Work Text:
He was scared to go home.
Checking his watch, it was a quarter after six - he’s already an hour late, getting off of work at five, and the text he’d sent to his dad (a measly excuse of Yugi needing his help with math homework when they both knew damn well it was the other way around) had never delivered. Perhaps against his better judgment, however, he made sense of wandering around Domino City in a vain attempt to get cell service - but now, the sun was setting, and there was no red at night against the horizon for him. He checks it once more - the white X mocks him, and he curses his small paycheck (maybe, if he’d been paid more, he could afford a proper phone) before stepping foot into his neighborhood, the air seeming to shift around him.
It clings to his jacket like a vice - it constantly smells like cigarettes here, and a dog barks at him with the intent to kill with nothing but a chain preventing it from doing so. Joey remembers when he’d been six and the chain hadn’t been strong enough - and unconsciously touches where the skin of his hand had been sewn back on. It’s not like it’d mattered, which he finds sort of funny. His father had beaten him enough because of the medical bill to make him regret crying hard enough for the family next door to call an ambulance.
The fences are low and tied at the top with razor wire, and all the windows he can see are barred with either metal or wooden planks - the grass in each dinky yard grows in brown patches, and the sun glints into his eyes as he turns into his own, fishing out his keyring. He’s learned by now to hold them by their bottoms so they don’t clink - he doesn’t know who could be watching him, and if anything sounded like money, he’d be left with none of it and bruised ribs. He quickly and methodically unlocks all seven of the deadbolts they have on their door and takes one last breath of the too-humid nearly-summer air before slinking inside.
The air conditioning hits him immediately and he shivers. There’s a unit right above the front door that blasts him whenever he gets home from the beginning of spring to the end of autumn, and he never gets used to it. It blows his hair into his eyes and his heart feels ready to pound out of his chest - every moment spent not getting to his room was one closer to getting caught, and he didn’t want to, not today, not after everything today. He’d break if it happened today, and his dad loved it when he broke.
If he thinks of it like a video game, it makes him feel a little better. He had three paces down the hall and then the kitchen to the left, which he’d speed by - and then the living room, where, if he was lucky, his father would be passed out on the couch or too engrossed in the TV to notice him walk by, make a quick right, and then enter his room. His blessed room, the only safe haven he’d ever had (besides Yugi’s gameshop) - with his stereo, only ever broken once, and his bedsheets.
His stomach goes cold. He can’t think about his bed for too long - can’t think about the brown and white stains tightening the sheets, or the way his pillow smells like his dad’s cologne. Can’t think about the way he still sleeps in it, filthy and rickety and creaking everytime he moves, the glow-in-the-dark stars the only witness to his torture.
Blinking himself back to reality, he holds his breath and walks down the hallway, clutching his bag with both hands - his grip is white knuckled and he forces himself to look straight ahead as he passes the kitchen, willing his father to not see him as he blusters by the foot and a half opening in the wall. It’s a wonderful, wonderful five seconds when he thinks the other hadn’t seen him or simply wasn’t there - his shoulders had been halfway to relaxing, but then he’d heard heavy footsteps and a presence behind him and every hair on the back of his neck stands up.
“Miss Wheeler,” he growls, the beer bottle nearly splintering with how hard he puts it onto the counter (Joey flinches at both the nickname and the noise), “where've you been?”
“Work, dad,” Joey says, clipped - if he was fast and honest enough, maybe he’d be let out of here with minimal wounds to lick. “I headed straight home afta’, I promise.”
“Yeah?” His dad asks.
“Yeah, I-”
He’s cut off by a hand grabbing the collar of his jacket, yanking him backwards - he would’ve acted faster had he been expecting it, but he supposed he’d been too keen on running away that he hadn’t properly listened to his dad’s footsteps. He falls back into his shoulder and is then pushed against the hallway wall, head colliding with it hard enough to crack - pain blossoms behind his eyes, and his father’s hands dig into his collarbones, pinning him down.
“I knew you were a brat, but a liar, too?” He scoffs. “It takes you ten minutes to get home, retard. You think I’m gonna buy that bullshit?”
“N-no, sir, please,” Joey tries again, “listen, I… I had to go to Yug’s house for a little bit, I tried to send you a text to let you know, but it never delivered; you can check my phone, I promise, I…”
“Changing your story for me, huh? I see how it is.” He nods decisively, and Joey bites back a whimper. “That doesn’t change the fact that I expected you home at five fucking fifteen,” his dad snarls, “I’ve been waiting for you to clean the fucking laundry and do the fucking dishes like you’re supposed to so I can feed and clothe your worthless ass. This is the thanks you give me?”
He slaps Joey, then - hard and right across the face, enough so that Joey’s jaw cracks. He’s entirely unable to fight the tears as they well up - it hurts, it hurts way too much, and he knows his skin will stain red in a matter of minutes. In the bleariness of his vision, he sees his father, looming over him with his eyes bloodshot and teeth bared - and suddenly Joey remembers what it feels like, to be six again with a crazed dog looming over him, his child body nothing more than its prey.
“I-I’m sorry,” Joey stutters, “I-I didn’t know, I swear it.”
“Really? You should know it’s part of our routine. But you’re late, and we don’t have time to make it up, so we’re gonna skip it. Does that sound good? Can my puppy earn his food for tomorrow?”
His head is throbbing and the lump in his throat grows hard to swallow around. “Yes, sir,” he says, quiet enough to be pitiful, “h-how do you want me to?”
His dad’s smile is sick and yellowing, lips cracking from the constant drinking - his breath reeks as he leans in, close to Joey’s head, hot against his cheek. “I’ll take care of the dishes and the laundry,” he says, “but you have to go to your bedroom and get yourself ready for me.”
There are few feelings in the world more horrifying to Joey than the first flush of warmth in his core when stuff like this happens. As many times he’s told himself it’s nothing more than a survival response, the guilt makes him nauseous - the thought that he might actually like their trysts keeps him up at night when his father is too drunk to do it himself. Joey nods mutely, not trusting his voice - and tries not to bolt too fast once his dad loosens the rib-crushing pressure on him.
His bedroom feels no longer like a sanctuary as he swings the door open - the curtains are pushed to either side to let the light in, and several study books and his DS are strewn around the room where he’d forgotten to put them away in the morning. He makes quick work of picking it all up and throwing it into his closet (the one place his dad usually wasn’t smart enough to check) before putting his bag onto the floor, watching it land with a low thud. He’s glad there aren’t any mirrors in his room as he tugs off his jacket, shirt and then, miserably, the sports bra he bound with - the only good thing his genetics did for him was give him a smaller chest, but it still makes him feel sick to look at. He hears his dad in the kitchen, dishes clinking too hard together - he tunes into them instead of the unhitching of his belt buckle, the rustle of his jeans and then socks as they all go into the pile.
His fingers find his neck and he squeezes, anxiety spiking like electricity through his veins. He was scared, he was so scared - he hoped tonight would be easy, that his dad would only go once or maybe just use his mouth - but he remembers how furious he’d been, how he’d asked for Joey to get undressed like this, and he figures his luck ran out with his mother.
He lays down, stomach up, on the bed - like always, it creaks beneath him, and he would pull the covers over him but Dad liked seeing him on display. Slowly, he brings his legs up - one splayed out to the side and the other held by his forearm - and winces when he feels his lips spread from the stretch. He turns his face into the pillow, forcing back the tears to retain any shred of dignity he had left - it would be ripped from him in due time, but he refused to let it be because of his own doing.
And then he waits, a pretty picture of patience with dread thrumming through him like the fibers of his body-canvas. Every second that ticks by, he feels his mouth grow drier, feels his limbs begin to ache already - listens to his dad grunting in the living room, the slam of the washer, and finally the opening of his door.
“You ready for me— ah,” his dad says, and Joey’s stomach turns with disgust as he watches his father’s eyes light up, raking over his frame and drinking in the sight of his thin thighs, perked breasts. “Good girl.”
Joey doesn’t say anything - simply just spreads his legs further and refuses to meet his father’s eyes.
“I’ve been thinking, Miss Wheeler,” he says, Joey listening to the ugly timbre of his voice and each of the teeth of his zipper coming undone. “I think you need something to bring you back home. A responsibility, hm?”
“What do ya mean?” Joey asks hoarsely.
“Well, if there’s a baby home, you’d want to come back after school and take care of it, huh?”
Joey’s blood turns to ice in his veins.
“No,” he says, “you— you wouldn’t, dad, please,” and against his better judgment, when his father’s hands meet his thighs he squirms and tries to shake him off. “I promise, this was a one time thing, I won’t be late ever again, I—“
“You’re right, you won’t,” his dad says, and he has the audacity to chuckle, “not with a baby inside of you.”
Joey starts sobbing at that. Sure, his father never particularly fucked him with condoms, but it was always right before or while he was menstruating - the risk had been menial, and nothing had come of it. Joey had wondered why he’d been spared the most recent of his periods - perhaps his dad had finally decided to give up the ghost? - and now, he was finding out in the worst way, two weeks later.
As his dad tries spreading his legs again, he kicks and hits his father harder than he’d meant to in the chest - his father roars, grabbing his stray ankle and twisting it until it snaps in a way it shouldn’t and Joey screams . He drops it, letting it fall limp to the mattress, and grabs Joey’s other ankle before grinning at him with no mirth in his face.
“Huh? Do you want to fucking fight me? Do you want to fucking fight me?” He roars, fingers making a ring around Joey’s foot. “I’ll break everything I need to until you can’t fucking move, do you hear me?”
“No,” Joey pleads.
His father’s grip tightens and his toes start pressing too close to his leg. “What did you say to me?”
“I’m sorry,” Joey cries and his foot is released, aching but not broken. As his father kicks off his pants and boxers, situating himself between his legs, pain spikes up his other leg like electricity - every time it so much as shifts he moves to get away from it, and he’s never wanted to die more than right now.
It burns as his father begins pushing his weight on him, the head of his dick meeting Joey’s underwear. He grunts, confused at the barrier, before taking the cloth in his fingers and pulling it to the side - to Joey’s horror, his father is already dribbling precome, and he rubs it against Joey’s pink-flushed lips as he laughs lowly.
“I’m not even gonna have to use lube,” he mutters. “Are you really that turned on by me breeding you?”
Joey whimpers loudly and wiggles his hips, tears spilling over his lashes as his dad squeezes his thigh, pressing his cock into Joey’s tight, tight passage. Joey cries as he’s filled, hyper aware of every inch that sinks deeper and deeper inside of him - it’s pulsing, throbbing inside of him, and he can’t help the way his cunt clenches around it.
It fucking hurts. It always does, but Joey’s long past the point of trying to convince himself that it’ll be easier this time - it feels like something’s digging inside of him, splitting him open and rubbing him raw. He’s no longer writhing on purpose - he hadn’t been in the first place, but now it is far more violent, to the point where the muscles in his dad’s arms are straining to keep his wrists pinned to the mattress.
“Please stop,” Joey begs. It falls on deaf ears.
“Yeah, atta girl,” his dad grunts, already picking up the pace - clearly it’s wet enough for him, paying no mind to the way Joey clings to him on the outward thrusts unnaturally. All he’s focused on is the way his dick punches into Joey’s stomach, one of the burly man’s hands unfastening to push Joey’s face into the mattress. It hinders some of Joey’s breathing, and though he’d pleaded to die, he hadn’t wanted it to be like this. “Taking my cock. Perfect fucking bitch.”
Any protest Joey had attempted to make is garbled, strangled and unheard - he’s nothing but a doll to the man over him, inside of him, a failure of a daughter with her only retribution being her body. The seconds or minutes or hours blur together in waves of agonizing pain, pain that makes his cunt slicken in an attempt to relieve it and does not succeed - and he braces himself as his father speeds up, pistoning his dick in and out of him.
The dirty talk fades in and out of his mind. He catches small things, like how full he’s going to get, how he’s going to spill with milk, but the rest his brain ignores - something he’s grateful for. If all goes according to his father’s flimsy plan, he’ll be worrying enough in the months to come.
The months were not the only thing to be doing so. His father teeters on the edge, forcing Joey to kiss him hard enough to bruise, murmuring a rough “take my fucking babies” and then a long moan as he spills inside of Joey. Joey’s sobbing, now, trying weakly to push him away - he just thinks it’s funny, digging his cock deeper, making Joey more panicked.
“Excited, are we?” He asks, and Joey squeezes his eyes shut. “Ready for more?”
And so his torture continues, each round sicker and sicker than the last. The next he’s on his side, his father fucking into him, and then he’s on his hands and knees, the perfect picture of a filthy mutt. He’s already so, so sore, all the muscles in his stomach and thighs aching with strain - somewhere along the line he’s stopped fighting, too, just laying there and taking it to save both his strength and his good foot. After his father makes him ride him, all the come he’d put into Joey spilling in streams down his length where they were connected, he pulls out for the last time with a satisfied huff.
“Good girl,” he says, smacking Joey’s ass, “I’m sure that’ll take. Maybe we’ll get lucky and have twins, huh? Fucking bitch.”
He gets up, cock swinging wretchedly between his legs, and he picks up only his clothes before turning to Joey, who looks at him through tired, half-lidded eyes. “I don’t fuckin’ feel like making dinner for you tonight, so unless you want to do it yourself, I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he says, and leaves.
If he had the strength to, Joey would’ve laughed. He’d be lucky if he managed to put on his pajamas.
He doesn’t know how long he lays there - he’d lost track of the minutes when he’d counted past ten, but he watches the sky turn dark as ink and the moon hang itself in the top panel of his window. Sweat gathers on his collarbones, eyes blinking tiredly - he watches the light from his DS fade and grow from the crack in his closet for a while, sees a bug climb across the outside glass, and finally hears his phone go off with his special text tone for Yugi. It’s on his nightstand, and his arms creak in pain as he reaches for it - it’s a picture of all of them, himself and Yugi and Tea and Tristan, and he smiles for a moment before it wavers and he breaks down into his bare arms.
Through his tears he manages to tap out a “lookin’ good!” and then begins scrolling through his contacts - all six of them, to be fair, but he’d do anything to distract himself from everything else. The TV is blaring some awful sports game where only two of the commentators even give a fuck, and he’s sick of analyzing his dad’s footsteps and feeling his come dribble out of him whenever he moved.
He sees all of his friends, his aunt, his dad, and… Wait. When did he get his number? He clicks on it, making sure it was legitimate, and frowns with surprise when he sees 10 digits in the proper place. As he stares, he finds his thumb hovering over the call button - what would he even say? - and makes sense of it by needing to find out if it really was real as he hits the green LED icon.
It rings once, twice, three times before the person on the other line picks up and fills the static in Joey’s head. “Wheeler?”
“Kaiba,” he echoes, immediately wincing at how hoarse his voice is. He clears his throat, but it doesn’t do much. “I didn’t know I had your contact in my phone.”
“I’d forgotten myself,” the other responds. “I think we exchanged them during the most recent field trip. You know, to the museum, when we’d gotten paired up?”
“Yeah, shit, you’re right,” Joey says, propping himself up on his elbow. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine.” A long pause. “Are you feeling alright?”
Joey’s happy he’s had so many years to practice lying. “The hell’s that supposed to mean? Course I am! I’m just watchin’ TV.”
“You don’t sound distracted,” Kaiba points out, and Joey curses lowly at how well the other can read him, even over the phone. “You sound miserable. Did you lose your DS?”
“My virginity, actually,” Joey quips under his breath.
“What did you just say, Wheeler?” Kaiba demands through the phone, and Joey looks at his own device in disbelief. He’d said it so softly! How the hell did it pick it up?
“It was a joke, it was a joke! I lost that years ago.”
“What?”
“Listen!” Joey says. Kaiba already hated him - this was just further digging his grave. “I’m fine, okay? Why the hell are ya worryin’ about a mutt like me, anyway?”
“You’re right that I have far better things to do,” Kaiba says, and Joey grimaces - that one hurt, “but I’m suspiciously free this evening and, seen as you called me despite the fact that you've sworn me as your mortal enemy, I figure something’s up.”
Joey sighs, mentally debating himself. He could tell Kaiba what had happened, but the fifty fifty chance of the CEO busting a gut and hanging up on him or pitying him for the rest of their lives wasn’t exactly either of his favored outcomes. Coming up with a valid excuse - maybe crashing on his bike? - would be a lot easier, but he found a pull in his chest wanting to tell Kaiba, to get his help or at least make him feel shitty.
“I got home late today, okay?” Joey says. “And whenever I get home late, my dad… rapes me.”
Kaiba is silent for a long time, to the point where Joey checks to see if he had been hung up on. Finally, he speaks, low and far more soothing. “You said you’re home?”
“Yeah, why?”
“What’s your address?”
Joey inhales sharply. “Why the fuck does it matter? Don’t tell me you want sloppy seconds, I—“
“I do not, Joey Wheeler,” Kaiba snaps. “You’re not safe there. If it’s fine with you, I’ll come pick you up, and… we’ll figure it out from there.”
“I can’t,” Joey says. “If he finds out I left, if he finds out I’m gone, I… I’ll have it so much worse, I can deal with this, I…”
“If he does find out, I will not let him lay a hand on you.”
“How the hell are you supposed to do that?”
“Tell me, what does your father do for a living?”
Joey thinks for a moment. “He’s… he’s unemployed.”
“Right. And what do I do for a living?”
“...You’re a CEO.”
“Excellent.” Joey’s face warms a little at the praise. “So understand that your father, when it comes to me, has no leg to stand on. He cannot approach my property or, if I say so, someone I am affiliated with.”
Joey’s exhale is shuddered into the receiver. “Do you promise?”
“That you’ll never see your father again if you wish? Yes.”
“Okay.” Joey says, nodding to himself. “Okay. My address is 453 West Adler Street — yep, the shitty place. Come through the window, though, okay? It’ll be unlocked for you.”
“Alright. I’ll be there within the hour. Be ready, Wheeler.”
“Kaiba?”
“Mhm?”
“...Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’d just like you safe.” And with that, the line goes dead.
Joey would’ve mulled over those words, picked them apart for any secret meaning - maybe they were connected to how his and Kaiba’s hands brushed while studying, their fleeting glances toward each other? - had he not realized he had forty five minutes to gather everything he owned. He winces in pain as he gets up, legs trembling about as much as they ought to but more than Joey would like - his ankle, most certainly broken, twinges every time he walks. He puts on his old clothes, still on the floor, and silently pulls his suitcase from the top of his closet.
It’s with furrowed brows does he realize he… really doesn’t have all that much. He’s leaving his bedsheets and his lamp, quickly remembering to stuff his phone and DS charger into his backpack - he shifts uncomfortably in his jeans, so sore it made him breathless. He’d like to go into the bathroom for some painkillers and maybe his toothbrush, but decides against it - it wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught.
And then he waits.
He checks his watch every minute or so, watching the seconds pass by. It’s 11:57pm and he’s just begun to worry that this was all some awful joke Kaiba had set him up for when the moonlight from his window disappears and he sees the familiar silhouette of the other’s coat.
“Nice to see you’re flashy as always,” quips Joey in a whisper as he throws the window open. Kaiba humors him with a laugh as he grabs Joey’s suitcase and then pries the window open more to let the teenager jump through with his backpack. He lands on the ground with a huff, ankles twinging, but recovers quickly enough - spotting the limousine with pulsing blue lights and smothering a laugh.
“What’s wrong?” Kaiba asks. “Are you hurt?”
Joey smiles. “My dad broke my foot during our little romp, but besides that, I’m all good.”
Kaiba’s eyebrow twitches. “We’ll get that fixed as soon as we get home.”
“Of course,” Joey grins, and they walk off into the night, the buzz of cicadas loud in their ears. Their shoulders knock together as they cross Joey’s yard onto the sidewalk, and Joey’s glad it’s nighttime - just so the other wouldn’t see the red blooming on his face.
Seeing Kaiba blush would be a funny sight - he was even paler - and then Joey smacks himself for thinking something so gay.
“After you, Wheeler,” Kaiba says, opening the door for him.
“Ayy, thank you,” he says, fingergunning at the CEO, and slides in. The smell of clean leather is a welcome one, and he sinks into the cushions as he puts his bag at his feet. A man in sunglasses puts his suitcase in the trunk and, to Joey’s surprise, Kaiba climbs in next to him.
The car hums to life, and begins to speed off to Kaiba’s house - or, in this case, mansion. The two of them are silent for a moment, Joey not sure what exactly to say, when Kaiba speaks up first.
“When we get home, do you need to clean up?”
“That’d be nice,” Joey admits, tugging at his jacket. “I didn’t really… have the opportunity to, if you know what I mean?”
Kaiba nods. “I don’t know if I said it over the phone, but… I’m sorry.”
Joey looks at him incredulously. “Sorry?” He repeats. “Sorry for what? None of it was your fault.”
“Sorry I didn’t find out sooner, I guess.”
“Hey,” Joey says, lightly smacking Kaiba’s arm. “Don’t blame yourself. I kept it under wraps for a reason. I’m just… grateful you were so proactive about it.”
“Of course I was,” Kaiba says, turning to face him entirely. “No one should be doing that to a child , much less my friend, much less you, I—“
Kaiba stops himself, then, and Joey’s wandering mind had been right - he was cute when he blushed. “I appreciate your concern,” Joey says, leaning forward, and buries his face into Kaiba’s shoulder. It smells like faint warm cologne and where Joey’s nose has dipped into his turtleneck, it is soft - and he melts into the other, not realizing how exhausted he was.
“Of course,” Kaiba murmurs, running a hand through Joey’s hair. It is so much more tender than his father’s, and he leans into the touch like second nature.
The car rumbles, and he is safe.