Disclaimer: Don't own YGO, i'm just borrowing the names but this storyline IS mine.

AN: the storyline is actually an adv. creative writing assignment from a previous semester. i enjoyed it so much i decided to share it.


The smell of sweat filled the club along with lingering scents of scotch, whiskey, brandy, and ale; beer, tequila, vodka and rum. The lights flashed. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. The music so loud that even the DJ couldn't remember the words to the song, just that the rhythm pulsed throughout the floor and into people's feet and up their spines in a tantrum sensation allowing fluid movements of arms and legs, limbs and fingers, reaching out to touch one another.

The clientele of The Cave were mostly strung out teens and twenty-year-olds all too young and drugged out to deal with Domino in the morning. So they came here, washing themselves in sin and tonic.

Seto was not one of them. He was a twenty-three years old paralegal, sober, wearing clothes that fit and didn't glow in the dark, and he was looking for his brother.

His only lead was a matchbook with the club's insignia on it, a dark swirl of purple against a round of black, found outside his brother's door with no other plan than to go and search. Seto realized just how stupid it was when he was already inside, pushing against and away bodies, searching for a glimpse at raven hair and gray eyes. Crunching numbers and going over case files suddenly became a lot more interesting.

" Hey baby, ain't cha on da wrong side of town?" A thick Brooklyn accent filled his right ear when arms wrapped around his shoulders. Seto was quick to jerk back, throwing off who ever the voice belonged to.

" Go find someone else to molest."

" An' if I only want yous?"

" Then you're going to have to..." The sentence was left unfinished when Seto turned around and recognized a face he thought he'd never see again. The blond hair with black streaks, the skintight shirt ripped at the hems, and the jeans so torn he wondered how they were still on, all alluded to a complete stranger but Seto knew only one person with mismatch colored eyes. The right eye green, left eye brown, it had to be..." Joseph!"

" Baby, I don't go by dat anymore. Jus Jo." The man once known as Joseph smiled, flashing his pearly white fangs. Seto's mind went reeling, of all the people he'd thought to find, Joseph Wheeler was the last.

"What're you doing here?"

Seto went back six years to a night there were no stars because the city's pollution choked the sky. It'd been two weeks after their high school graduation and Seto and Joseph were sitting on the truck bed of a ford pickup, compliments of the latter's alcoholic father.

"Baby, you're in my playground now, I get ta push da swings."

Jo closed any and all distance between them as he reached out to touch Seto, slithering his hand up and around the back of the other's neck, caressing the smaller hairs. " What're you doin' here? If you kept on the straight n' narrow, ya shouldn't end up here."

" That's more than I can say for you." Seto spat. He felt incredibly uncomfortable and not because Jo was so close he could see the boy's beads of sweat drip from his forehead but because the contact was welcomed. In any other circumstance, with any number of other people, he would have shoved them away and continued on but he was trapped. Trapped by the two-colored eyes and the boy he hadn't thought was still alive. " You mad?" Jo smiled, taking his other hand and sliding it opposite the other in Seto's hair. " You don't know the half of it Baby." He leaned in a little closer, their lips almost touching and looked Seto straight in the eye. " What're you doin' here?"

For two seconds Seto forgot himself. Forgot who he was, where he was, why he was there at all. All he could think about was the fact that Jo's breath smelled like vanilla caramels and Jaeger. "Mokuba."

" I knew it." And just like that, Jo let go of Seto, taking a few steps back and bumping into a couple dancing so close together you could smell the sex radiating off of them.

" You've seen him?" Seto's heart leaped into his throat if at least metaphorically because it could have easily been the music.

Jo held out his hand. " I saw a pretty boy tonight an' thought about you. Hair jet-black like yours an' da same pair of sad eyes." He was shouting, too far away in the packed club to be heard over the noise. " He was on the wrong kind of high, you sure you wanna see 'im?"

" He's my brother!" Seto screamed, the music became faster, heavier, and the bodies were beginning to thrash about. He sought Jo's hand afraid he'd be eaten up by the masses. He felt thin fingers slip into his and tug.

Six years ago, he'd have followed Joseph anywhere, anytime with a bubble of anticipation of what trouble they would get into next. That was six years ago when they were still best friends. They lived in each other's world even when one was pissed off at the other or when they ended up with broken legs because the idea of jumping off bridges was a good one. Even when one was in love with the other and it was the best-kept secret since the brain tumor his father had been silently suffering from. Now he was following Jo into the depths of The Cave, surrounded by people so far gone from this realm they would be offended if referred to as humans. The music grew louder before it faded and lights stopped flashing to pulsate. There were less and less bodies and more and more hiding places. Seto could hear the noises of people having sex, laughing, arguing, fighting, screaming, murmuring, snorting lines of coke.

" Why are you here?" Seto's head was too fill with questions not to at least ask one.

" Long story Baby, long story."

" Stop calling me baby." Seto squeezed his hand over Jo's, " Give me the cliff notes?"

" You're here for Mokuba, not me." Jo continued to tug Seto further and further down a hallway, his feet knowing all too well where they were going to end up.

" You're coming with us."

" You jus decided dat for me?"

" Yes."

" You were always da dumb one Seto."

" I've changed." Seto stopped, pulling Jo back from getting caught up by storm of bodies grinding themselves raw. He held him to his chest until he felt Jo pushing away.

" No you haven't." Jo whispered, not to be heard by Seto at all. He was still holding his hand, still tugging him along. Jo used his free hand to reach out to the wall, feeling around for a door that was easily missed in the strobe lighting and curtains. When he felt hinges he spoke loud enough for Seto to hear. " Dis is it," and let go of his hand, opting to be the first one to open the door. Seto looked over Jo's shoulder but only caught a silver of a room before Jo closed the door back up. " He's not in there?" Panic boiled over somewhere inside the pit of his stomach where all the knots were sitting. Seto was scared shitless. Afraid he'd been too late. Two weeks late since Mokuba had first gone missing.

" Ever changed ya brotha's diaper?"

" What?"

" Sometimes seein' too much of someone is bad, no matter how much ya've known 'em."

" Joey, you're not making..."

" Ya don't need ta see certain people doin' certain things"

" What is he doing?" but Seto was already reaching for the doorknob. Jo pressed himself up against the taller man to stop him.

" Do you rememba da night I left?"

" What! Jo is he in there or not!"

" Do you rememba?"

" Of course, what does that have to do..." Seto trailed off when he realized Jo's hands were encircling his waist.

" Tell me."

He tried to remember the night in the pickup. The night no stars were out. They'd been driving for hours and ended up on some dusty hillside just outside the city. It had reached the darkest of night and even though they lay right next to one another, they could only just make out the other's outlines.

" We were high. Parked in the middle of fucking nowhere. I...I kissed you and.." Seto watched Jo's expression hoping to find some meaning to all this. He remembered being shoved. He remembered feeling utterly rejected. " You tasted like booze and I wanted to puke right then and there but you were still crying."

" An' why was I cryin'?"

" Because..."

" Because?"

" Because you were hurt, that fucking prick of your father hurt you." Seto's hands curled around Jo's shoulders only to push him aside. He threw the door open, eyes searching like a madman for sanity for his brother.

The room was set up much like any other back office. Shelves of binders, books and drug paraphernalia lined two quarters of the walls. There were two leather bound chairs facing a wide desk but it was who was on the desk that turned Seto's skin cold.

Mokuba is eighteen but fiercely resembles a twenty-odd year girl. Alabaster skin, long black hair, and small curves always confused people but never really bothered him. In fact, he'd purposely wear womens' clothing to get into clubs and have his drinks paid for. His androgyny was also a tool to maintain his meth addiction. Tonight was no different.

" Mokuba!"

He felt arms before he understood that they belonged to his brother who was now pulling his dress back down. " You're fucking sick!" but Seto wasn't yelling at him but at that guy. That guy that Mokuba couldn't remember his name, just that he had a syringe full of euphoria.

" Seto, let me go. I'm okay. I'm okay. I got this. I want this. Just one shot. I'll be good. I'll come home. Just one more shot." In Mokuba's head's he sounded perfectly normal, words spoken to ease the tension in the room but to Seto, it sounded like nothing more than the rabid pleading of a junkie.

" Hey, look, he came to me okay?" The man with a name neither brother cared enough about hadn't bother to put his pants back on, just sat there in his underwear.

" I don't want to hear it!" Seto nearly screamed, the blood rushing straight to his head. Before he did something along the lines of breaking his fist against the man's face, he grabbed a hold of Mokuba's arm and stormed out with his brother still pleading and mumbling and squirming.

Jo watched from his corner outside the room, surprised nothing else happened. When he was younger, he had known Seto to be secretly violent; the kind that would beat the shit out of his father if he saw Joseph come to school with a black eye or two. It was something that both excited and frightened him and wondered sometimes what it would be like to be hit by an enraged Seto.

" We're going." Seto's hand snatched Jo's wrist dragging him alongside.

"nononononononononono, Seto, no please, please, one more shot, ONE MORE SHOT! I need it, I neeeed it. Please! pleasepleasepleaseee. I'll give you anything...ANYTHING!" The panic was rising and Mokuba's movements were becoming ever more wild, making it harder for Seto to keep a hold of him.

" Mokuba!" Seto didn't like it but he let go of Jo and held onto Mokuba with both arms, pushing him along in front of him so that the smaller boy was forced to go the same way as him. He wanted nothing more than to be home. He could deal with anything there and not The Cave. He turned his head to make sure Jo was still following when Mokuba began shrieking.

" LET ME GO. I WANT IT! LET ME GO SETO! PLEASE I NEED IT! "

" You need ta take 'im to a hospital an' have 'im..."

" I HATE YOU LET ME HAVE IT I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T!"

" Dis way's faster." Jo stuck his index and pointer fingers into a belt loop on Seto's pants and broke through a throng of people to continue into a darker part of the club. Somewhere where the lights and music couldn't reach. Less and less people were around until finally they found themselves in an empty stairwell, leading down into a glowing red exit sign. There stood a giant black door between freedom and sin.

" Be there for 'im but don't listen. Shut ya ears, it's all da meth. Watch him. Don't give 'em nothin' sharp. Stay by his side an' when he's low..."

" You're coming with me." Seto cut Jo off, already going down the steps, not really listening to the blonde.

" I ain't so ya betta get goin'."

" PLEASE SETO! Anything, anything you want me to do, I'll stop wearing makeup, I'll stop stealing your money, I'll I'll..."

" Mokuba, NO." Seto shook his bother a little, watching tears run down the boy's face, ruining all his makeup, revealing tiny lesions. In the back of Seto's throat he threw up the one cup of coffee he had had all day.

" Jus go Seto, he'll need your attention 24/7."

" Come with us." It was Seto's turn to plead. He felt he was drowning in Mokuba's screams. He wanted more than ever to have Joseph in his life. Now that he knew he was still alive. That the one other person in his life that meant something could stick around and help him get through this was all Seto needed, just as much as Mokuba thought he needed the meth.

" Don't be stupid Seto. Ya got wat ya came for, now go help 'im 'fo somethin' happens. Meth-heads are sneaky fuckers."

" Seto! Seto! You can have Jo, just let me go! You can have him all to yourself! i know his pimp. his pimp, his pimp, his pimp knows a guy who has the best stuff. Come on, whaddya..."

" JUS GO!" Jo shouted, tears leaping out of his eyes. " FUCKIN' GO! DER AIN'T NOTHIN' YOUS CAN DO FOR ME!"

Silence. Even Mokuba stopped his babbling, if only for a moment before mumbling things underneath his breath. Seto looked up at Jo from his spot three steps down and stared. Stared and stared. In his head were a million excuses and pleas and arguments and commands he could shout at Jo but he couldn't choose any and his mind went further. Further into a time he and Joseph could still call each other friends.

" You're such a girl, always holdin' on ta shit."

" Am not. It's my fucking shirt."

" Yes you are, all ya do is hold grudges an' rememba fights from foreva ago an' stupid shit."

" Joey, it's my fucking shirt!"

" Shut up you, ain't da point here."

" Really, I couldn't tell...the fuck is then?"

" Stop keepin' shit. Stop collectin' it all in dat big head of yours. Does it matter I lied about where I was last night? I'm here now ain't I? Or dat ya dad called two weeks ago ta say he was gonna drop by but neva did? No, at all. All dat matters is whacha got right now, in ya face, in ya hands, an' it's workin' for ya. Stop tryin' get more."

"...still my shirt..."

" Oh fuck off Seto, ya ain't gettin' it back!"

Seto smiled for the first time in two weeks, although it was more of a grin, the kind you offer a widow at her husband's funeral. He gave a curt nod and adjusted Mokuba so that he could actually cradle the boy in his arms. He was staring up at his older brother, lips quivering and eyes going everywhere, wondering whether or not he'd get his fix.

Seto's eyes met Jo's for one last time, watching as the other bit his lip with one fang peeking out before turning around. He held onto his brother a little closer, leaning in and kissing the boy's forehead, his skin sticky and warm.

He took his time going down the stairs, sure Jo was still there watching, and counted the twelve steps before he reached the door.