Chapter Text
The Domino Club had been around for fifty or sixty years. The signboard outside had 1967 etched in old iron. It was weird, Joey thought, because the place hadn’t staggered out of 1987, or wherever it got the dizzying pattern on its floor. It’s walls. It’s lights.
Club was a pushing it, too.
Short of the pulsing baseline, it wasn’t a club. A social club, yeah buddy. With lights so low he couldn’t see an arm’s length ahead of him, unless it was in the multi-coloured lights.
He blinked and was pretty sure he’d moved two feet to the left. Maybe. That could have been the booze. He’d had two or three drinks since he’d been gotten to the club, but he’d only danced once, and that was a terrible average. At least three dances per drink, minimum. That wasn’t even his rule, it had been Tristan’s, but that bastard partner of his had abandoned him hours ago. He’d caught a glimpse of his buddy somewhere in the corner, wandering out of the bathroom with a blond on his arm.
This place was easy for Tristan; the girlies were everywhere. The guys, too, but they weren’t looking for other guys. Only girls.
Joey fell onto one of the couches near the stairs. He’d hung around there most of the night, getting up only for drinks. The people that walked down from upstairs were the crème de la crème. The people who ran the government, made movies, played sports and knew people who did those things. Plenty of girls in bodycon dresses and six-inch stilettos went up there. They hung off the arms of guys who he was pretty sure hadn’t come through the front door. He’d have seen them, because Tristan had abandoned him and he didn’t have anything better to do than people watch between the lights.
The decent guys had chiselled jaws and good hair. Slicked back hair? No, those were douchebags and weren’t his type. They wore gold chains and wristwatches they’d bought off of “their guy” on the corner. Joey didn’t even know shoes all that well, but he knew when there was an extra stripe on their Adidas. No, it wasn’t those guys, who buttoned down their shirts so people could see their pencilled in chest hair and the sweat from...whatever people wanted to think they were doing. Getting busy. They threw their coats over their shoulders like they were something, flashed fluorescent smiles, winked and waved. Some of them looked at him and the corners of their eyes glinted, and he knew what they knew, that he was checking them out, Adidas to slicked back hair. Then he stuck his tongue out and turned looked elsewhere.
Assholes.
Those were the kind of douchebags that were not only douchebags, but organised douchebags. Part of the Max Gang. He could sniff them out a mile away and...
Joey looked down to his empty tumbler.
...oh.
Right.
He was at work. Kind of. He and Tristan were supposed to be staking this place out. Something was supposed to go down between the Max and the Dragons. Whoever those assholes were.
As far as Joey or anyone was concerned, the Dragons were more like boogeymen. They were insular. Didn’t cause the kind of trouble that the Max did. They didn’t leave bodies behind. If they burned down a building, neither the fire department or the police cared. They didn’t seem to terrorise civilians, but they were always being talked about like a collective nightmare the people shrugged off in the daylight. Their leader, a guy named Seto Kaiba, liked it that way.
Whatever Joey was supposed to be doing here, he’d half forgotten it. Find out what those two were up to. Tristan was hitting up the girlies, but what was he supposed to do?
Sighing, he poised himself towards the stairs. It had a single bouncer at it who would unclip the velvet rope and let people up.
A gaggle of them were coming by. All Max. Gross. But he got up and swaggered over to them, making sure he didn’t trip on his way, and sidled up beside the fifth guy trailing in the back.
“Lookin’ mighty lonely there,” Joey said.
“Back off, toehead.”
“Aw, c’mon.”
The guy wasn’t that bad. His shirt wasn’t unbuttoned, that was a plus. Joey winked at him, gave him the little eye glint and the smile.
“Hey, I’m just callin’ it like I see it, bud. You looked lonely,” he said. The group was heading straight to the stairs, but Fifth Wheel stayed behind. Perfect. “Happens that I’m lonely, too. Was thinkin’ me an’ you could grab a coupla drinks. I’ll even buy my own, I ain’t that kinda guy. Nothin’s gotta be well...nothin’. Just us two, y’know? Tomorrow’s a new day, or whatever they say.”
He didn’t know if this schmuck was ignorant or desperate. Joey’d been told he wasn’t charismatic, but Fifth Wheel was checking Joey out, so he cocked his hips a little forward.
“Don’t stick out, toehead. Play it cool,” Fifth Wheel said, and he reached over, unbuttoning the top button on Joey’s dress shirt.
He refrained from rolling his eyes.
They went upstairs, and he practically beamed at the bouncer. This was easy, and ditching this guy once he got some intel shouldn’t have been too hard.
The upstairs was suspended over the ground floor, leaving enough space that you could look down at the other patrons and sneer at them. It also made the space compact, where you swam in between, and sometimes over, the bodies of people idly dancing to the beat.
The Fifth Wheel lead him to a back corner, up against a plexiglass wall that disappeared in the flashing lights. It made it really seem like you were floating, and Joey was a little impressed. He fell down on the couch by Fifth Wheel and gaped.
“I said don’t stick out,” Fifth Wheel hissed.
His hand landed on Joey’s thigh and squeezed. Tender? Not so much. But he played it cool and cased the area. Lots of Max. A city councilman talking shop to a Max. Domino City’s pro league pitcher, a guy named Martinez, was in the corner getting a lap-dance.
It felt like it should have been more sex charged; it was, but there was a palpable tension. Guys in silk suits and baggy hoodies loitered around, a mix that didn’t sit well with him. Fuck, his head was spinning. The music, the lights, Fifth Wheel’s cologne. He almost hauled ass back down the stairs, he wasn’t ready for this. And then someone called out to Fifth Wheel. He whispered he’d be back, but Joey wasn’t concerned once he disappeared.
There was more to scope out. He got up and slithered around the second floor, trying to remember people and names. He fumbled with his phone, trying to take pictures as discretely as possible.
And then he made it to the back. He didn’t know how. The people pushed him back there.
The back wall of the floor was the only part attached to the wall. The illusion of floating broke back there, but unless you were really drunk, it probably didn’t matter. People mostly sat down and were too busy with their partner or partners to pay attention to him.
His feet took him all the way to the door in the back. It was boring, wall-coloured. Instinct said it wasn’t anything. The waiters likely used it to get upstairs and serve drinks.
He went in anyways. The hall was bland, bright. There were stairs to one side, but to the other, where the hallway bent at the corner, he heard voices. Terse voices.
Pulling out his phone, he set it up to record audio and stuck it in his pocket. The closer he crept, the clearer the voices became. There were two doors on the right side of the hallway, both closed. The voices carried, and he went past the first door, sticking his ear to it to make sure he was right.
“...downtown isn’t viable anymore...”
“Yeah, not at all. We have to restructure. You know how it is...”
“...beneficial for all parties, divvying it up...”
And a bout of silence. Joey was practically on top of the door, listening through the crack. If someone spoke, it was so low that he couldn’t make it out any better than a fly buzzing. He closed his eyes, convinced he’d heard a word or two from a gravelly voice.
The door opened.
Joey’s eyes widened immediately but didn’t adjust fast enough. Someone grabbed fistfuls of his collar and hauled him into the room. He had a face full of tablecloth before he knew it, bent at the waist and more vulnerable than he’d been with Fifth Wheel.
A body hovered behind him. Something square jammed into the back of his head, and he heard a hammer click back. “Who the fuck are you? Go on, tell us before I blow your fucking brains out! C’mon! Who are you you sonuva—“
“Useless.”
One word. Two syllables. Joey’s blood chilled, and he roved his eyes around as far he could to get a glimpse of the mouth the word came from.
On the other side of the table, a lithe man sat. He wasn’t so much a man as he was a set of angles. His shoulders jutted one direction, and his head ticked the other. Chestnut hair curled at his brow and around his ears. It wasn’t slicked back. Oh no. This man wasn’t a Max. His pressed shirt and the long coat over his shoulders said he was much more than that. And the blue eyes....
Fuck.
Seto Kaiba himself.
“Useless?” the man holding Joey said. “I’ll show you useless! Tell us who the fuck sent you....!”
“I...I just was lookin’ for the bathroom!” Joey blurted out. It was taking every ounce of strength not to wet himself, then and there. It may have been necessary. “I didn’t...I thought someone was’n here is all...I...”
A small, noncommittal noise came from Kaiba. Not a tongue click or groan. It wasn’t upset, but Joey couldn’t place it. And that worried him more than anything.
“Just looking for the bathroom,” Kaiba repeated.
“I don’t believe him.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because he went stickin’ his nose back here. Fuckin’...spy...”
Kaiba waved his hand dismissively and locked eyes with Joey. He scowled hard, like a man who didn’t know how to smile, yet in the moment he was the least serious man in the room. The rest were ready to turn Joey into Swiss cheese, but Seto Kaiba had a levity about him. Fuck, even in that scowl he seemed downright pleased.
“Let him go,” Kaiba ordered.
“What! No, he—,”
“Let. Him. Go.”
The gun moved away from his head. The fist unfurled from his collar. Joey collected his breath and sobered up quickly, wondering if he should stand up or keep bowing. As a general rule, he didn’t bow to criminals, even if they were the leader of the underworld. But Kaiba, and his giddiness, gave Joey a solid opportunity. If he could get Kaiba talking and find out something, anything, he could skitter out like the lost drunk they thought he was and give over all the audio evidence to his captain. Yeah. That’s what he’d do.
He stood up and lifted his head. Their eyes met, and a charge went between them.
From the new position, the room was less imposing. It was small. Six people already crowded it, and he’d made it even tighter. Three Max, three Dragons. Despite their conversation, there wasn’t any sort of map between them for ‘divvying up’. It was a bunch of playing cards and loose change that had been thrown around when he was thrown around. In fact, Kaiba still had cards in his hand.
“In case you think that I’m letting you go, you’re wrong,” Kaiba began. “You just happen to be more interesting than these idiots at the moment. Sit down.”
Joey sat. He gripped the sides of the chair tight. “What’s goin’ on here?”
“Nothing of note.”
“Sure seems like it.”
“Its not.”
Kaiba gathered up the cards and shuffled them twice. He didn’t do anything flamboyant to them. No fancy tricks, even though his long fingers were the kind that could. After, he doled them out a five-card hand and laid the rest of the deck in between them.
“Discard as many as you want to make the best hand,” Kaiba explained.
“What?”
“Your cards,” Kaiba said. “Or is that too complicated for you?”
“Not really. I just don’t get why I’m doing this.”
“It seems pretty obvious.”
“Well, yeah. To you maybe. You’re the one doin’ it,” Joey said. He picked up the cards and looked them over. A pair of eights. Nothing of note. Ha. Same as Kaiba said, it didn’t look like anything. Maybe it wasn’t anything, maybe he’d walked into the Max and the Dragon’s card night.
He threw out three of the cards and drew three more. He didn’t look at them. He was honestly too busy looking into Kaiba’s eyes. They were like endless, sapphire pools that Joey was ready to drown in. Kaiba had given him more than a glint or a look, but Joey doubted that Seto Kaiba was even giving him a look. He wasn’t that sort of guy. His stunning cheekbones and thin nose and smooth lips aside, Kaiba wasn’t anyone’s kind of guy. He was for himself only. He carried himself so well that he wasn’t going to be approached by shitty, undercover detectives trying to get a few free drinks and one-night stand.
Joey shook his head.
“Is something wrong?” Kaiba asked. He discarded two cards. Drew two more.
“Lost, I guess.”
“Tch.”
“I mean, more than tryin’ to find the bathroom.”
“You weren’t trying to find the bathroom,” Kaiba said.
“I was, really.”
“Please.”
“I’m not a spy or...or whatever you’re thinkin’. Really. I don’t even know who ya are man, I jus’—,”
Kaiba slammed down his cards dramatically. He spread them across, one by one. Two kings, two queens. “Show you hand.”
“I—what?”
“Show your hand.”
Joey clutched his cards. This was a game of life or death. Kaiba hadn’t said it, but he wasn’t that stupid. He had stumbled upon something huge, and Kaiba was toying with him in lieu of killing him immediately. For fun. For power. For fear. It probably didn’t matter what he had in his hand, Kaiba was going to make him disappear.
So he threw down the cards, closed his eyes, and held his breath.
One second. Two seconds.
Nothing.
He opened his eyes again and looked down at his cards. Three eights. If he remembered poker right, three-of-a-kind beat two pair. Right?
“I...um...I think I won.”
Kaiba was motionless. The room had gone so quiet you could hear the conversations floating in from downstairs. Joey tried to gauge how Kaiba was reacting underneath the scowling exterior. He was still pleased, but there was a change. He was looking down his nose at Joey. In fact, from that angle he wasn’t scowling, per se.
“Dumb luck wins occasionally,” said Kaiba blandly. “Not that it takes skill to draw cards.”
“Hey, I thought I did pretty damn good there. So, can I use the bathroom?”
“You don’t need to use the bathroom.”
“You tell that to my bladder. This dude scared the piss outta me,” Joey said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “So are ya gonna let me go?”
“Should I?”
“I’d say yeah. You got all this company, an’ I’m sorta crashin’ your party,” Joey said. He stood, and someone loomed behind him. “Though I gotta say, the real party’s downstairs. You should come join me. Be a lot more fun than these guys.”
Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Pass.”
“Hey, I tried.”
Joey played nonchalant despite his bowels quaking. He went to the door, but was stopped short by a, “We’re not finished yet,” from Kaiba.
He swallowed. “What’s up?”
“Your name.”
“Me?”
Kaiba raised a brow. Best not to piss off the mob boss, or whatever Seto Kaiba considered himself.
“I’m Joey. Some people call me Joe, if ya want. If we go out for drinks or whatever,” he said. His hand was on the door. He was almost out.
“Joey what?” Kaiba pressed.
And every bit of Joey screamed at himself not to fuck up. Don’t tell him Wheeler. Don’t tell him Wheeler. Don’t tell the fuckin’ mob boss your name Detective Wheeler.
“Wheelman.”
Yeah, that sounded good. He’d had better cover names, but that was good in a pinch and three drinks in.
“Mm. Sounds boring. Made-up almost.”
Joey shrugged. “What can I say? I’m pretty damn borin’,” he said, and he pressed his luck asking: “You?”
“Kaiba. Seto Kaiba. But you know that.”
Joey dug in his brain for something. Some reasoning, some way to get him out of this as safe of possible. So far he’d gotten Kaiba’s name on tape. That wasn’t anything. He needed more. He’d gotten this far, and his captain had sent him after the Dragons. What would they give him if he could hand them over on a silver platter?
“Ya got me,” Joey said, exasperated. His heart raced and his cheeks got hot. “I...I guess I’ve had a bit of a crush on this whole thing. This. The...well, I used to watch a lot of movies as a kid. Lot of mob movies, gang stuff. I know this isn’t really that, it’s a lot classier. Looks like it. Anyways, I always wanted to get close so I...yeah, I made up the bathroom story. I didn’t mean it that way, I jus’ didn’t think if I came in here like some band groupie that you’d see me. Honestly,” Joey said, looking Kaiba deep into his endless eyes. “I wanted t’ hear your voice. I got that, so...”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty embarrasin’.”
“I can imagine.”
Joey cleared his throat. “Anyways. Me. You. Downstairs? I’ll be waitin’.”
Once Joey got out the door, he ran out of the corridor, across the second-floor platform and all its formless people, all the way down and out the building. Cold, December air hit him like a brick to the face. He promptly threw up, and even once the nausea passed and he stopped shaking, he still could feel Kaiba’s eyes on the back of his head.