A/N: Hooray for finals, holiday stress, my dog barking at all of the late-night finals week activity in the apartment complex, and insomnia.
It's been a really long time since I wrote fanfiction, and I don't intend for it to be a regular thing. That said, this was inspired by my relationship with my boyfriend, who has a mild autistic spectrum disorder. Which is a weird inspiration for a story about brothers, admittedly, but I thought it kind of fit. With people you really love, you accept them for them, even if they're not what you expected, or what other people would want them to be. They're not perfect. But they're them. And you love them anyways.
Anyways, it's really late at night. Enjoy question mark?
Resentful was too strong of a word for how Mokuba felt about his brother coming home from work every day. But every day, around five in the evening, as he tidied up his schoolwork and set about preparing dinner and thought of everything from his day that he wanted to tell his brother, he felt a certain kind of reluctance. Around six, with dinner ready and the scattered contents of his backpack hidden in his room, he would bring his homework to the kitchen table, waiting for his brother, and sigh. Seto Kaiba never gave an estimated time of arrival. Dinner was an arbitrary sort of thing, something to deal with eventually, and not on anyone else's time frame, let alone his little brother's. Sometimes Mokuba ordered dinner, or put a frozen dish from the store in the oven, and sometimes when he was bored, he cooked. He had his doubts about whether his brother really noticed where the food came from, or what it tasted like, or whether there was even food at all. He wasn't entirely sure why he always got everything ready like his brother was going to come home at five and eat dinner with his family like a normal person. By seven, he would take a half-serving of dinner and eat it quietly, secretly a little relieved that he might not have to deal with his brother that night.
Not tonight. As he heard the distant whirring of the garage door, Mokuba couldn't help but feel a little resentful of his brother. He'd been patiently preparing for his brother to come home for hours now, and at this point dinner was already cold, and his math homework was scattered over half of the kitchen table. Once again, he may as well not have tried.
As Seto Kaiba entered the kitchen, Mokuba tried to judge his expression, evaluate the situation in his head. It was seven-thirty-late, but not very late. Sometimes seven-thirty meant Seto was stuck in a tiresome meeting that was only supposed to run until six-thirty. Sometimes it meant that he'd spent the last five hours patiently working away nonstop at a project of his. Seto didn't usually offer an explaination, and Mokuba had long since stopped asking. But sometimes seven-thirty meant his brother might be in a better mood. His brother's expression was cold and blank as he carefully cut out a large square of congealed grocery store lasagna and seated himself at the kitchen table, pointedly moving Mokuba's homework into a neat pile and placing it on the seat next to him. Up until the point he started eating, Mokuba wasn't sure if he'd seen his brother's mouth move.
"Hey." Mokuba had already finished his dinner a couple of minutes before hearing his brother come in, but he didn't yet have a reason to excuse himself-not that he imagined Seto would mind, but he would feel uncomfortable getting up and leaving without saying anything.
"Evening."
"Um, stressful day at work?" Although he rarely got more than a two-word answer, Mokuba always asked.
"Not particularly."
"Are you...going to be busy tomorrow?"
"Why?"
"I thought we could...you know, go out to eat," Mokuba said uncertainly. His brother never made plans for the two of them, but he would occasionally agree to them, if they were planned for him. "You know, you could take me in your new car. We can go wherever you want. We never go out anymore."
Seto stared blankly for an extended moment, not at Mokuba but at something a thousand miles past past his head. Awkwardly, Mokuba pressed his lips together, avoiding eye contact with his brother.
Moments stretched by, with Seto frozen in the same position, with his pale blue eyes still staring at nothing. Mokuba knew his brother better than to assume there was nothing going on in his head-the gears in Seto's mind never stopped turning, and they sometimes turned so quickly that he would become, momentarily, unresponsive. Most people interpreted it as a businessman's tactic-a trick to build tension, to keep any conversation on his terms. To Mokuba, it was mostly disappointing, because his long silences usually meant that Seto was in a bad mood.
"Okay, what?" as suddenly as it had begun, Seto snapped out of his trance. His tone was harsh, perhaps not much harsher than usual, but the abruptness made Mokuba flinch. "I can tell you're disappointed. What is it, Mokuba?"
Mokuba cringed, forcing himself to look at his older brother. More times than he could count, he had mentally had it out with his brother-
you don't care about me anymore/I sacraficed everything for you to be happy/Nobody asked you to do everything that you did/I had no choice/We would have been better off if you'd never forced us into this life/You ungrateful little brat
-but knew that Seto would never engage. "It's nothing."
"Hmm. Nothing." The vitriol in the older Kaiba's voice was gone, replaced with a cold, flat monotone. He cut off a corner of his lasagna and moved it to his mouth, chewed it carefully, swallowed.
do you know that I get dinner ready for you every single night and you never thank me/I didn't realize you needed an applause/Do you care about anything anymore?
"I mean," Mokuba said slowly, "I don't have a lot of homework tomorrow, and so I thought it might be nice..." he trailed off for a moment, afraid of losing his nerve. "...like, do you have plans tomorrow?"
Seto was off in space again. Mokuba bit the inside of his lip and stared out the window, past his brother's head. Deep down, he knew he was grateful for his brother-aloof and stubborn as he was-and that Seto, in his own strange way, would always care for him. Seto was distant and introspective enough to make Mokuba seem bright and relaxed by comparison, even though Mokuba himself possessed many of his brother's traits-his calm manner, his cold affect with strangers, his fiercely competitive nature. In Seto, these traits had become so exaggerated because he used them as his tools to protect himself and his little brother. Seto was Seto so that Mokuba could be allowed to grow, someday, to become somebody else. It was a conscious effort that Mokuba could barely begin to grasp, or perhaps the magnitude of his brother's self-sacrifice made Mokuba uncomfortable. But on some level, Mokuba understood why his relationship with Seto never much resembled a typical relationship between brothers. It was sometimes, like tonight, disappointing, but something that Mokuba couldn't imagine trading for anything else.
"Not really, no." Seto's response came after such a prolonged pause that Mokuba, lost in his own thoughts, had forgotten what they were talking about.
"Uhm...what?"
"You asked if I was busy. I said no, not really." The look on Seto's face was unreadable. "Pay better attention in the future." His lips were tightly sealed, upturned at one corner-Seto's version of a smile.
"So we can go out to dinner, then?"
"I suppose."
Mokuba smiled, leaning slightly towards his brother. "Great! Can we get french fries? There's this burger place downtown that will serve you as many flavors of ice cream in a milkshake that you want..."
His brother's response was to fold his napkin neatly on his plate, set his fork on top of the napkin, and carry his dinner dishes to the sink where they would be washed by a maid in the morning. He was silent again, but the look in his eyes was less intense, and much less terrifying.
"...this one kid in my class said they'll make you a burger with as many patties as you want, with as many toppings..." at this point, Mokuba was egging his brother on, grasping albiet one-sidedly at the carefree relationship he would never have with his brother, who he knew wouldn't play back. Having moved the dinner dishes to the sink, Seto retrieved his brother's math homework from the seat he'd left it on, and placed it in front of Mokuba, replacing his empty dinner plate.
"Do you still have homework?"
Mokuba looked at him for a long moment. "Er, some..." The pages were out of order, and he hastily rearranged them, folding the corners neatly so they would stay in place. When he looked up, Seto had set up his laptop across the table from him, and was laying out a large stack of papers.
"Me too." Mokuba heard the soft beeping indicating that Seto's computer was powering up, and he glanced back at his own work, finding it a little bit difficult to concentrate.
"Oh, and Mokuba?"
"Seto?"
"Thank you for dinner." Mokuba thought he saw the trace of a smile on his brother's face. He saw his brother's mouth twist into a smirk for a moment, before his face became expressionless once again as he focused on his work.
Sure, he didn't have a playful, easygoing softy of an older brother or a parent to spoil him rotten. Mokuba just had Seto. It was what it was.
Today, it was just enough.