A/N: What would happen if the abridged version of Kaiba and Joey were married? Good question.

Summary: Seto Kaiba's life is far from interesting outside of a children's card game. It's just work, an emo teenage brother, and a husband who he may adore or may just want to kill. And with fangirl death threats, Zexal ringtones, and bento stealers, he's going to need a lot of aspirin.

Rated: M for language, adult humor, future sexual content (possibly?), and all around abridgy-ness.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! but I do own LittleKuriboh. (That's right, LK. Your ass is MINE.) don'tsueme

1. 4AM Joey, really?

Kaiba was going over the last spreadsheets when his cell phone rang. He ignored it. His home office was completely quiet except for the sounds of clicks and clacks from his laptop. After a few more minutes, his cell phone rang again.

He ignored that too.

It wasn't Mokuba, so it didn't matter. And even if it was Mokuba, Kaiba was in no mood to speak with him. After he turned the mansion into J-MTV's version of Cribs to satisfy his hormonal urge to impress his thirteenth girlfriend, Kaiba had cut off all of his younger brother's funds and told him to get a real job. That kind of pissed him off.

"He's just a teenager, baby." Joey always took Mokuba's side. Always. "Remember when you were... oh, that's right. You weren't normal like the rest of us. I forgot I married the equivalent of a talking vibrator that makes money."

Moron.

He needed a break. Kaiba sat back in his expensive recliner, blinking away the bright light of the computer screen to look at the bland ceiling. He began to idly turn the golden band around his ring finger almost absently, hearing Joey issue out of his throat an annoying wheeze he called a laugh in the memory.

His cell phone rang again. He continued to ignore it.

Why, one must wonder, what had brought him to this point. Why, if he hated Joey Wheeler so much, did he marry the son of a bitch in the first place?

Two years ago, Kaiba had just... stumbled across Joey one day. They hadn't seen each other in a while and, after Duel Monsters became less popular and all of Kaiba's exploits in the subject was more ridiculed than admired, he had struggled. He wanted to play the children's card game oh so much again. And he wanted his name chanted from all four corners of the world that he was the best at it.

He found Joey on the curb, homeless and brandishing a guitar for change like a douchebag. He wanted to be famous and he wanted to be an international pop sensation. It was completely stupid, but this was something Kaiba could never pass for the world. Joey bitch-ass poor? This was going to be hilarious. Despite how pathetic Joey claimed him to be, at least he had money and he could flaunt it like the badass he was.

"Hey Kaiba," Joey had said in that annoying Brooklyn accent, shifting his ass on a raggedy Egyptian rug that he actually stole from the crazy cat lady three blocks down. And he wasn't making this shit up. "Wanna help me become a star?" He nudged a dirtied upturned hat filled with yen. It was almost full so Kaiba had to surmise that Joey was honestly really good with the guitar or his douchebag look was good with virginal Japanese schoolgirls and the occasional cougar. He decided on the latter.

"Ha, I knew you were going to end up like this! A third-rate duelist like yourself deserves nothing more than panhandling old ladies on street corners!" Kaiba folded his arms and laughed to the sky, scaring a bunch of schoolchildren in the process.

Joey tossed his donated sandwich right in the kisser. "Hey! Do you mind?! You're scaring off potential customers, ya dumbass!" He spluttered when Kaiba tossed the sandwich into the trash. "HEY! That was a week's worth of food!"

"Who's fault is that?" Kaiba snarled, wiping a bit of mayo from his cheek. "Get a real job, you hobo!" See, if Joey was just a decent duelist, he wouldn't be a damn ragamuffin. Simple logic. "You see, I have a job. I make millions! Why do you think so?"

Joey folded his arms over his guitar in an extreme moment of clarity. "Because monopolizing on entertainment and riding popularity instead of instigating it benefits your stock options?" Kaiba gaped at him, but Joey just shrugged his shoulders. "Whaaat?"

"Okay, no... and I'm just going to ignore what you just said because I can't wrap my mind around it. It's because I'm the best duelist there ever was!" That caused Joey to snort.

"Ya moron, I'm not poor because of my dueling skills! It's because I didn't pay attention in school. Well, half of that is... the other half is Japanese society's rule against students having part-time jobs. I could've had some mucho dough saved up, but naaaah..." Joey blinked and stared at his guitar for a moment. "This IS Japan, right?"

Did Kaiba suddenly just fall into another dimension? "...yeeeessss?"

"Then how come I have a Brooklyn accent?!" He jumped off the rug and grabbed Kaiba by the front of his trench coat, suddenly horrified. "Why?!"

Kaiba's eyes narrowed at the intrusion. "Because 4kids."

"Oh." Upon closer inspection, Joey poked the side of his own chin. "You got a little some... whatever." He waved it off. "Hey! Ya wanna play a children's card game for old time's sake?"

That was when time stopped for him. Kaiba hadn't dueled in so long... because people said it was old and boring and Angry Birds was the next best thing but Kaiba never gave up that one day, ONE DAY, he would be able to duel again without being laughed out of a hobby store.

And yet Joey was offering without a mock or insult. He still had his deck, he said, inside of his guitar. He still played it despite the jeers and taunts his fellow hobo friends gave him for it. Suddenly, Kaiba was seeing Joey in a whole new light. That messed up blond hair, those gorgeous brown eyes, those rough hands... not as gorgeous as his own hands, but he was going to use them in so many delicious ways. Like drawing a card, setting down a card, pointing to instigate an attack...

Kaiba grabbed Joey by the shoulders hard and began to shake. "Wanna go out?"

Joey blinked. "Wha-wha-wha-nyeeeeeeeh?!"

"You. Me. Go out. I'll give you everything you want." Just so long as Joey was willing to play a children's card game with him.

"... I can have a clean rug to sit on?"

"I'll buy the whole FUCKING block for you!"

Joey's eyes began to waver in unshed tears. "That is the most romantic thing I have ever heard!" His lips tilted up into a perverted grin. "Let's duel then. Winner gets laid!"

That left Kaiba slightly confused. "Wouldn't that just mean both players get laid regardless?"

"Then I guess we'll both win," Joey purred, swiped the rest of the mayo off of Kaiba's cheek with a finger and lewdly popped it into his mouth. Kaiba just stared, pupils blowing up in a strange lust he had only thought could happen around an Egyptian God Card.

"I love you."

"NYEH?!"

"Marry me."

Best and worst decision he had ever made.

Now his cell phone was practically doing somersaults on his desk. This time it was a text. He knew it was because Joey put Zexal's theme song into it and then password locked it just to piss him off. Fucking Zexal...

He was pretty sure it was from Mokuba. And, like Mokuba, the cell phone needed to shut up. He was a businessman who actually did WORK. But the reminders kept coming and the song just kept getting shittier with each ring.

Take off, it's time to fly!

Take a chance to make it all the way!

Kaiba growled and stuffed it into a drawer. Now he could barely hear that auto-tuned piece of shit. Thank money. First thing's first. He was going to kill Joey and then divorce him. In THAT order. There had to be some other duelist out there that still dueled. Maybe they wouldn't have as great an ass as Joey's, but he could manage.

That was the only reason why he married that no-good annoying asshat. Well, that and Joey was the only one who would screw him and not laugh at his ineptitude at it. He had been a virgin because he had better things to do... like playing card games and running a company. Maybe getting laid did lighten up his mood a bit. Maybe. It had to otherwise he wouldn't be putting up with this shit. Like making his phone ring that shitty Zexal song that 4kids shat out at the last minute. They just... didn't care.

That was when one of his little Hitler Youths slammed open his office door and barged right on in. "HEIL KAIBA!" Probably Han's nephew needing the extra cash for his pot smoking hobby. Probably. Kaiba didn't care.

"What the hell are you doing barging into my home office?!" Because really! Who did that?!

Han's possible nephew/son/Kaiba-doesn't-give-a-flying-fuck pointed at the still ringing phone locked in his desk. "Fuhrer Kaiba's Eva Braun is calling!"

His what? Kaiba looked directly at the desk and, with a long suffering sigh, pulled out the cell phone.

Take a chance and chase my doubts away!

Believing gets me through the darkest days!

Unlocking his phone, he found nearly twenty missed calls from Joey, ten of them texts, all of them ranging from 'I'm at the airport' to 'Please pick me up there's a strange man in a trench coat following me' to 'I fucking hate you you fucking fucker fuck! Answer the phone or you'll never see me again I swear to fucking'.

Huh. Kaiba looked at the clock and then at the uncovered window to prove he wasn't seeing things. It was four AM and he could see the sky already purple. "So," He asked conversationally. "How long do you think he's been at the airport?"

Han's familial thing faltered from his salute. "...three... four hours, mein Kaiba?"

He smiled. "Perfect."

And somewhere in the night, a child's beloved puppy passed away in its sleep.

Strange how there was no paparazzi around following Joey. Maybe Joey wasn't as much of a hotshot popstar as he thought he was. You see, Joey did follow his dreams. Before they got married, Joey bet on his deck that he could take ten thousand of his American dollars, go to America and use that to become a famous J-Pop artist... AND pay back the money tenfold.

Despite the flaws to that logic (you can't be a Japanese-Pop artist in America, you dumb shit), Kaiba gave him the money and called it a dowry that Joey's parents couldn't spend. Parents were useless anyway. That's why he got rid of his. And he didn't give him the money because he loved him, hell no... he did it for his deck.

And boy was it a shitty ass deck. It was only after he rifled through it and found next-to-nothing worth of cards did he realize he had made a terrible, terrible investment.

But, he had to give Joey credit, he DID get popular in America. He put up one viral video of him on Youtube singing nothing but that annoying verbal tick of his to a Lady Gaga song and he skyrocketed to stardom faster than a preteen girl willingly dropping her jaw for Justin Bieber's schlong.

Wow, that was in bad taste. He was actually married to the Japanese version of Justin Bieber. Wonderful.

Joey had been on tour in America for six months. Six blissful months. Well, almost blissful. That was six months without sex, but he spent most of his life without it so whatever. He can survive, but he did sorely miss it. And he was supposed to wait another six months before Joey returned to Japan, so why he arrived was still a mystery to him.

There he was camping out near the rotating baggage claim like an extremely well dressed homeless person.

When Kaiba approached, he found Joey practically sleeping on the floor, one leg haphazardly over the railing as it ran on top of the conveyor belt like an odd vibration relaxer. Only Joey Wheel-Kaiba, Joey Kaiba, (that STILL sounded weird), would sleep so awkwardly.

Nodding at Han's spawn something to get the car ready, Kaiba knelt down by the luggage and simply watched as Joey drooled on top of his phone, his wedding ring glinting at him in such a mocking fashion. He actually married this guy. Fucking surreal. Who'd have thunk it?

And yet... there was something charming about it. At least he wasn't alone. Joey had been his first and, for all the insults he would give the moron, Joey had been the best relationship he had so far. Well, the only relationship but who was counting? He wasn't.

He nudged at Joey's tummy with the tip of his shoe. "Well, well. You can take the hobo out of the street corner, but you can't take the street corner out of the hobo." That caused Joey to stir and rub his eyes.

"Nyeehhh... don't talk to me, Kaib-Set-oh fuck it, I'm calling you Kaiba because I'm pissed." He grumbled. "How could you not pick up my texts?! Did ya know I was being followed by a creepy guy in a trench coat?"

Kaiba snorted. "You may have mentioned that once. Twice."

"Well he followed me into the bathroom and violated me." That caused Kaiba to pause, eyes widening but Joey continued. "He showed me some bootleg holos. Totally violated my sense of decency for the game. I mean, who does that?!"

Fucking moron. "Why didn't you call a cab?" Now it was Joey's turn to pause and gape like a fish. "I thought so." Kaiba closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to remind himself that he didn't marry him for his brains, he did it for that piece of ass. That was a mantra that kept him sane so far.

"It... well, I wanted to see you!" Lame save.

"I find that hard to believe." Kaiba glanced at all the luggage that was currently being used as a rudimentary fort. Probably to keep away scary guys selling bootlegged holos in their trench coats. "What the fuck is all of this, Wheeler?"

Joey half-glanced at the bags before going back to his phone. Angry Birds. Kaiba's left eye began to twitch. "My luggage, duh."

"Did you bring half of Texas with you?" Because he was pretty sure Joey didn't leave six months ago with over twenty carry-ons. "If you're running some kind of drug cartel, we're in need of some marriage counseling."

That finally got Joey to look up from his phone. "Oh no. Half of these are gifts from Ricardo. It's a thank you for lending me to him and skirting me away to his tropical paradise of anal sex and undercover spy work."

"Ah." Kaiba drawled. "Well isn't that nice of him? Now tell me what are they really for." He expected typical stuff a popstar would bring: expensive clothes, jewelry, instruments, third-world babies... Joey's answer surprised him.

"They're gifts."

"Gifts." Kaiba's eyebrow climbed up in disbelief. All of these were gifts? "For who?"

Joey looked at him like he just grew a second head. A real deformed one. "For Yug and the gang, duh. And for my blind sister whats-her-face..."

"Serenity." Kaiba said slowly because really, he was talking to someone with an IQ of a grapefruit. "She's not blind anymore, remember?" And really, he didn't understand why Joey would call those dweebs friends. Yugi was a schizo, Tea was batshit crazy about friendship, Tristan seemed to be working on less than half a brain, and the less he thought about the other slut the better. What was her name again? Duke Devlin. Their 'devotion' to him seemed to depend on whether they took their daily Ritalin or not.

"Right, riiight. The life of a J-Pop star is hard. Can't remember more than lyrics half the time," Joey mumbled and returned to his phone. "And there's stuff for Mokuba... and for you."

Kaiba blinked. "For me?"

Joey snorted loudly and pocketed his phone. Damn pigs and their jeers. One day he'll destroy them with his mighty bird army. "Well yeah. You're my husband, aren't ya?" It was astonishingly earnest enough to stump Kaiba right on the spot. "I've missed ya, hot stuff! Even with all the fangoils and their enormous breasts pushing up on me, it's your pasty white ass that for some reason keeps me from cheatin'."

"Gee. Thanks."

Han's something-something dark side came back and saluted them. "HEIL KAIBA! HEIL EVA!"

For some miraculous reason, Joey recognized one of the Hitler Youths. He clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey Schmidt! Ya mind taking all this to the car?"

"I WILL SACRIFICE MEIN LIFE AND MEIN ARMS FOR MEIN EVA!"

"Good man!" He nudged Kaiba with his elbow. "You know how hard it is to find good help in America? Rudest people ever!"

Kaiba snorted. "You tell me seeing as your accent came from there."

"What accent?"

Schmidt dutifully moved past them carrying... all of the luggage. Both Kaiba and Joey looked back at the now empty floor and then back at their servant. "That must be killer on the back." Joey winced as the little Hitler Youth's entire body began to tremble under the weight all the way to the car.

"Who cares? One of those better have my hundred grand in it." Kaiba's grumbling and Joey's attempts to feign obliviousness about that brought them to the car. The sun was already peaking out in the horizon.

Joey inhaled the pure Japanese smog, coughed, and then sighed. "Good ol' Japan and its overcrowdedness! It's good to be home!" Kaiba watched him, slightly mesmerized by how... coincidental his husband looked against the backdrop of the sunrise. Blond hair clashing with the light purple... yeah that was it. He was a businessman, not a poet. You want unnecessary prose, go read some Twilight fanfiction. Or, for maximum prose-ness, read the actual book.

Still, somewhere in Kaiba's ice cold heart, he could admit just a smidge that he missed him. The dueling he missed, he meant. Because Yugi's fucked off to somewhere and was now the King of Angry Birds. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Almost absently, he leaned forward and he must have looked good too against the sunrise because Joey looked at him eagerly and decided to close the rest of the space. For the first time in six months they kissed.

It was chaste because Kaiba was still inexperienced about this shit. Joey was always the most eager one and it was this vitality that benefited their physical relationship so far. "Tadaima..." Joey murmured against his lips, his voice revealing how tired he really was.

Gratuitous Japanese? Joey must really be caught up in the moment. Kaiba caught his lips again and yeah, he had to admit, this he liked. Very much. "Okaeri." That seemed to get Joey smiling.

"SAYA CHEESUU!" A brilliant flash of light and the moment was now permanently gone. Kaiba pushed Joey away from him out of reflex of a PR nightmare, but it wasn't fast enough for the man intruding on them. He was holding a giant camera with a big ass flasher on top.

Joey looked up from his crash on the concrete. "NYEH?! You're that pervert who was trying to sell me fake holos!"

"You sacrilegious piece of shit!" Seto snarled. No one makes a mockery out of Duel Monsters and gets away with it! He snapped his fingers. "Get him, Han's... Christian Anderson's..."

"Schmidt." Joey said unhelpfully.

Needless to say, the man did manage to get a picture of them for the J-Daily Enquirer. By the end of the morning, Kaiba woke up from a short nap to find the magazine sitting on the table. He stared over his cup of coffee to find both haggard looking former duelists locked in a very awkward and very unflattering shot of them in mid-kiss, eyes widened from the flash. 'Kaiba Corp CEO Seto Kaiba Engaged in Homosexual Relations with J-Pop Star Joey Wheeler!'

Fuck.

Joey yawned louder than necessary in the background before walking over to plop his chin on Kaiba's shoulder. He grimaced at the cover page. "Better than the last one. You had your hands down my pants in the last issue." Kaiba tried to ignore the heavy heat against his back. It was both uncomfortable yet comfortable. How does that work out?

Yeah well the joke's on the fucker that took it. He probably still has the burn scar from when Schmidt branded him in the ass with the KC poker. That was the staple of every security officer in Kaiba Corp. Pokers. To brand people with. His plan was flawless.

Mokuba walked in in all of his teenage glory and, spying them near the kitchen, decided to see what they were staring at. He tugged at his itchy nose ring as he leaned forward and examined the latest Enquirer. "This one isn't bad. At least your hand's not down his pants like the last issue."

Kaiba groaned. "Shut up, Mokuba." And this time, he meant it.

For Japanese newbs: 'Tadaima' means 'I'm home'. 'Okaeri' roughly means 'welcome back'. Pretty sure. It's been years since I stepped foot in a Japanese class.

[RIP my ears for listening to the Zexal song to get into Kaiba's headspace. I'm so sorry, Kaiba.]