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Black Coffee and a Funny Cigarette (free day)

i didn’t really have a plan for the last day of @joukaiweek buuuut i’ve had this sitting in my secret documents for a while. a sort of sequel to this gangster au, overly self-indulgent, and utterly tragic.

Title: Black Coffee and a Funny Cigarette Rating: M Characters: Joey Wheeler, Seto Kaiba Word Count: 2209 Warnings: Depression, Aftermath of Violence, Weed, Family Estrangement, Mokuba Is Dead In This One, Discussions of Violence, Swears, Sex, Minimally Researched Historical Fiction Summary: It’s the end of a long night for Joey Wheeler, and he seeks some comfort in the form of black coffee, and a funny cigarette.

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Joey runs a hand through the wet strands of his bleached hair and tries to avoid his reflection in the mirror. The steam from the shower works to cover the small medicine cabinet in the skinny bathroom of his tiny apartment, but blotches of color still make it through. The straw colored yellow, the warm tan of his skin, and the purple bruises that bloom on his face like water stains. His knuckles are red and raw, and he buries them in the scratchy towel before pulling on his overshirt and opening the door.

Night has stayed nested outside the single tiny window he called his own, but now early morning leaks shades of red into the midnight blue. Inside, the lamps were lit, making spots of warm light against the brick and plaster walls. Joey’s lucky to have an apartment fit for one, even if the metal frame bed is pushed up against the far wall, leaving only a little space between there and the cubby kitchen. The furniture can’t even be comfortably called second hand. No, the shabby pieces have been rescued from dumps and resale shops. A radio sits on the table, one of the only relatively new appliances he owns. Jazz crackles out of the speakers, the sort they played for late night insomniacs and sleepy workers starting their day or waiting to see it end.

The newest addition to his apartment comes in the tall dark shape of Seto Kaiba. He’s pulled a frayed robe over his shoulders and is now pouring himself a cup of black coffee in the small kitchen area. His eyes have a similar red rimmed sleepiness that Joey identifies with too well with. Since bringing him into the fray with his usual gang, he’s taken to the work with a relative easiness and unflinching attitude that others have already noticed. His night hasn’t been half as rough as Joey’s, but he waited for him at the bar until Joey shuffled in with the rest of the boys, face half-bloodied and knuckles cracked. The right thing to do, Joey knew, was share a drink with the gang, a moment of camaraderie and bravado after another night of doing their worst, but Seto wrapped a jacket around his shoulders and guided him onto the darkened street where they walked in silence, just the heavy footfalls of their feet and the click of Seto’s cane against the gray concrete.

“How are you feeling?” he asks as he crossed the small space to Joey’s side.

“Better,” he mutters and turns away from him. The bed creaks beneath him as he falls back. He squeezes his eyes shut and sinks into the stiff mattress. A headache pulses in the front of his temple. He doesn’t figure for getting much sleep tonight.

“I thought you’d feel this way,” Seto says from somewhere above him. The tips of his long fingers brush the sheets beside Joey, like he isn’t sure if he should touch him. “I can leave, if you’d like.”

Wordlessly, Joey reaches across, finding Seto’s wrist and holding him there. The thought of facing sunrise alone leaves a pit in his stomach. Seto still has a bed in some shared tenement, but more and more he spends his nights here, warming Joey’s pillows after a night out in the cold. They’ve never put into words what exactly their arrangement even is. Partners implies a certain amount of intent to a relationship carried mostly by momentum, and sweethearts is too saccharine and dovey for Joey to care for it. Lovers conjures images of elicit affairs tucked behind gilded couches, or maybe love lorn letters brimming with heartfelt emotions. It isn’t the sort of word used to describe two brow beaten men, exhausted and empty, looking to fill up on whatever comforts they could manage.

Tonight is a night for comfort.

“Of course,” Seto says, and his lips brush Joey’s forehead. “I think I have just the thing.”

The bed depresses next to him, and he peeks an eye open as Seto leans over the nightstand. His cane is rested beside the bed, the dull wood a dark shape in the dim lighting. His hands move like he was looking for his cigarettes, but he pulls out a small tin that, when opened, reveals a number of smaller rolled sticks. Reefer. Along with the banning of alcohol, the teetotal committee has been in a tizzy over the immigrant weed which passed through every club in New York. Their gang doesn’t deal much in it besides enjoying it. They smoked a stick together on the veranda outside a jazz club, and Seto always kept a few on him, for his hip he said.

He strikes a match now and brings the joint to his lips. Joey watches him inhale, his chest expanding as he sucks in the musky smelling herb. He holds it in his chest for a few heartbeats before exhaling it. Smoke dances blue in the yellow light of the lamps. It’s all Joey could focus on as he takes the offered joint and sucks in a breath himself. His ribs ache, his limbs are sore, and he can feel every bone in his body, broken or not. George Olsen croons from the table, the soft rhythm of the song setting a gentle tenor to the air.

Each breath unspools the tension in his chest. Joey and Seto just breathe for a while, in and out, to the time of the radio’s melodies. At some point, they climb into bed proper. Seto’s lean frame leaves his back against the wall as Joey lays against his chest. His heartbeat is a steady rhythm in his ear, and he closes his eyes against it. The sky is still lightening outside, but for right now Joey can pretend that this is the whole world. The little apartment, the music, him, and Seto.

“They’re playing some Charlie Chaplin pictures at the theater this week,” Seto says. His fingers brush through Joey’s hair. “We should go.”

Joey smiles. “You love those.”

“They make me laugh,” he says without a drop of amusement in his voice.

That makes Joey laugh, and he squeezes him a little tighter. “You’re buying. I heard someone’s working the books now.”

Seto hums. It’s no secret one of the bookmakers had up and left mysteriously overnight, after more than a few mistakes in his accounting were discovered. Seto had run numbers for a short while before someone up top realized his street smarts barely measured up to his business sense. Better money than street work, more perks too, so long as you keep your hands clean and don’t scrape off the top.

“We oughtta go out to Coney Island,” Joey continues. “Get a hot dog, play some games.”

“I’ve never been before,” Seto says. His fingers still stroke the long strands of Joey’s hair. With his eyes closed, Seto’s voice comes from somewhere distant, the soft slow murmur of his voice laying on Joey like a blanket.

“It’s the best,” Joey says. “No place like it on Earth, far as I know. Maybe we could go swimming. You own a bathing suit?”

“No,” he drawls, and Joey laughs again.

“We used to go all the time,” he says. A pang of melancholy strikes his heart, but his mouth is already moving. “You can ride the train straight to it. Even after they started charging for the parks, we’d save our nickels. I don’t know if I’ve ever been as happy as I was sitting on the boardwalk with a corndog with my sister.”

Seto’s fingers pause. He tucks a strand of yellow hair behind Joey’s ear. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

The melancholy settles in like a well worn jacket. Joey buries his face in Seto’s side. “She’s in California. I haven’t seen her in ten years.”

Seto says nothing, and Joey’s grateful. If Seto presses even a little bit, Joey doesn’t know if he could stop himself from telling the full sad tale, and he doesn’t want to. It’s not anybody else’s burden to bear, or anybody else’s secret to keep.

“I had a brother,” Seto finally says. “It’s been a long time as well.”

Joey opens his eyes and sits straight up. Seto’s hand falls away from him. He doesn’t know what he expects to see, as Joey searches Seto’s face, maybe some tears, maybe a tremor to his lips, but Seto looks at him the way he always does. His expression is a guarded secret, a bank vault begging to be cracked open.

“Is that why you left?” Joey asks. “Texas. You said something happened.”

Seto puts a hand on the locket he wears around his neck. He’s opened it exactly once around Joey, who saw the braided strand of hair inside but had asked no questions. It’s how it works between the two of them. Sometimes Joey suspected Seto liked to hear him talk so much because it kept his own fragile thoughts at bay.

“His name was Mokuba,” Seto says. “He was the only thing I had left. After his funeral, I went to my adopted father’s office, and I bludgeoned him to death before burning the place to the ground.”

Seto’s gaze hasn’t moved from Joey’s. He waits, unflinching, for Joey to say anything at all. Dares him to. He’s confessed to a murder. No, he’s confessed to an execution. Joey reaches out with his own blood covered hands, holding Seto’s face, and he lets out a dry, cracked laugh.

“We’re as fucked up as you can get,” Joey says. “Sometimes I think we’re made for each other.”

Seto stares at him, and then he pulls Joey close to kiss him. It’s a messy thing. They’re both sluggish and sad and grateful to feel the warmth of another person. New York is a cold and lonely place, so full of people and so empty of hope. But here, in this room, in this bed, with Seto’s breath against his skin, and the heat between them, they can grind away a little of that hard outer shell they worked so hard to keep. For a little while, they can feel anything at all.

They fuck, or make love, Joey isn’t sure which. It’s never like the way he’s had it before. Joey’s body isn’t the same beneath his clothes, and with every other lay he’s either been careful about how much of himself to reveal or fuck people he knows don’t care. Seto’s hip is fragile, and so the times they’re rough are still taken with care. It’s the first time they feel fully bare to another person, the only time someone has taken either of them with care. Tonight’s it’s lazy. Joey nips his skin without intent, and Seto’s hands draw up and down his spine. They stop to kiss each other and start again to feel their skin move together. Even after they’ve come, they don’t move free of each other. The sun’s come up outside, softening the warm glow of the lamps and painting everything in hazy shades of pink and blue, and they share the tail end of the reefer between their lips. They lay together, not an inch of space to spare.

Joey rests his head in the crook of Seto’s neck. Seto’s arms are loose around him. He breaches slow and deep, falling asleep, and it tickles the hair on Joey’s head. Tears prick the corner of Joey’s eyes as he feels the hollow well in his chest suddenly overrun. It’s been a long, hard night. He feels rough and raw in a way that isn’t entirely bad, which is so often how he feels in bed with someone else. This is the first time that feeling hasn’t left him scrambling for the hills. Instead, Seto sighs and holds him a little a tighter. Joey presses his lips to his jaw.

“You should stay,” he says.

A dry laugh shakes Seto’s chest. “I had no intention of moving, I promise you.”

Joey looks up at him. “You should stay here. You and me. I don’t wanna be without you.”

It’s too earnest of a confession, he knows. It’s the reefer, making his head fuzzy, and when they wake up in a few hours they can laugh. Except, tonight they’ve been too honest with each other, and none of it can be taken back. Joey doesn’t want to.

Seto presses his forehead to his, he’s smiling in a way Joey so rarely gets to see. “Of course I’ll stay.”

Relief breaks in Joey’s chest. He kisses him again, and again, and again. His lips are wet from crying, and Seto laps away his tears. They’re kissing moves him inside Joey, who offers a desperate thankful thrust. They do make love this time, no longer lazy but set to satisfy each other, to share in a brief and happy solidarity. Without Seto, Joey’s night would’ve been spent alone and empty, dark, and cold, the apartment stinking of sweat and blood. Joey doesn’t know if he could stand it. But somehow, Seto’s spread the dawn across their little haven, and the air is warm and layered with the scent of black coffee and his funny cigarettes.

#the original i put sorely in the american depression but i started playing around with prohibition era #so if there's an inconsistencies don't tell me #this is an au of an au of an au #we're layers deep people #me writing my own fanfiction like do you think i'm depressed #kaijou #joukai week #joey wheeler #jounouchi katsuya #seto kaiba

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