Things were tense in the Kaiba household since their fight. Isono had this fantasy that he would throw down his contract and demand to be treated like a friend. But that idea died in practicality. He was caretaker, not a friend. And this was as close as he was going to get. Mokuba still hadn't called. His facebook page was full of pictures and sarcastic quotations. He and Serenity seemed to have formed a real adult relationship. She didn't seem intimidated by his former wealth nor he by her former poverty. They enjoyed each other. And Isono realized that Serenity might be the perfect person for Seto to talk to. She had faced down a deadly, debilitating condition and survived after all. He asked Joey but Joey just shrugged it off sadly.
" I promised Kaiba, I wouldn't interfere. When they come home, sure. But I'm not going to be the whistleblower."
Then he'd headed up the stairs, with some risotto that Devlin had made, to try to goad Kaiba into eating.
And that is how Isono lost his last chance to avoid being the bad guy. So life settled into a steady descent. Kaiba's vision continued to suffer, causing him to smack into corners and barely clear elevator doors. The Board was still in the dark as mono did take a long time to recover from and to them it had only been a few weeks of absence. Seto still cleared paperwork for most of the day. But like other CEO's he was absent from the actual processes, sitting in bed instead of frequenting a high end escort. One night, Isono had seen Seto to bed and he had seemed as bit strange, off in some small way.
Isono was so tired of worrying needlessly that he had just gone to bed. He woke up at 5 a.m. feeling sick, sweating and nervous. He threw the thin covers off and strode down the hall. He was seriously expecting it to be nothing. Seto's room stank. Isono flipped on the lights and Seto wasn't moving, his eyes rolled back into his head. Isono surged to his side and tried to pull off the covers but they were sodden. He was too scared to move him, so he called an ambulance. They were there in two minutes. In that time Isono learned two things.
Seto had the highest fever Isono had seen in years. He was 106 degrees.
He had soiled himself. Not in the accidental loss of control way. Not even in the usual way of sickness. But in the sense that his innards had liquefied and his body had panicked and tried to get rid of everything.
The crew wouldn't let him ride along, so he was left alone with a mess that made him throw up twice. He picked Seto up a few hours later, his fever broken and an IV supplying him with electrolytes. Though he couldn't have remembered, nor would Isono have preferred him to know that humiliation, he seemed to sense something horrible had happened. When Isono came to affix him to an new IV, he was making a list of pros and cons on the subject of adult diapers. Isono laughed so hard, he thought he might throw up again. Kaiba threw the notepad at him and covered his chortling by pretending to drink some water.
The tension broke then as surely as the fever had. And Isono decided something. He couldn't be down the hall anymore, especially since the fever seemed to have undone all the good of the medication. Seto was having seizures again. Not the enormous ones that would drive him to the floor, but little ones that would make him rigid and shuddering for a minute. He couldn't be so far away anymore. So despite the memory of the mess ( and the social awkwardness of it all) Isono showed up in Seto's room a few nights later, in his stupid pajamas, reading glasses on his head and book in hand. Without asking, he climbed onto the other side of the bed and settled the comforter over his legs.
Seto, on his laptop, stared him down for a moment, before going back to his blurred typing. Eventually Seto tired and closed the laptop. Isono waited a few more minutes before turning off his own lamp and settling into the bed. It was very comfortable; he wondered again at Seto' choice to keep Gozaburo's mattress. It creeped him out. Seto had explained something about the assumed invulnerability of predators. Isono had been too distracted by the horrible corpse smile making a jagged gash across his femininely pointed face.
Seto turned towards him suddenly and looked right at him. In the dark, he was all blue but his eyes were still stabbingly clear.
" I always knew I would die young."
Isono felt like he was going to throw up again. He wondered if Seto was just trying to scare him out of the bed. He fought down the panic and nodded for him to continue.
" After we came here, I thought ' If I can just make it until Gozaburo is gone' and then ' if I can just make it until this company can stand on it's own for Mokuba' and then ' if I could just see Mokuba become an adult'. It was comforting to have those end points, for there to be corner I could turn away from what was happening. But now."
He turned onto his back.
" Now there are so many end points. Mokuba will marry that girl. He'll have children. They might look like my mother, my father. I want to see that even when I never wanted to before. I wanted to sleep and be buried and be over. But now."
Isono watched the pale light of the window catch and shine near Kaiba's ear. A wet trail had snaked unobserved into his hair.
" Now I want it to be over in a different way. Because it's different than I imagined it, because it's not my terms and it's not rest. And I have people to leave. Even if I'm, like I was, I'd still exist. "
Isono took his thumb and rubbed that wet trail away. Kaiba let him, passive as a lamb.
" What would you have done?"
" I keep a gun in my desk." Kaiba said hollowly and Isono swallowed loud in the night. He fought the urge to run and get it, hide it, burn it down for scraps.
" It isn't loaded- was always too afraid Mokuba might find it. Sometimes I would put it to my skull anyway and pull the trigger. And imagine how good it would feel. Peace . But I'm done now aren't I? And it's just as horrible. I think it's supposed to be that way, for me at least. "
He rolled away from Isono onto his side.
"Peace. Of all the fictions I thought up at my little desk..."
In a perfect world, Isono would have known what to say. The world would be turning and bowing to their need. Maybe it would be snowing outside. Maybe a fat moon would cast some beauty. But the sky was overcast and rain was drizzling thick on the windows, not loud enough to really drown out their breathing.
Seto wasn't crying.
Isono wasn't either.
He didn't do some grand gesture, spin him around and tell him about life's worth. He didn't leave. He didn't even have the bravery to touch him. He just lay there and eventually fell asleep. When he woke up, Seto had managed to worm his head under his arm and was tucked up into his arm pit. Isono could have left, gotten the gun, removed some razor blades and pills. But he didn't. He just rubbed the young man's shoulder until he woke up slowly, blinking like a fawn and then made him some eggs.
