[Note: Seto refers to Yami Yugi as simply "Yugi," because… anime canon.]
Inhibitions
Yami Yugi has learnt much about Seto Kaiba by observing the manner in which he responds to sex.
When Seto Kaiba is on a bed he lies there, immobile, in dorsal decubitus. His arms remain at his side, parallel to his body, hands palm down against the bed. At times, when beads of sweat begin to pool along the base of his hairline, he might bring one arm up to wipe his brow with the back of his hand.
Seto's skin is cold when they first begin to touch, limbs stiff and straightened. But the heat of his body rises in crescendo with each received caress, tense muscles gradually de-contracting. Yami feels these changes and adapts, as though to a game. Seto never asks, never states his desires. But Yami has learnt to interpret the expressions that flicker over the other man's eyes.
When they enter the room – whether in a hotel or Seto's mansion – Seto first takes off his long white trench coat and hang it on the clothing rack. If there is no rack, he folds the coat across the back of a chair. If it is nighttime, he closes the ceiling light and switches on the bedside lamp. Then, he turns so that he faces Yami Yugi. If Yami is occupied, for instance because he is hanging his own coat, Seto walks slowly to the bed. First he sits. Then, he allows his upper body to collapse against the mattress. All this is done in silence. His eyes never leave Yami Yugi.
Seto does not like to kiss, but accepts to be kissed. The inside of his mouth is cold and his tongue flattens itself against his lower teeth, like a frightened cat.
Yami must remove Seto's clothes for him. Sometimes Seto reaches for a part of him, the waist or the shoulder, whichever is most accessible at the moment. He does so with one arm, never both. The hand rests there for a while, then drops back to the bed. During intercourse, Seto's eyes look up at him in silence, lips and brows contorted. Is he in pain? Is he in pleasure? Which one more than the other? At times, is difficult for Yami to tell.
Seto's breaths escape in trembling heaves which culminate at the moment when he loses control.
But if Seto is quietly passive on a bed, it is he who calls up Yami Yugi in the middle of the night, harshly inconsiderate, at 2 AM. In a terse, chief executive officer's voice, he arranges their next rendezvous. Yami winces thinking of the times that Yugi Muto, his other half, was awoken by the ringing.
When he walks out of the house with the intent of seeing Seto, Yami shuts himself off to his other self. Yami Yugi does not entirely know what Yugi Muto thinks of his behavior. He does not want to know – is afraid to know. But it is little Yugi who awakens with pain still between his legs, the imprints of another on his pubescent body. Each time Yami steps out of the room that he had occupied with Seto, he inwardly begs for forgiveness from his other half. But he already knows that he is forgiven. Yes, Yugi forgives, kindly and unconditionally, body bruised yet all smiles.
Does Yami inflict pain on Yugi Muto through his actions? Most likely. When Yami leaves to see Seto, Yugi closes himself up in his soul-room. He remains there, until a single knock at his soul-door signals that all is over and done with. Yugi then takes over, carries on with what he must for the rest of the day. The two go on to have cheery conversations about friendship, duels, the weather, and anything that might cross their minds. That is, except for one thing. Seto Kaiba is never mentioned, as though part of an unspoken contract of silence.
The price that Yami pays for this silence is his guilt.
Yami is vocal by nature, but possesses the ability to self-regulate. In day to day life, he voices his thoughts when need be, remains quiet when strategic to do so. On a bed, he sets his inhibitions aside. That is why moans spill from his mouth, desire reverberating from deep within his throat. Meanwhile, Seto is a man of few words. But the few words that he does express are loaded with weight and power. His words are the mechanism by which he controls a company, sending innumerable employees kneeling at his feet. Beneath Yami Yugi's body, he suppresses the sounds that rise in his throat, urgently, like liquid under pressure. Silent to the end.
Yami is never as raw and open as when his body melds with another's. He feels himself slide into a most exquisite and intimate plane of being. But what does Seto feel?
Yami wishes to connect. He wishes to enter Seto's mind, and step with him into the same open and uninhibited dimension. But Seto will not allow it. His mind is a shut and lonely mystery.
More than once, Yami has wondered whether he could change Seto. Whether he could untangle the knots of repression coiled deep within the other man. But time after time, the same sequence unfolds. Yami Yugi initiates. Seto Kaiba accepts, long fingers tightly clenching the bed sheets.
One particular time, Yami sensed that Seto had, at last, opened to him. It is a moment which, when the time comes, he will carry to the afterlife.
They were waking up to a sleepy weekend morning. Limbs askew, bags under eyes and hair a mess, still tangled in Seto's bed. Yami opened his eyes. He brought his tongue to his lips, and felt that they were dry. He made to go get water. But as he shifted, Seto woke.
Seto's eyes were fixed onto Yami's. His eyebrows were knit as though he was trying hard to formulate something.
"Yugi. I…"
He stopped. Simply uttering the other's name was too great an effort. However, his expression finished the sentence. "I need you," was what it said.
And Yami Yugi crawled back beside him, where it was warm beneath the single blanket. They slid their arms around each other. Seto's lips wetted his, and he forgot that his mouth was dry. They remained this way for one more hour that gave the illusion of being eternal. They held each other in mutual vulnerability and understanding silence.
A few days later, Yugi received a call after suppertime. As always, Seto set the time and place. In two days. At a certain hotel. His voice was dry and icy, as though settling a contract or placing a demand. Cool and to the point, as ever.
Yami is patient. But they do not have the luxury of indefinite time, of promises of forever. Yami Yugi's destiny is not to be found in this world – he knows it, and cannot escape it.
Seto is there but not there. Yami would do anything to break through, he thinks to himself.
Are they in love? Yami does not know. They are like strangers wound up in each other's arms by a whim of fate, a haphazard roll of the dice. Yami does not fully understand Seto, his twisted past and unlived childhood. And Yami is only just beginning to piece together the puzzle of his own past. How could Seto understand him if he did not understand himself? They exchange few words. They only meet, in the darkness of the night or the quietude of an afternoon, in order to slip together into the same bed.
Sometimes, in the warm after-haze, Yami cannot help but voice his pangs of loneliness, his uncertainties for the past and future. Seto listens. He keeps still in the purest silence. He is listening even when he does not appear to do so, even when he does not fully grasp the meaning of the words spoken to him, clear blue eyes turned to the rain outside the window.
Does he love Seto? Yami cannot decide. Does Seto love him? He does not think he will ever find an answer. But what Yami Yugi does know is that, whatever sentiment of attachment exists between the two, it is the closest to love that Seto Kaiba has ever yet experienced. Whatever love is.
And that thought contents Yami, as he exits the hotel from the back door.