Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, not making any money, no.
Kagi's notes: Seto POV. A sequel of sorts to my fic A Winding Road, set in the same timeline. Credit for the original inspiration should really go to Sol1056 (who would be propely horrified I'm sure ;) ) for her brief mention of a similar analogy in Restraint of Desire. Many thanks to Nenya, Ashes, and Ringa for helping me work out some of the details. Any comments are greatly appreciated!
---
Night Rain
It was late when Kaiba finally left his office. Very, very late. Well past midnight. Outside it was pouring rain, storming really. He had heard the thunder from inside the building, but been too preoccupied to go and see how severe the weather was.
Now that he was leaving, it had calmed somewhat, at least for the time being... the rain still pattered down incessantly, but it was no longer the driving downpour he had heard on the roof earlier in the night. The thunder continued to rumble in the background, but it was more of a grumbling mutter and less of a booming crash.
He looked up at the wet sky from underneath the slight overhang at the entrance to the the building, watching the streaks of lightning that still flickered through the darkness. He was glad he hadn't missed the storm completely. Staring up into the dark clouds for a minute, his expression eased slightly, and on anyone else, it might have been called a smile.
Kaiba liked rain. He liked storms and darkness and wind and thunder, but most of all, he liked rain. There was something so refreshing, so relaxing, almost soothing about watching the silver streaks pour down like a flood from heaven. The not-quite-there smile lingered as he made his way to the car and headed home--driving himself, because he never asked a driver to stay as late as would be necessary to take him home when he worked late like this.
He didn't bother to drive slowly and carefully, although the streets were slick; he knew what the car was capable of and his ability to control it, and he was not worried about the possibility of an accident. Other than making sure he had more time than usual to brake for stoplights, Kaiba drove the way he always did--slightly too fast, with somewhat reckless confidence.
The windshield wipers hummed back and forth in a steady singsong rhythm, the cleared path on the glass almost immediately obscured again by streaks and blotches of silver. Sitting at a light, he watched it absently, the swish-snap of the blades as they went back and forth, back and forth, in a seemingly pointless effort to keep his view clear. The rain sluiced off to either side, running in rivulets down the edges of the window and over the side.
It was the way he sometimes felt about the past--the way he kept brushing aside the memories, looking forward and moving on, and yet they still danced across his vision and clouded his view and his judgement. The edges of the streams and droplets of water were tinged with red from the stoplight overhead, much the way most of his memories were tinged with anger and pain.
The light turned green, and the highlights of color changed accordingly, making the raindrops oddly greenish, as if they came from the ocean rather than the sky. The car surged forward as he pressed the gas pedal, leaving the memories behind in the past, where they belonged.
When Kaiba came in, the house was dark and quiet, and he knew Yami was already asleep. He felt a faint, hollow sense of disappointment, but ignored the brief, selfish thought of waking him. It wasn't like he needed his lover's companionship to properly end his day. Kaiba Seto was never going to be that dependent on anyone. And besides, it was raining. That was more than enough to relax him for sleep.
He shrugged off his wet coat and tossed it over a chair, unheedful of the expensive upholstery. It could be cleaned. Pushing his damp hair out of his eyes with a tired hand, he looked over at the bed where Yami lay sleeping. There was a small light on--apparently his lover had fallen asleep waiting up for him.
Kaiba went over and turned the light off, plunging the room into comfortable darkness. The only light now was from semi-frequent flashes of lightning from the storm outside, coming in through the tall French windows that led to the balcony at the far side of the room. He paused beside the bed, one hand hovering, not quite touching, over the brightly colored hair on the pillow. It appeared that Yami had taken a shower before going to bed, and his usually spiky hair was soft and flat, laying smoothly in odd striation across the silky surface.
Careful not to disturb him, he stood for a moment watching Yami's sleeping face, musing on the way the stern expression eased and faded in his slumber. At such times, it was easier to remember that the boy-pharaoh of his ancient past still lurked beneath the facade of the fierce Game King. Reaching out once more, he brushed the backs of his fingers almost over his lover's cheek, still hovering just millimeters shy of actual contact.
Letting his hand drop and the almost fond gentleness fade from his expression, he went to stand before the window, looking out at the storm. The rain was still pouring down, thunder in the background a near constant rumble.
Gently he opened the door and let himself out onto the balcony, leaving it ajar behind him. He leaned back against the doorframe and folded his arms, letting out a long sigh. The power of the storm washed over him, though he was still dry under the overhang of the balcony, and he started to relax, as close as he ever got to peace. He was tired...it had been a long day.
Tilting his head back, he closed his eyes, feeling the rain pounding down around him and the coolness of a slight wind as the tension in his muscles started to seep out. He sat for several minutes not thinking, not moving, just letting the restful moment ease the stress in his mind and body. The rain drops pattered a comforting beat in counterpoint on various surfaces, while the continual growl of thunder rumbled in the background.
It was a good sound. The wind, the thunder, and over all the drumming pattern of drops of rain, falling faster as the wind gusted, then fading, slackening somewhat into a steady, comforting rhythm in the night.
When a slight sound came from behind him, he was relaxed enough to not tense up again, identifying it immediately as not being a threat...nothing to be on guard about.
He turned his head slightly and saw Yami standing there at the foot of the bed, just standing, watching him. Apparently the sound he had heard was his lover getting up and moving around.
The familiar feeling of warmth and accompanying ache grew in his chest as he looked. Yami was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of sweats that Seto recognized as his own, standing with one hand on the bedpost of the nearest corner of the canopied bed. His hair was soft and flat, falling around his face and shoulders, open now without the usual mask and pretense. No barriers, no image to be upheld. Just a man, a man who loved him.
Sometimes that thought hit him again like it was brand new, and he still couldn't quite believe it. The ache in his chest turned into a wistfulness, a feeling as if he were looking in at a scene that he wasn't really a part of. But he was part of it, was the one Yami waited for, the one he welcomed with that unbelieveable, unconditional acceptance. The one Yami was willing to open himself to, share himself with, completely, regardless of the possibility of hurt. Suddenly the edges of the day seemed blunted, the painful memories muted, the aching aloneness fading in the dark glow of what that presence offered.
It took his breath away for a moment, and he stood frozen, hoping the spell would last. The darkness called to him with a song as steady and comforting as the rain, and he contemplated the thought of giving into it as he rarely did, letting go, letting it soothe and heal the scars of memory and the day.
It was frightening, the idea of letting anyone get that close, to give that much of the soul you had left to someone else. But it was also irresistible in it's promise of peace and of healing.
The corner of Seto's mouth turned up, not quite a smile, but a lightening of expression, an acknowledgment and an invitation.
The soft look in Yami's eyes as he started toward him, was all the answer he needed.
Yami paused just inside the open window, as if to take in the picture of his lover framed against the harsh beauty of the storm.
"Can't sleep?" Seto asked him, and his voice was barely audible over the fierce roar of the downpour, even to himself.
Yami smiled, looking a bit sleepy still, but the smile itself was so open and unguarded--unwary--that Seto was struck speechless for a moment by the sheer vulnerability it implied. The trust. For it was a weakness, one that his instincts told him he could exploit. He could destroy this man, this fierce proud soul who had so often been an adversary. And perhaps he should want to. This weakness, however, was not inherent, but chosen. An allowance, a voluntary exposure that left him both awed and slightly afraid.
Afraid for him, he realized uneasily, and he wondered when Yami had become part of the very short list of things he wanted to protect. The man who had once been his enemy had given him the perfect opportunity to exact a complete and final defeat--but now that he had the choice, now that the power in his hands, now that he so easily could... he didn't want to. His thoughts were interrupted by Yami, who answered his question as he finally moved out in the night air.
"I was waiting for you," was all he said, not exactly an answer and not quite a question. He came to stand beside Seto, though his quiet gaze remained fixed on the falling rain.
Seto felt the strange glow of warmth Yami sometimes gave him that he never liked to acknowledge, because it meant admitting that he, too, had a weakness. His was less voluntary, though, or so he told himself. It seemed to him that it was there against his will, which made him afraid somewhere in the back of his mind where he tried not to think about it. He resented it sometimes, that weakness, his inability to resist.
Yet he knew too, though he refused to admit it even to himself, that he had, in fact made the final choice, the decision to allow it. And that was the most frightening of all. It was... reckless? Dangerous, even. Maybe that was why he'd done it. He'd always found danger to be a tempting challenge.
"You should sleep," he replied, distracting himself. He loved storms and darkness, the rare sense of peace they instilled in him...but they made him think too much.
Yami didn't answer immediately, wrapping his arms around himself against the slight chill and leaning against the opposite side of the door frame. When he did answer, his voice was quiet, almost reluctant, his eyes cast down. "I don't sleep as well... without you," he admitted. Admitted, for it was an admission. It should have been a simple statement of fact, but the preceding silence and reluctant tone gave it the air of one entrusting a secret. Perhaps it was.
If Seto had been surprised before to see the openness offered him here, he was now well and truly shocked. You just...didn't admit things like that. Not to anyone, ever. The implication of intimacy both in the statement itself, and the sharing of it--even reluctantly--shook him deeply, and for the first time since he'd come out into the cool night, he shivered.
Yami glanced over at him, seeming to understand his silence, and pushed away from the wall to come stand beside him, shoulders just touching--not quite leaning on him. His eyes were on the sky rather than the man at his side, and after a moment Seto relaxed, just a bit.
What was it about this that he couldn't fear it even when he wanted to? Even when he thought he should.
"We're like thunder and lightning, you and I." Yami spoke quietly, thoughtfully into the night, his voice barely audible above the noise of the storm.
Seto raised an eyebrow at the odd comment, wondering which was which, or if Yami just meant both of them in general. Equal and opposite, yet complementing forces in the same storm. On the same side. "Are we?"
Another flash of lightning blazed cracks in the sky, illuminating Yami's enigmatic smile.
"Lightning, like your Blue Eyes dragon's attack, a flash of white fire. Lightning splits the sky with it's intensity, but still, it is grounded by the earth it is drawn to. That's you--splitting cracks in your world by the sheer force of your spirit."
A trifle unsettled by this description of himself, Seto shifted, uncrossing his arms to push his wet hair out of his eyes again. Putting his hands in his pockets and studying the ground as if it were suddenly fascinating, he asked, "And you?" He shot a brief look at Yami out of the corner of his eye.
Again that smile. "And I am the one who rumbles back, challenging you, answering you. Always following in your wake, mending the jagged lines in your sky. Saying the things you feel that you can only show. The audible expression of your silent blaze of light. Thunder and lightning, you see."
It made a crazy kind of sense, and before he thought about it Seto shot back, "Mokuba is the rain." Almost defiantly, daring Yami to disagree.
But Yami smiled again, softer this time, and the tender understanding in his eyes was almost more unsettling than the sharp inscrutability of his earlier amusement. "Yes. Mokuba is the rain." After a moment of silence, he continued; his deep voice, imbued with an oddly warm gentleness, rising clearly into the darkness.
"Rain is the reason for lightning to exist; it's beginning and foundation. Yet it softens it's destructive potential, extinguishing stray sparks before things have a chance to burn. Whether fierce or gentle, it always brings renewal to the land it falls on. A clean slate. It washes the dirt and blood and grime from even a war torn battlefield, bringing a sense of healing, of peace, a possibility of hope even to the driest, most burned out areas."
Seto released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and returned his gaze to the sheeting rain. He recrossed his arms, comtemplating it as he pondered the analogy. Mokuba was the reason for his existence, that one thing that made everything he'd ever done worth it. The dark, grimy, painful ground of his memory washed clean in the face of Mokuba's love and enthusiasm for life. The hope.
No matter how he hated some of the things he had done, when he remembered that Mokuba was there, would always be there, because of him--he was at peace with it. He'd made his choices, for better or for worse, and he'd never want to change that.
It was Yami, though, who had made sure it stayed that way. Seto reached out to run a hand down his lover's back, resting briefly at his waist in a gesture of silent thanks. Yami had protected Mokuba even from Seto himself when it had been necessary, and that was a debt he couldn't pay if he spent his whole life trying. But he was going to try.
The storm had mostly spent itself now, some vague, quiet rumbling and the steady fall of rain the only remaining noise in the silent night. Seto straightened, pushing his hair back reflexively, and turned to Yami with just a hint of a tiny, quiet smile.
"Come on," he said softly. "Let's go in." The rain could fall and wash the world clean, and he could sleep now. The storm had quieted, for the time being, and so had his soul. Whether that had more to do with the storm itself or Yami's presence, he wasn't going to examine too closely. It was enough that it was.
He let Yami take his hand as they went in, and the brief, silent pressure of Yami's lips on his fingers, said as clearly as any words that his lover felt the same.
Peace itself, no matter the cause of it, was reason enough to be trusted.