Title: Brothers, As In Plural
Pairing(s): None
Rating: K+
Word Count: 1,783
Author's Notes: For those who've read my other fic, Free, I did say in my author's notes that I love sibling stories. I actually wrote this one before Free, but I was more comfortable publishing that one first because I felt like it was more ready. This one's longer and dives into Kaiba's head which was more difficult for me than Ishizu's. I wanted to try and dive into the idea of Noah as another younger brother for Seto so this was born. I'm thinking of another fic or oneshot that's AU with Noah as part of the family, too, so if you like those things, look out for it, alright? Thank you for reading, everyone. Also, once again, I'm using dub names/spellings.
Seto's still not sure how it happened, and he doesn't like not being sure of anything. It's not in his nature. He's a businessman, even when things may not go how it's planned in his head, he still considers himself sure of things. But Yugi and his friends and their weird insistence that magic exists and his own denial are making him unsure of how the hell this happened.
The last time Noah was mentioned was one night in the mansion as he and Mokuba talked over dinner. They'd sat at the kitchen island, because that ridiculous dining room table was far too long and they tended to avoid things that reminded them of their stepfather. Even Seto's own home office had been set up somewhere far from where Gozaburo's had been. It was a random thought that Seto certainly hadn't been expecting.
In the midst of talking about a school trip Mokuba's class was supposed to take to a tech museum (which was totally useless, in Seto's opinion, because chances are his brother had seen far superior technology by being Vice President of KaibaCorp., but he was excited to go and Seto was never one to deny his brother the childhood that he himself had been robbed of, especially if the experience made him smile like that), the younger Kaiba said it seemingly out of nowhere. "I miss Noah. I wish we could have gotten him out of that virtual world."
Seto had been caught off guard, another thing he never liked. He didn't know what to say, personally he'd had mixed feelings on his stepbrother. Granted, the little brat had trapped them in a virtual realm, kidnapped his little brother and turned him against him, and wanted to take over his company by stealing his body, so he was fully within his rights to hate the little punk. But when he took into consideration how they'd both been raised and manipulated by the absolute bastard that was Gozaburo, and the fact that Noah did get them out of there and hold their father off, he could be forgiven. Kind of. Maybe.
He settled on a small grunt as he took another bite from his filet mignon, and Mokuba had changed the subject as quickly as ever. He didn't expect that said little brother still had it in his head that he somehow needed to save their would-be stepbrother until a week later when he came into the office, proud grin on his face when he announced that, "They said they'd help! I found him and they said they'd help, Seto!" It took him a while to calm down Mokuba to the point where he explained who he and they were and what they were going to help with. Really, he should have figured it would be the Geek Squad giving Mokuba hope they could give Noah his own body, they tended to be at the heart of at least half his headaches.
Honestly, Seto blamed Yugi and his group for this on multiple levels. Obviously, their weird Egyptian magic was to blame for being able to do this, but also their obnoxious heroic attitude where they always seemed to need to save the world was probably responsible for inspiring his brother. Atem/Yami/whatever-they-were-calling-him-these-days-because-Seto-still-fought-the-urge-to-just-call-him-Yugi had given him an annoying smirk when he'd heard the brunet mumble this sarcastically, and replied that obviously that was it and it had nothing at all to do with watching his big brother put everything on the line – from his company to his life – all for family.
It didn't matter who was to blame, exactly, because suddenly the Insufferable Ishtars were back and doing the same type of magic they apparently used to give the Pharaoh and 'reformed' tomb robber their own bodies (reformed, as if – Seto always felt the need to watch the guy like a hawk and keep a hand on his wallet when he was around) with those damn Millennium Items that he'd really hoped he'd never see again, Yugi assuring Mokuba it was totally safe who in turn spoke to the computer screen displaying the green-haired boy they'd be calling brother soon. Seto had thought to himself that he probably could have found Noah a long time ago, he just hadn't thought to, but alas. Mokuba had and it only took him a week. He had a certain sense of pride at that, he was still human and that was still his little brother.
Skip forward to now, nearly a month later, and he's watching an eleven-year-old very-much-human Noah Kaiba sleep in the bedroom across the hall from his own and Mokuba's. He hadn't meant to start doing it, he didn't even realize when he did, but somehow when he went to stop in and make sure Mokie was asleep before he retired for the night (because sometimes he'd still be up working on homework or, more often, playing video games because he had expected his older brother home later than he was) he ended up walking to the other bedroom and checking on Noah as well.
Seto didn't want to believe in magic. He really couldn't wrap his head around it. Science, yes, science was tangible. Science, technology, they all were there and had proof. Religion, magic, whatever else was happening surrounding those Millennium Items, he didn't want to believe. He denied it when he first realized little Yugi and ruthless Yugi who almost knocked him off Pegasus' castle in Duelist Kingdom were not the same person and the other one apparently had his own body now. He denied it the first time other-Bakura gave him a Cheshire Cat grin and held up the keys to his Ferrari which nice-Bakura had insisted the other give back, which he did and Seto figured the thief just wanted to show off how easy it was to steal from him. He'd been denying it back when half of the finalists in his Battle City tournament and their friends wound up unconscious and/or had been previously possessed (figures, Wheeler ended up checking off both of those boxes. Idiot.) He'd even been denying it when suddenly monsters were flying around the world and people were losing their souls with weird Atlantean magic and whatever else was happening during that time because really, it still seemed like an awkward bad dream when he looked back on it.
Even when he had living, breathing proof of it under his roof, he didn't want to admit there was magic in the world – and yes, Noah was breathing. Seto had checked himself on more than one occasion, usually when he was asleep. He was inhaling oxygen and omitting carbon dioxide just as everyone else was, and his pulse beat against his wrist like any other human. The logical part of him pointed out how there was no way this was a hologram or a robot or anything else. Even if he'd tried, that oh-so-dreaded moment when Noah's voice started to deepen to signal that, like Mokuba, he was actually hitting puberty had been a reality check. Of course, the logical side of his brain still fought against the idea of magic, but what could it do now?
He doesn't understand it, and no matter how many times Ishizu or Atem tried to tell him he used to be a High Priest and a master of this crap, he still didn't understand it. If reincarnation existed, then all his magic has been transferred into intelligence and business strategy, and that's still a pretty big if. He doesn't understand it, no, but somehow, he has a second little brother, one who is so much like him but still so different. A second little brother who had, thanks to Mokuba, learned not to care so much about running an empire and instead just enjoy being a kid. A second little brother who had, just the other day, complained about how school was a waste of his time because he was smarter than half his teachers anyway, and Seto didn't want to admit that he'd felt exactly the same way and instead insisted that both Noah and Mokuba needed school. Even he'd went through the works of graduating high school, his brothers would be doing the same.
It was still weird on his tongue, to say he had brothers as in, plural. Mokuba had found it easy as pie, he'd been saying it since they'd been in the virtual realm. Noah, too, had started off awkward about it. He hadn't said just brothers at first, he'd started very formally with the full word, stepbrothers, but he'd recently dropped the prefix. Seto told himself he didn't know why he did, but he wasn't so foolish to not have noticed it happened after a night of pizza and games at Yugi's when he told the shorter teen that if anything happened to his brothers while he was at work and they were under Yugi's watch, he'd find a way to shut down the game shop.
Noah shifts in his sleep, making a distressed groan that causes Seto's eyebrows to furrow for a moment. He listens closely, hearing the younger boy's breathing even out again and knows he is still asleep. Seto hopes he isn't having some kind of nightmare, but when he doesn't make any other move or sound in the next few moments, the brunet is placated. He slowly shuts the door, careful to keep the click of the doorknob as quiet as possible. As he stands between Noah and Mokuba's doors, he lets a rare smile come to himself.
Yeah, he could handle having two brothers, he thinks to himself as he makes his way to his own bedroom, quickly discarding his clothes and crawling into bed.
But in the morning, when he peeks his eyes open and there are two pairs of sad puppy-dog eyes looking up at him from the side of his bed, he starts to wonder if he'd grow to regret being outnumbered… and when they both insist Seto should take a day off and they could have a family outing to Kaiba Land and maybe even see their friends, and Seto can't seem to say no because it's early and they're babbling and looking at him so hopefully, he knows he's going to wish he had another voice on his side. Just this once, he decides to give in easily and nods, and after they all dress and arrive, he's watching the two preteens bouncing up and down as they wait to be boarded onto the new roller-coaster.
No, Seto doesn't understand how it happened, but (though he'll never admit to being grateful for the Nerd Herd) he's thankful it did.