Epidermis
by Cryptographic DeLurk
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AN: This fic includes descriptions of self harm and sexual violation.
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There was a mark on his skin, if you looked closely enough. A dirty thumbprint left in a dark yellow substance, like mustard, although it blended into the pale grey at his wrist far too easily. Jounouchi had grabbed his wrist and twisted, curled his thumb and nail in to dig into the purple artery under Seto's skin. Jounouchi had been shouting something. He was loud. Far too loud. But Seto couldn't even remember what he had said.
Jounouchi was an idiot. His posturing wasn't intimidating. He didn't need to yell. He didn't need to claw and twist Seto's arm wearing that angry grin that begged for the pain to show on Seto's face. Jounouchi wasn't scary in any of the ways he thought he was.
He wasn't scary at all, Seto corrected.
But Seto couldn't hear what Jounouchi had shouted. He couldn't register the movement of Jounouchi's lips. It had been so completely drowned out by the screaming in his own head. A kind of silent horror that didn't have any words – only a pulsing cry into the emptiness, that he sat with in increasing discomfort with until his body moved in to stop it on its own. He'd lifted a leg up and plunged his heel into Jounouchi's gut. Martial arts. Perfect form.
Jounouchi had let the pain show on his face. And Seto watched it and felt nothing, before he walked away.
But the thumbprint was still there.
If I died right now, Seto thought. They'd run an autopsy. And they'd find his thumbprint in mustard on my skin.
They could identify Jounouchi with that thumbprint. And they might even put it in the tabloids: Disgusting blond man's fingerprints found on the cadaver. Under further investigation.
That Jounouchi could leave that kind of impression on his person, even temporarily-
Seto didn't allow himself to finish the sentence.
Seto peeled off his jacket. Then his shirt. He was too dehydrated to produce much sweat, let alone urine, which was how he preferred it. But, still, there was a faint scent of body odour, which he found offensive.
One thing at a time.
He positioned his wrist under the faucet of the bathroom sink. He took a couple pumps of hand soap, and touched it tenderly to the spot above his ulnar artery. He lathered it slowly, in a circular motion, until it became clear that this wouldn't do. The thumbprint seemed to stand out in increased contrast – black and white like an epidemiology chart. He scrubbed more ferociously.
He tried to remind himself that the rate that skin cells shed and regenerated was very fast. Six weeks and his epidermis would have replaced itself in its entirety.
This was not comforting. Seto slammed his hand against the filth of the sink. He ducked down to examine the cupboard under it. Dish soap would have been his next choice, but that was out in the kitchen, and the scouring powder and bleach were sitting here now.
Seto stood quickly. He waved the powder over his arm. The faucet seemed to roar, as he scraped the bones in his hands over the thumbprint until the skin was red and inflamed, and he couldn't see it anymore. He uncapped the liquid bleach, and poured it over the affected area. And it stung against the scratches he had dug into his skin, but he held back the hiss on his tongue.
And then the roar of the faucet subsided to the small trickle that it was, and Seto could breathe again.
He capped the bleach and put it away.
He considered the scouring powder. He took off his pants. His socks. His underwear. He tossed them in a heap with his jacket.
He considered the scouring powder again, and dusted it lightly over his shoulders, before putting it away and heading to the shower. The bath he never used. Too much sitting in your own filth.
The too hot water burned over his skin, leaving it dry and rubbery. He was calmer, but something was still amiss.
The thumbprint was gone for now, but it wasn't the first time Jounouchi had touched him. One time he had whipped a hand against Seto's nose while gesturing too effusively. A finger had brushed against Seto's neck when Jounouchi grabbed his collar and pulled him down to shout in his face. Even, what should have been impossible: Seto could feel the handprints through his clothes when Jounouchi clasped his shoulder. They were marks that didn't fade over time, but startled into starker existence.
And more than Jounouchi. The maid that Mokuba had hired to care for him. Pegasus had touched his face. Maybe done more while he was comatose. Mazaki had brushed his hand by mistake one time during Battle City. Mutou Yuugi had done the same during Duellist Kingdom. The Other Yuugi –
Seto wouldn't go there. The Other Yuugi hadn't and that's all there was to it. There was nowhere to go.
Seto abruptly turned the shower water cold. His body trembled in the cryotherapeutic shock. It felt empowering somehow. Moreso when he realised the pain and shock hadn't given him an unwanted erection.
That had happened before. He didn't need to deal with it today.
He thought about Isis, who he'd had sex with from what felt like opposite ends of the room. The only points of contact had been where she sat astride him. Her legs parted over his groin and hugged his hips. At one point, she had grasped his hand in hers, and led it up to caress her breast, her cheek.
And that was it. The marks left on his hand, the marks left by her thighs – they had faded into the same soft marks of infringement as the others. And then she had left him, and Seto still wasn't sure what he had done wrong.
He wondered what it would be like to have sex with Jounouchi. No doubt, it would be like everything else Jounouchi did to him – assuming he didn't draw the line, didn't have some ethical objection to fucking another man. Jounouchi would grin teasing and sadistic the entire time, and layer hand over hand on him, revelling in Seto's discomfort, as he pressed his fingers over shoulders and stomach and legs and feet and posterior. It would be agonising and, by the time Jounouchi was done with him, Seto wouldn't have any hope of scrubbing the fingerprints and subhuman filth off. No matter how harsh the abrasive he applied to his skin.
Seto's skin hurt, standing in the shower. He was very tired of scrubbing his skin in the vain attempts to keep clean a little while longer.
And Seto then wondered what it would be like to have sex with the Pharaoh. But- No! He was dead. He was dead. He was dead! And Seto had no idea what it would be like. And Seto never would. Because he was dead. And he was dead! And there was no point thinking about it. No point in coming up with hypotheses he could never test. Stop! No!
The roaring screams had taken over his ears again. And Seto shut off the water so as to hear them more clearly.
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