The three men slept cuddled together in their large, shared bed, Seto between his two lovers. Their intimacy had been wildly passionate; tender, yet rough. The power distribution among them was delicately balanced like trinkets on a three-way scale. Kaiba never relinquished his control easily, but Duke was willing to wrest it from him at any given point in time. Ryou gave himself to both of them because he enjoyed being swept up in the current of their desires. Even though he was often a more passive participant, nothing happened unless he wanted it. They knew each other so well that they were long past the point of needing to ask for permission, but if Duke ever got adventurous and Ryou felt uncomfortable, he only had to say the word, and they would stop.
Tonight had been intense; a week into their vacation, and Seto was finally learning how to relax, and apparently relaxation made sex even better. That was something he'd never known before, mostly because he'd never truly been relaxed before. It had been intense enough that they'd all been wiped out afterward, and promptly fell asleep.
After such a night, it would have made sense for them all to sleep soundly. Sadly, this was not the case. Seto was unfortunate enough to experience one of the night terrors that had plagued him for so long. He'd managed to suppress them for so long, keep them secret from his boyfriends. They were actually the primary reason he hadn't yet invited Ryou and Duke to move in with him, though they had moved in with each other. It wasn't that he didn't love them or that he didn't trust them. Seto Kaiba had built layers of thick defenses around his heart, his mind, his personal life. These two in his bed had already pierced more of those defenses than any other person alive, but they hadn't yet reached the very core of his soul and being.
Ryou, the lightest sleeper of them all, was the first to be woken by Seto's thrashing. Having suffered from night terrors at one point himself, he realized immediately what was happening. He grabbed Seto's wrists and pinned them down to the bed, calling his lover's name in an attempt to wake him. Seto didn't wake, but Duke finally did. As Duke gradually came to awareness, Ryou ordered him, "Duke, hold down his legs so he doesn't hurt himself." Duke obeyed without asking, too confused about what was going on to protest. Less than a minute later, Ryou succeeded in waking up Seto, who gasped for air immediately opening his eyes. Ryou let go of him and glanced down at Duke, indicating for him to do the same. Both of them pulled back a bit, Duke edging closer to help Seto sit up as Ryou took a moment to sort his thoughts.
"How long have you had night terrors, Seto?" Ryou asked quietly, slipping a pale arm around his waist since Duke's arm was around his shoulders. The brunette didn't answer immediately, preferring to rest his head against Duke as he struggled to catch his breath, trying to calm himself down so that things didn't get any worse. The current situation wasn't helping things, either. This was precisely what he'd been trying to avoid for so long, and now he couldn't avoid it any longer. They would know; he couldn't not tell them…
Ryou realized that Seto still hadn't caught his breath, that even though Ryou and Duke flanked him comfortingly, he seemed tense, anxious even. Anxiety attack. Ryou remembered that they commonly occurred with night terrors; they had for him. He took Seto's face into his hands, turning it to face him so that Seto could no longer avoid his eyes.
"Breathe, Seto. Just take a deep breath and let it out slowly. You're going to be okay. I promise." Ryou's calm voice helped to soothe him, and several moments later, he could feel the anxiety ebbing. Ryou, looking hurt and worried, pressed his forehead against Seto's and gave him a small nuzzle. "Why didn't you ever tell us this happened?"
It was Seto's turn to struggle internally with what he was comfortable with and what would be honest. "I… didn't want to," he said with difficulty, knowing that the answer was insufficient on its own, but at least it was a start.
"Why not?" Duke asked, puzzled, combing his fingers through Seto's hair soothingly.
Ryou watched as Seto's eyes clouded over in unspoken anguish. He only ever looked like that when a certain step-father was involved. "It has to do with Gozaburo, doesn't it?" he murmured, and Seto closed his eyes, nodding slightly. "Seto…" Ryou whispered, his voice breaking as he fought back the emotions that welled up inside of him.
The brunette pulled away, almost as if he was going to climb out of bed and escape their questions. Duke stopped him by wrapping both arms around him and tugging him down so that he was lying with his head in Duke's lap. "I think we've been together long enough that it's time we talked about this," Duke said firmly, trying not to sound aggressive at the same time. "We love you, Seto. We just want to help you with this, whatever it is."
Seto was silent for several moments as Duke stroked his hair and Ryou rubbed his knee, both gazing down at him in concern. He buried his face in the silk sheets, not even sure if he was going to tell them anything. Ryou sighed and lay down beside Seto, his head now resting in Duke's lap as well. He caressed Seto's cheek with his hand, making those sapphire eyes peek out from the sheets.
"Please, talk to us," Ryou begged softly.
Seto swallowed hard. "Gozaburo taught me himself. My education was of great interest to him. During lessons, he forced me to… to wear a dog collar. I was already a prodigy, but that wasn't good enough for him. Nothing was ever good enough for him." He inhaled deeply, trying to keep his emotions in check. "You already know that he was abusive, I just never told you how." Duke's jaw clenched as he remembered when he'd first found out.
"You used to cut?!" Duke exclaimed in shock as he pushed Seto's sleeve back even further. The brunette wrenched his arm free from Duke's hold and turned to leave, but Duke seized him by the shoulders and shoved him against the wall. The two glared at each other aggressively, Seto scowling and Duke sneering. "You cut."
"It's in the past, and I'm not having this discussion." Seto attempted to push Duke away, but his boyfriend slammed him back against the wall.
"We are going to talk about this, Seto. Right. Now." Duke growled in Seto's face, trying to impress upon him how much this mattered to Duke.
"Make me," Seto spat back, shoving Duke off and starting to stride away, starting to button up his sleeve cuffs. He cried out as Duke tackled him from behind, taking both of them to the floor as they wrestled. Duke, having the element of surprise on his side, was able to pin the broader man beneath him.
"Talk," Duke ordered, holding Seto's wrists pinned above his head, peeking down the sleeves at the white scars.
"No."
"Seto, do not argue with me." Duke's eyes burned like the eyes of an avenging angel. "We are talking about this right now. When did it start and when did it end?"
Seto lay beneath Duke in silence for a solid two minutes. When Duke began to unbutton Seto's cuffs again, he yanked his hands away in frustration. "It started when I was eleven," Seto ground out between his teeth. "It stopped when I was seventeen. Now let me go."
"No." Duke pinned Seto's hands down again. "Why did you do it?"
Seto's grinned in a way that Duke found frightening. The laughter that followed was even more disturbing. He listened to his boyfriend's maniacal cackling, waiting for it to die down.
"Why does anybody do anything?" came his cynical response, then his eyes grew cloudy, almost dead-looking. "Gozaburo Kaiba was a cold-hearted, abusive bastard. Is that enough of an answer for you?"
It was. Duke felt his heart ache for Seto, unwilling to push him any further when he was clearly so uncomfortable talking about this. He leaned down and kissed him tenderly, but Seto was slow to respond. It took him a few minutes to warm up after reliving his long-term trauma.
"Why does it matter so much to you?" Seto murmured. He'd been confused by the ferocity of Duke's questioning.
"I had a friend in middle school once," the dice master admitted slowly. "He cut, but he never told me. One day he went too far. I found him dead in the bathroom stall at school."
They sat together in silence for several minutes, kissing intermittently. "Can you get off of me now?" Seto asked, sounding disgruntled.
Duke obliged, saying, "I'm going to tell Ryou."
"No you're not," Seto ordered.
"I'm not one of your employees, Seto," Duke countered. "And there are no secrets between the three of us."
That was months ago, and Seto had made a lot of progress, both in terms of increasing candidness and decreasing aggression.
"He used to beat me when he was dissatisfied with my academic performance, then he would threaten me, saying that if I told anybody what he'd done, he'd hurt Mokuba. The beatings got worse as I got older, and he managed to break my ribs on more than one occasion." Seto took a deep breath to steady himself. "I started having night terrors a little while after the beatings started, and they never really stopped after that. Even when he was dead, I was still afraid of him, still trying to live up to his expectations." Ryou started to cry and embraced Seto tightly. "Please don't cry, Ryou," he muttered, always uncomfortable with the empath's tears.
"I have to," he whispered in answer. "You would never cry for yourself." It was true, they all knew it.
Duke gazed down on Seto with empathy. No, his father hadn't been abusive, but he understood what he meant about the pressure, the need to succeed. His own father had pushed Duke so far as to try and steal the Millennium Puzzle from Yugi, wanting his own son to solve it and become King of Games.
"My dad had high expectations for me too, though he wasn't nearly as bad as yours," Duke ventured cautiously. "I get what you mean about feeling him pressure you even though he's gone." Seto nodded, grateful that Duke at least somewhat understood. Ryou began crying harder, for both of them now. Duke and Seto glanced at each other, then put their arms around the weeping angel between them, who wiped his cheeks on the sheets in an attempt to hide his tears.
"Don't cry, Ryou," Duke murmured, kissing the pale forehead of his beloved. "We're all safe now, there's no need to cry anymore."
"I never really knew my father," Ryou choked out, and his lovers held him tighter, understanding now that he cried for all of them.
