.
“What else am I going to do, Mutt?” She asked, almost dangerous if it wasn’t for the warmth behind her eyes.
Joey opened her mouth – to goad Kaiba into kissing her, into touching her, into making them just, so, so fucking late – only to bite back a swear and a disappointed huff when the sleek black phone on the nightstand started to rattle its way across the wood, merry as can be, like it wasn’t actively tanking her plans for the evening, “You’re gonna to answer that phone and deal with whatever Isono needs.”
As Kaiba stood to cross to the other side of the bed, Joey let her head fall back and her hands drop to her side. She wasn’t mad; disappointed, sure, but not mad. She’d long accepted playing second fiddle to Kaiba Corp.
The company was Kaiba’s baby; she’d torn that asshole's bloody legacy to shreds with her bare hands and rebuilt it from the ground up into something incredible, of course she micro-managed it a little. There was no one in the entire world quite as ruthlessly competent as Seto Kaiba; her standards were the only thing higher than the heels on her work pumps.
Joey was proud of her – who wouldn’t be? That was her girlfriend out there ruling the world. Her girlfriend walking into board rooms across the world and striking fear into the hearts of gatekeeping nerds everywhere.
The bed dipped and where Joey was expecting the apology, the explanation, and the brief kiss to her forehead, she found one of Kaiba’s hands on her cheek, the other ghosting down her neck to slip her fingers under the collar of her t-shirt, and that wicked smile softened into something fond and gentle.
“Isono is calling Mokuba,” she said simply, “I have a date.”
“You… what?” Kaiba begged off of work so rarely, preferring to oversee everything directly, “Seto–”
“I’ve missed you,” and there was that quiet, almost shy lilt in her voice that always accompanied pink spreading across Kaiba’s cheekbones, “And besides, aren’t you the person always telling me to delegate?”
“Me, Yugi, the whole gang,” even breathless and giddy, Joey was never going to turn down the opportunity to give Kaiba just all of the shit; she even ticked off on her fingers as she went, just to watch Kaiba’s eyes roll, “Mokuba, Pegasus, your board of directors–”
“You wouldn’t trust my board of directors with a ham sandwich,” Kaiba interrupted, already curling her fingers around the hem of Joey’s shirt and tugging it up and over her head in a ruffled puff of blonde hair, “your exact words.”
“I stand by that,” Joey confirmed, blowing her bangs out of her face with a wry grin, and setting about removing Kaiba’s top with slightly more gusto than was technically called for but she was greedy for smooth, pale skin against dark lace and wire, “but we both know I ain’t above usin’ ‘em when it's to my advantage.” It just rarely was.
If there was one thing Kaiba would always splurge on, even if she didn’t have more money than God, it would always be underwear and Joey, who has always been poor, couldn’t even fault her. Sure, the bra Joey was currently reaching behind Kaiba’s back to unhook cost more than her degree but goddamn it looked good.
Kaiba shivered, pressing closer still to Joey – if pressed, she’d say it was because the room was cold and Joey ran at approximately one million degrees but they both knew it was because she was just as desperate for Joey as Joey was for her–, “You are very… resourceful.”
“That a fancy way of callin’ me–” Kaiba kissed her before she could even consider working herself into a proper sulk.
Which, yeah, okay. She was easy, what could she say?