Thirteen
Some time, about halfway between having done the grunt work needed to finish high school and trying to write a proposal for a game that would meet his brother's exacting standards, Mokuba had the epiphany that his brother wanted his approval. It was a startling thought and he didn't have any idea where it came from but he was sure of it all the same.
Not because of anything Nii-sama did. He behaved as he always had, only half in the corporeal world most days, a solid 50 per cent of his mind absorbed by planning his games and handling his business empire, which was also a game to him and one he took as deadly seriously as every other game. He let Mokuba do almost anything he liked, and Mokuba returned the favour by obeying without question when he did tell Mokuba to do something. Somewhere in the back of his mind, unexamined, lay the idea that Nii-sama was owed his obedience.
But the idea seemed true, no matter where it came from. He shied away from it even in his own mind, because who was he? The weakling younger brother, who didn't even have the nerve to… They were three years and many many miles away in New York from Mutou Yugi and the creepy, scary things that seemed to happen around him and his weird friends but it wasn't something either Kaiba had forgotten.
Mokuba still woke up in the middle of the night convinced that he was trapped in a card and his body was rotting away in some dark dungeon somewhere. His latest resolution was to go a month without needing a nightlight anyway. Face your fears and all that shit. He nearly lost it three days into the month when he woke up running away from some nameless, formless thing and he couldn't open his mouth to scream. He jolted up from bed and was too clumsy to get out of the bedclothes, his frantic scrambling for the lights just sent everything crashing to the floor.
The startling noise calmed him down to some extent. He could hear himself breathe harshly, threatening sobs. The door between his bedroom and Nii-sama's cracked open and there was a low voice, "Mokuba?"
"Come in," his voice was reedy to his own ears and embarrassingly close to cracking. Even on the bare wood, Nii-sama only made a whisper of a sound moving. The door was mostly shut but rarely locked. He snuck into his brother's bedroom frequently, to sleep in his bed or work in the comfortable soundtrack of Western classical music and click-clacking on the laptop or even just lie sprawled on the rug in front of the bed, staring at the soothingly white ceiling. His brother never entered his room without explicit permission.
A hand landed on his head. For a moment Mokuba wanted to shove it aside, break it, even bite it. Then the sudden rage went as quickly as it had come, leaving him exhausted. He sagged, and a deft embrace lowered him gently to the bed. A hand ran rhythmically through his hair, over and over, 5-4-3-2-1-pause-5-4-etc.
Between two numbers, Mokuba fell asleep again. In the morning, before even brushing his teeth he took the nightlight to the attic so that he wouldn't be tempted to use it the rest of the month. Only in the evening did he notice that the mess from his bedside table falling had been cleaned up before he had gotten up and could ask a maid to do it.
As rapidly as he realized that his brother wanted his approval, he forgot it. It was too odd and uncomfortable to think about.
"We have a garden," Seto said, puzzled. The monstrosity in front of him looked like it could barely hold itself up. They did, in fact, have a garden. It was half-wild since there was no gardener and Seto only took care of the rose bushes that he had planted himself. There was a stubborn vine with white, scented flowers which blew into every open window on the back side of the house and a bunch of weeds which could survive anything, but it had never bothered Seto. Certainly not enough to get a gardener who would probably have to live in-house to take care of the large amount of land.
They had no live-in servants in America; even the security personnel had their own building on a different part of the property. Seto was willing to pay for the privacy.
"I wanted a greenhouse," Mokuba said, although he too looked somewhat dubious about it. "I don't think I planned it properly."
Seto agreed mentally but said nothing. The glass gleamed threateningly; the whole structure seemed to be listing to one side. He had only been away for a week, so it was remarkable that Mokuba had gotten anything built. But he should demand a refund from whoever he had hired.
"Maybe we should pull it down." Mokuba looked solemn now.
Seto gave him a long look and said, "Do what you like."
Mokuba kept the greenhouse. He filled it with all manners of plants, none of which had flowers or anything useful. The only advantage that Seto could see was that they seemed to have a neverending supply of peaches and avocadoes and it made breakfast more pleasant.
Inhale, hold, breathe out slowly. Mokuba blinked sleepily at the tiny smoke rings, and a small smile curled up at the edge of his lips. Tatiana leaned over him and said, "Hey." He passed the joint on to her. His thumb brushed her palm gently and lingered. She smirked at him knowingly but didn't push his head off her lap.
"Hey," he said
"M." Someone was kicking at his side urgently, "M, man." Alexei-who-preferred-to-be-called-Al called him impatiently.
"Fuck off, bro," he said easily, still staring up at Tatiana who had stopped smirking and was now blushing, looking away from him, a grin still tugging at the corner of her mouth while she tried to take a pull on the joint. Any moment now…
She looked back at him and grinned, eyes bright and inviting. Oh, yeah. This was going to be good.
"M, you asshole, get your dick back in your pants!" Someone was pulling at his hair now, and without turning, he sat up, grabbed hold of that wrist, bent it back and then pulled the hand up behind the boy's back high enough that he, Francis that dick, let out a yell. Then Tatiana was crushing the joint beneath a uniform-violation-heel and grabbing hold of him to pull him away, and they ran to the opposite side of the school's roof, to duck into a small space that looked like part of the ventilation system. From outside it looked like it was locked, so they used it to hide whenever the authorities started sniffing around. All of the sophomores in the school had spent their share of time hiding in here.
He was still short for his age, and Tatiana was slim, but there was still just barely enough space for both of them. He grinned to himself. Tatiana turned around to face him, giggling nervously in a huff of air he felt more than heard.
Outside there was the clatter and voice of the security guard of this academic block.
"Ssh," he murmured, raising a hand to run it through her hair. She didn't move either to push him away or to move closer. Her bright pink lipstick was visible in the faint light coming from outside. The noises grew fainter.
"M, you dick," she said. Her breathless whisper came from very near. "Frank's going to whine about his arm for ages." She always used the same scent, something faintly floral. He should find out what so he could get her a 'thoughtful' gift in a couple of weeks.
"Francis will be fine," he said, barely even paying attention. He lowered his hand to cup the back of her neck and stroked his thumb gently as her blue, blue eyes got larger.
"You ever pay attention to anything other than your dick?" she said, but her voice was bright with excitement.
"Around you, gorgeous?" he asked, and then pulled her down with gentle pressure.
There weren't any more stupid questions.
"Are you coming to the first-round tests?" Sasaki-san asked, smiling down at him. They were actually ahead of schedule. It was like finding El Dorado. Nii-sama might actually smile for once. It would probably frighten the entire engineering team into working even harder.
"I'm always up for a party," he replied, grinning. He ran a hand through his hair and winced at the dust and grease everywhere. His small size came in useful when they were doing the fiddly work in machinery but it meant he ended up contorted into increasingly weird shapes and his hair got sweaty and disgusting.
"That's my man!" Someone's hands landed on his shoulders and he kicked out automatically before he got picked up and swung around. After a brief scuffle, he and Thomas separated, laughing breathlessly.
"We did it man," Thomas said, still laughing and he high-fived Thomas. They went through an elaborate handshake that got more complicated each week. Kurt Thomas was the youngest member of the engineering team. He had been picked up right out of school and was working with them part time while studying, in return for KC paying for his degree.
Mokuba admired how he skirted the edge of being too brilliant to be fired for being an asshole. That, and whatever innate charm which made people forgive him, even when he pulled stupid practical jokes like putting salt in everyone's coffee.
"It's just first-gen," Mokuba said. "We still have a long way to go." He had enough experience from the VR pods to know it would take at least six years and several more models before the AR vision was useful for anything other than lab testing and dreams.
Sasaki-san nodded approvingly at his caution, and the deputy head—Miss Leibovitz—smiled at him but Thomas rolled his eyes, "Christ, kid, live a little. It's time to celebrate being young and brilliant."
Mokuba considered him narrowly. If he called his classmates together and showed up with a cool college kid who could get them alcohol, it would certainly up his cool factor exponentially. And he was young and brilliant. He deserved a drink after a long day of proving it.
"Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse?" he offered with a lazy smile, slinging his bag over one shoulder and nodding at the exit.
"That's my man," Thomas said again, a companionable hand coming to rest around his shoulder.
Soft whistling reached his ears as he reached the bottom stair.
His hands had paused on his shirt. He finished buttoning the last button below the collar and smoothed down his shirt with one firm pat and strode into the kitchen. This early it was obviously Mokuba but it was odd that he was up early. He didn't tend to get to sleep before the early hours of the morning most days. Most nights he would slip out of the house after dinner and come back long after. Seto never slept until the sound of the door next to his shutting had reached him.
He walked into the kitchen. Mokuba had graduated to actual singing now, headphones over his ears as he poked at the griddle with a spatula. K-pop.
Mokuba whirled around and huffed out a laugh. After a moment Seto realized that his face had twisted into an incredulous expression at what Mokuba was singing. Mokuba nodded at him to sit where a crisply folded newspaper waited for him, and plated up a dish of stacked pancakes with sliced up peaches on top. He looked at it critically. He tended to skip breakfast most days.
"It's eggless," Mokuba said, back to him as he poured more batter on the griddle.
He sliced a precise forkful and bit into it. Chewing slowly, he nodded to himself. Mokuba slid into the seat next to him and attacked his own plate with gusto. He had finished scanning the newspaper for anything of interest, and (surprising himself) eaten most of the pancakes when he looked up to see Mokuba frowning at a carton of soy milk so intently he was almost cross-eyed.
He chuckled without intending to, and Mokuba started and stuck out his tongue at him.
"Trans- what-ever. What does this even mean?" he demanded, shaking the carton and then looking distrustfully at a full glass on the table. "English is awful!"
Seto ignored the old complaint; Mokuba was perfectly fluent in English now. "You're the one who wants to study medicine," he pointed out.
Mokuba looked insulted. "I'm going to be a neuro-surgeon, not a… a nutritionist." He might as well have said 'bug.'
Seto held back a smile along with his pride at the way Mokuba said 'going to be,' instead of 'want to be,' and said, "Drink your milk."
"You drink my milk," Mokuba said, giving the glass a dirty look. Mentally shrugging, Seto did. He swallowed and set the glass down.
"It's acceptable." It wasn't very sweet and didn't taste like the horrifying fizzy concoctions that Mokuba tended towards. He pushed it towards Mokuba who wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
"No. It has your cooties."
Seto stared at him in genuine shock. Recovering in a flash, he retorted, "You ate my cooties cookies the other day." He had licked them in an undignified attempt to keep Mokuba from eating them all. It hadn't worked.
Mokuba shrugged and sprawled out over the table, apparently trying to see if he could have his pancakes without the aid of a fork, or indeed hands. "That was cookies. I'm not having your cootie milk."
Rolling his eyes, Seto drank the damn milk. It was only afterwards, when Mokuba was stacking utensils to put in the sink that he had a suspicious thought. "Mokuba," he said calmly, "give me your cheek."
"Why?" Mokuba was clearly grinning.
"Guess," he retorted.
"Is it because you want to slap me? But milk is good for you." Mokuba was turning around, still grinning and wiping his hands. He tried to dodge and was unsuccessful as Seto picked him up and carried him into the living room, digging his fingers unerringly into ticklish spots.
"I will never surrender!" Mokuba yelled, laughing helplessly and kicking at the air uselessly, since Seto had both of his legs captured in one hand. Finally Seto let him have mercy, nobly allowing clemency for a worthwhile opponent. They were still on the couch, Seto on his side, Mokuba curled into his chest, still a small bundle. He hadn't grown taller at all since he was ten, although he had filled out a little and wasn't so shockingly thin.
He ran a hand through Mokuba's hair. He had grown it out but didn't seem to do much with it. He barely conditioned it.
"Maybe I should cut it," Mokuba said into his chest, half-echoing Seto's thoughts.
Seto looked down at the black mess and tried to imagine a Mokuba with short hair. He wouldn't have to carry clips and bands in his pockets for when Mokuba inevitably lost his, and check for them every time he threw something in the laundry.
Somehow, he could only think about a bald, whimpering baby that he had once shushed with his own version of their mother's lullabies.
"Do what you want," he said, and kept stroking his head until Mokuba was mostly asleep and only murmured a complaint and went back to sleep when he carefully extracted himself from the sofa to repair the damage to his clothing and leave for office. He already had three missed calls and a number of urgent emails to answer.
Tatiana called from the bathroom, "You coming to tonight's party?"
Mokuba lazily tried to catch sight of her through the half-open door, but he couldn't be fucked to move from his comfortable groove in the bed.
"You know me, always up for a party," he called back belatedly.
"Frank's got the place to himself. His parents are off in Thailand or something." She came out to stand in the doorway brushing her hair, still in a skirt and her bra, a black lacy wisp of a thing.
"I gotta be nice to Francis?" he whined half-heartedly and smiled as Tatiana waggled her eyebrows meaningfully. What sort of asshole asked people to call him Frank like it made him cool?
"He's got a pool. And his brother's having his friends over too."
"So I gotta be nice to Francis so you can flirt with college-age guys? What do I get out of it?" Mokuba asked, still mostly focused on whether her panties matched her bra or not.
Tatiana tossed the brush on the bed and dropped down after it, smile growing, "Why don't you let me think about that?"
Mokuba found that he could be fucked to move, when he had the proper incentive. He pulled her closer and buried his mouth in the expanse of gorgeous dark skin between neck and full, beautiful breasts.
Two in the morning and Mokuba still wasn't home. Security would have called him if there was trouble. If they had time to… but no, he would know. If Mokuba was in trouble, he would know.
Mokuba frequently stayed out late, but his high school classmates and friends didn't always have the same leniency, and he would usually get home before midnight. Once or twice he had stayed out until the morning was shining weakly through their thick, dark curtains and Seto had never asked why. He hadn't even commented that he knew, even if he thought Mokuba suspected. But he couldn't lose himself in his work either.
He had been reading proposals for games for their new Augmented Reality module but absorbed only surface details. Now he was staring equally blankly at a 3-D model for the AR module glowing in the air in front of him. It was flawed, if brilliantly so, and he couldn't… he didn't…
He didn't encourage his staff to report anything except Mokuba's location and physical health but he was tempted now to call Mokuba's bodyguard.
Three in the morning. Four in the morning. He should at least be using this time fruitfully, so he worked through some of the inevitable mindless paperwork that accumulated even in a so-called paperless office.
He was considering the current benefits of coffee versus the acidity he would suffer from later when he heard quiet footsteps, such as from someone who had taken off his shoes and not worn slippers. His room was closer to the stairs than Mokuba's so Mokuba had to pass by to reach his own room. A slowly opening door creaked a little and a gentle 'click' indicated that it was shut.
A buzz from his phone.
A message from an unsaved number that he had memorized: "Location: Home."
A swift debate with himself before messaging back: "Reached." Mokuba's bodyguards tended to get personally attached to Mokuba, despite the havoc that they had to deal with. While he didn't understand it he had learnt to encourage it, having found that this would get him better results than a handsome salary, although he ensured that their salaries were handsome enough to discourage any side-jobs.
Then he went to bed for a few scant hours of hopefully dreamless rest.
In the morning, he woke up (zero-to-sixty, just like always, at least after becoming Kaiba) but not to his alarm clock. His instincts weren't screaming 'danger' at him, so he shifted slowly to his side, and watched Mokuba putting a cup of coffee on his bedside table through half-closed eyes. He couldn't have slept at all if he was up so early.
He dozed for fifteen minutes or so, enjoying the rich smell and then got up, reaching for the warm mug. He inhaled before tasting. It was a pour-over, not from their coffee-maker. Seto sipped slowly, eyes closed, enjoying a few moments of blank thoughtlessness.
He turned off the alarm and went to the bathroom. He would have to be quick if he didn't want the coffee to be disgustingly cold by the time he was out.
Walking down the stairs, he sipped the last bit of coffee. Shame his staff couldn't make coffee like that. He left his briefcase near the steps and walked into the empty kitchen. He wasn't entirely surprised when he saw that the kitchen was already a mess.
A place was set for him, with a bowl of rice, natto and miso shiru. It looked like there was dried nori as well as the inevitable glass of soy milk. No, Mokuba hadn't slept at all.
Mokuba walked in towelling his hair as he took his first mouthful of rice and natto. He froze in the doorway and watched Seto's hand move chopsticks from plate to mouth as if hypnotised.
After swallowing he said, "It's good."
Mokuba's gaze snapped up. He nodded thanks and moved towards the cupboard with bowls in it. Seto kept eating mechanically. However hard Mokuba tried, he could rarely hide his feelings from his eyes. He hadn't looked so hurt and weary in years. Seto had thought those days were over, that he had finally succeeded in keeping Mokuba safe from harm. He had failed without even realising it. It was a failure on top of failure.
Mokuba sat down with his bowl, and poured miso soup and natto right into it, and then added rice as well. Then he ate the entire mess in about three bites with a spoon. Seto pursed his lips. Mokuba hadn't even bothered frying some pork for himself.
He said, "Sasaki could use your input on beta-testing some of the AR systems today." It was an offering to let him miss school and have some fun with the engineering team which loved and despaired of him in equal measure. Mokuba didn't even look up from his empty bowl. After a moment through which Seto kept eating and looking at him steadily, Mokuba poured some more miso shiru.
"My girlfriend dumped me," he said. He still hadn't looked up.
How dare she, Seto thought stupidly, then, I didn't know you had a girlfriend. He had known there were girls of course. There were lipstick stains and traces of scent that wasn't Mokuba's deodorant on his clothing. But a girlfriend was different, singular.
"She said," Mokuba said, calmly, "she said I was too young. Like she didn't know how old I was three months ago." He drank from the bowl and jabbed his spoon into the bowl of natto. "It's for the best anyway. She was cramping my style."
Seto's shoulders were stiff with staying still. How had he missed this for three months? He wanted to be… reassuring. The situation seemed to need it but he didn't know how to comfort a Mokuba who sat across from him and didn't even let his voice tremble. He had barely known how to comfort a brother who turned to him for it.
Mokuba finished his bowl and finally looked up. He looked calm enough when he said, "I'll come to the office with you. I'll be out in twenty minutes. Are you going to wait?" He offered, "I can get someone else to drive me."
"I'll wait," Seto said. If he couldn't do anything else, he could do this.
