To paraphrase Louise Rosenblatt, "a story's just ink on a page until a reader comes along to give it life." This in my way of saying, I'd really like to know what you think.
CHAPTER 37: LIVING FOR LOVE
LIVING FOR LOVE: Screwball comedy, circa 1937. Mary Wilson is a newly hired electric shaver saleswoman and George Martin is a starving artist/night watchman. Since neither can afford their rent singly, and since one works days and the other nights, their landlord, who's on the verge of having his furniture repossessed, gets the brilliant idea of having them share one apartment. Neither agrees that half a room is better than none – and both spend their free time trying to drive the other one out. Their attempts range from the merely mean-spirited to the nearly homicidal until they meet and fall in love. There's no one to root for in this truly terrible movie, except possibly the beleaguered landlord… but it does have a pretty spiffy moral.
MORAL: Scheduling is difficult.
Kaiba, Yami and Mokuba stayed to watch the next few chicken races after dinner. Everyone pretended not to notice that the losers had managed to avoid the deep fryer. When Mokuba's yawns started threatening to dislocate his jaw, they headed out. They stood outside the restaurant for a minute, waiting for Isono to pull up in the limousine.
"The rest of the birthday cake is in the limousine refrigerator. Can I have some on the way home?" Mokuba asked.
"You're still hungry?" Kaiba said.
"Sure!" Mokuba beamed up at him.
Kaiba shrugged.
"Thanks!" Mokuba said.
Kaiba frowned. "The last thing I expected was for Tamashiro to bake a cake. I hope she gets it out of her system by the time she gets back to work tomorrow."
Yami glanced at Kaiba's profile in the light of a streetlamp. "Was it hard?" he asked suddenly.
"What?" Kaiba said.
"Walking into your new office the day after your 16th birthday and taking over... afraid everyone would only see a child?"
Mokuba drew in a breath, but stayed silent, yawns forgotten as he waited to see if his brother would answer.
Kaiba shrugged. But he shifted his weight slightly from foot to foot, negating the casual indifference of the gesture. "If they underestimated me that was their problem."
Yami didn't answer; they both knew Kaiba had avoided his question.
Kaiba shifted his weight again and added. "It had to be done. I didn't think about whether it was hard or not. That wasn't going to change anything." Kaiba glared at Yami. "Was it hard walking in to meet with what was left of your councilors, knowing you were going to be sealed inside a Puzzle for the rest of an unending life?"
Yami was about to remind Kaiba that so many of his memories were lost beyond recall. Then Yami realized that even without a memory to guide him, he knew how he had felt. He smiled briefly. "It had to be done. And yes, it was hard."
Kaiba surprised him by raising two fingers to his forehead in a salute as Isono pulled up with the car.
Kaiba relaxed on the ride home, sitting in the middle seat with one arm around Mokuba and the other resting across Yami's shoulders. Mokuba leaned against him, alternating between dozing and murmuring, "I'm not asleep."
Yami couldn't resist saying, "Sure, you're not."
That woke Mokuba up long enough to say, "Tonight was fun. I can't wait for your birthday, Yami, now that I know you want a real splash. When is it anyway?"
"I don't know," Yami admitted.
"What?" Kaiba said, sitting upright. "How could you possibly not know? We were stuck in that Memory World for days. Why didn't you ask someone?"
"If you remember, I was pretty busy trying to save the world from an unstoppable god of evil."
Kaiba grunted. "That's not much of an excuse. Ever heard of multi-tasking?"
"Anyway, I don't need to know mine. Yugi's sharing his birthday with me."
"After driving me crazy for days, are you going to lie to my face and tell me you don't care when your birthday is?
Yami turned away to look out the window. The limousine pulled up to the mansion. Yami waited until Kaiba had put Mokuba to bed and they were in Kaiba's bedroom before turning to him and insisting, "I'm happy to share Yugi's birthday!"
Kaiba laughed. "That's what you waited all this time to say?"
"I am!"
Kaiba snorted. He stopped laughing but his smug smile was just as infuriating. "I bet it sounds more hollow each time you repeat it."
"I'm honored by his offer!"
"That's not the same thing as happy."
"Kaiba, why are you doing this?"
"Who are you avoiding answering: me or yourself?"
"It's not that simple. I do love sharing Yugi's birthday, no matter what you think. I love the reminder that I'll always be a part of him." Yami paused, startled by the sudden bitter expression that crossed Kaiba's face. "But I crave my own birthday. I want to know the day I became real."
Kaiba came forward and cupped Yami's face in his hands. "You are real." He kissed Yami slowly, then raised his head and laughed. "Now let's get to bed before midnight. I should manage to get one thing I want out of this damn birthday thing."
Yami took a step back then launched himself at Kaiba, tackling him into the bed. "I think that can be arranged."
The snaps on Yami's shirt were just as easy to undo the second time around. Kaiba unfastened Yami's pants. One yank took care of the rest. Kaiba's outfit was much more complicated, but Yami didn't seem to mind putting in the extra work. He grinned as he eased Kaiba out of his jacket, as he unknotted Kaiba's tie and unbuttoned his dress shirt with painful slowness, kissing, and occasionally nipping at each inch of skin as it was revealed. He tickled his way to Kaiba's waistband.
"Do you think I want to be teased?" Kaiba growled.
"Yes," Yami answered with a grin. "A little anyway." He laughed at Kaiba's outraged face and hurriedly added, "But it is your birthday," as he got down to business in a Kaiba-approved way.
Kaiba had meant to lie still, to maybe even gloat about getting to take advantage of Yami's birthday fixation. They wound up wrestling across Kaiba's bed instead, rolling in a tangle of arms and legs until Kaiba managed to pin Yami as they lay diagonally across the mattress, the blankets in a tumble on the floor.
"My turn," he said as he moved to tease Yami in turn, resisting the impulse to shake his head in wonder. Kaiba had gotten used to sex. He'd even gotten used to passion.
But this was fun.
It was fun teasing Yami, playing with his body, having his own groped in return. It was fun kissing Yami, having Yami be that eager to kiss him back. It was fun, feeling the heat rising off of Yami's skin, feeling his own temperature soar in response, in hearing Yami gasp through the sound of the blood rushing to his head and pounding in his ears. It was fun molding Yami's body to his, having Yami follow his lead, hungry for everything Kaiba wanted to give and do and not because it was his birthday.
And then fun abruptly morphed into something else… something that was too intense, too raw in its aching need, too much like an overstretched nerve being twanged until any sensation, even pleasure was almost – but not quite – too much to bear. Until fun toppled into euphoria, into a dazed disbelief, into a need to scream, into a shuddering satisfaction, wild relief and release merged into one.
As his breathing returned to normal, as the sweat cooled on his body, as Kaiba gathered Yami into his arms, he chuckled and mumbled, "Best birthday ever."
Kaiba shut eyes, too tired, too relaxed to hold them open. But if Kaiba had been a gambling man he would have acknowledged that since he felt so good, the odds were that a nightmare would reach up to grab him as soon as he'd been lulled into sleep.
He would have been right.
Kaiba woke with a start. This nightmare had been different. Yami had been there. Kaiba had fallen into an abandoned, endless well. Every time he tried to climb out, he failed. Each attempt caused him to sink deeper into the muck lying in wait at the bottom, until he was left buried to his mouth and exhausted. Yami had watched in silence… and then had turned his head. Kaiba's last glimpse before drowning in filth had been of the back of Yami's head as he'd walked away.
Kaiba shuddered silently and couldn't stop. The stench was still in his nostrils, as if his dream had never really ended. He would have sat up... he wanted to run to the bathroom and wash the remembered taste of slime out of his mouth. But Yami was still lying across his chest.
For now.
Kaiba tried to control his trembling, knowing that the room was temperature controlled, that there was no reason for him to be shivering at all.
Kaiba drew in a breath, desperately needing to sort out what was true and what was merely a leftover phantasm. Yami was here. He was on top of Kaiba; his hair was tickling Kaiba's chest. That was real.
Yami blinked and lay still for a moment. He'd been drifting off to sleep; now he was fighting his way to awareness. He could feel Kaiba shivering under him. Kaiba was silent.
"Kaiba? Are you awake?" he asked, knowing the answer.
There was a pause before Kaiba answered. "Yes." His voice was perfectly composed.
Yami's sigh was audible. He signaled for the recessed track lighting over the bed to turn on. He didn't ask what the nightmare had been about.
"How can I believe in you when I've never believed in anything?" Kaiba asked, a note of panic edging into his voice.
"What?" Yami asked, shifting and leaning up on an elbow to stare at Kaiba.
Kaiba frowned but didn't answer.
Yami said, "I was worshipped as a living god, once. My memories may be scattered, incomplete, but I remember that."
Kaiba grabbed Yami by the shoulders, pulling him half across his torso. "Is that what you want? You know I can't offer that!"
Kaiba wondered how he kept forgetting the sweetness of Yami's smile… why it was a revelation each time he saw it.
"No. It's what I escaped… being worshipped for all eternity… an unending life always behind a barrier separating me from the rest of the world." Yami shook his head. "I wanted a destiny. But I never asked if the destiny I was chasing was the one I would have chosen."
"Why do you want to know your birthday so badly then?"
"Because it's mine."
Kaiba nodded.
Yami settled more comfortably on Kaiba's body. He closed his eyes.
"You know, I bet we could figure it out. There have to be enough clues left," Kaiba announced.
"What?" Yami asked, startled into wakefulness for the second time that night.
"Now that we know your name and about when you lived we should be able to find some documentation of when your birthday was. You were a pharaoh. That must have been some kind of a big deal."
"But Seto, they erased my name from all documents and buildings, remember?"
"So, we look for erased names. How many could there be in the brief period when you ruled? And your father's name wasn't rubbed out, was it?"
Yami stared at Kaiba. "No, it wasn't." He laughed. "You make it all sound so simple."
"Not simple. Possible."
Yami glanced over Kaiba's shoulder at the small blue and white birthday candle on the nightstand. "You're right. Thank you for reminding me. Anything's possible." He snuggled against Kaiba's side.
Kaiba shook his head and signaled for the lights to dim. He smoothed Yami's hair out of his face, torn between rolling his eyes and grinning. In some ways he was closer to Yami when they talked than when they screwed. He'd given up wondering if it was supposed to work that way.
Kaiba woke up on Friday morning with Yami still in his arms. He drove Mokuba to school, Yami back home and went to work. He had to remind himself not to smile when he reached his office.
After work, Kaiba went back to the Mutou's home. It was strange seeing Yami twice in two days, in having him stay over for two nights in a row. But there was something nice about it, even if he had to waste a few hours with Yugi and his friends, counting each minute until he could suggest leaving.
The next morning, Mokuba was waiting when Kaiba returned home after dropping Yami off for the second day in a row.
Mokuba drew in a breath. "I need to talk to you."
Kaiba scanned his brother's determined face and swallowed. "Of course." He led the way to his bedroom. The maids had cleaned up while he'd been out. The bed was freshly made. He and Mokuba sat on it.
"I've been thinking about you and Yami," Mokuba said.
Kaiba nodded and braced himself. He'd thought Mokuba and Yami were getting along better, but he'd be the first to admit he wasn't good at reading things outside of a duel or the corporate boardroom. Once that had been enough...
"It's okay if you want to see him more," Mokuba continued in the same overly earnest voice. "Like on the weekend or something… or whatever… I thought that's what people do."
Kaiba frowned in confusion. "Where is this going, Mokuba?"
Mokuba drew in a breath. Time with his brother was the most precious thing in Mokuba's life. The thought of sharing any more of it, hurt. He stuck out his chin and folded his arms across his chest. "I mean it."
"Forget it! I'm not taking away our time together, not for anything!" Kaiba shouted.
Mokuba smiled. He was tempted to let the whole thing drop; he couldn't imagine a better answer. But he'd learned after Death-T that his brother didn't always know best. He'd learned at Alcatraz that there were some things his brother didn't seem to get. And he was learning now that sometimes his Nisama needed a big brother too. "You like him. It's okay," Mokuba insisted.
Kaiba ran his hand through his hair. "Things are fine the way they are."
"Just think about it," Mokuba said.
Kaiba nodded. It was the easiest way to end the conversation.
They didn't talk about it the rest of the weekend. But the idea refused to go away. The thought of more kept intruding – increasingly insistent… and seductive – each time Kaiba shoved it aside.
He'd never thought about more before. Now he had to admit it... he wanted to see more of Yami.
He had no idea if Yami felt the same.
Kaiba shook his head. The evidence suggested that he didn't. If Yami had wanted to see him, he could have stopped by the office more often. He could have spent time alone with Kaiba on Fridays instead of insisting that they hang out with the gang. He could have done a dozen different things.
He hadn't.
Kaiba grunted. Now that he had established the probability of Yami's relative indifference, there was no point in stalling. He opened his computer. An hour later, Kaiba leaned back and smirked at the screen. It had taken some doing, but he'd re-arranged his schedule. Yami already stayed over one evening during the work week, usually on Tuesdays. He also stayed over Friday nights and again sometimes on Sunday evenings. Kaiba could take one additional evening from Mokuba – five hours on Wednesday or Thursday nights or possibly on alternating Saturdays or Sundays depending on his other commitments. Including accounting for supplemental time the next morning it would come to approximately six hours per week. He could leave work an hour and a quarter earlier on the other four nights, making up the difference in Mokuba time. If he got up earlier and worked before waking Mokuba on those mornings he could see Yami alone at least once a week without taking any additional time from Mokuba. A better option might be simply not sleeping on Monday nights. Kaiba breathed a sigh of relief. Either way, it was doable.
The only unknown was whether Yami felt the same.
Kaiba managed to wait until Tuesday. He stopped by the Mutou's home to pick Yami up.
"At least we have 51 weeks of peace and quiet before it's time to wish you 'Happy Birthday' again," Sugoroku said as Kaiba walked in.
Kaiba snorted. "I'll have figured out when Yami's real birthday is by then. He can plan his own party without bothering me."
"That's so nice of you!" Yugi said.
"It sounded more like self-defense to me," Sugoroku observed.
"Do you care?" Kaiba asked.
"Why you're doing it? Not at all. For once I agree with you: it's the results that matter. Sort of like the way you decided to bully him into living," Sugoroku said.
Kaiba smirked. "It worked, didn't it?"
Kaiba's attention switched to the door as Yami entered the room. Sugoroku had learned to watch for all the little moments when Kaiba thought himself unobserved… for the brush of Kaiba's hand against Yami's back, the glancing pat on the shoulder, the slight bump of their bodies whenever Yami stood nearby. It was never anything as overt as an embrace; it was there nonetheless. And Kaiba himself must have been unaware, or he would have controlled himself much more rigidly. Sugoroku smiled. Who would have thought that Seto Kaiba was a secret cuddler? But it made a sad kind of sense.
Kaiba waited until they were downstairs and in his car. He gripped the steering wheel, paused before turning on the ignition and ground out, "You want us to see more of each other or what?"
"What?" Yami asked, startled.
Kaiba refused to look at Yami. He pressed his lips together and debated turning on the car and driving away from this mess. "Mokuba said you might want to come over more."
"Mokuba wants to see more of me? How sweet!"
Kaiba growled and swung to face Yami. "Stop playing around."
"I could say the same to you. What do you want?"
"I figured it out. We could go out or something… together. If you came over on Wednesday or Thursday or maybe alternate Saturdays or Sundays depending on Kaiba Corporation, then if I left work early…"
Yami laid a hand on Kaiba's arm. "Seto, I'd love to spend more time with you. Whatever works for you is fine with me."
Kaiba stared at him a moment. His smile was surprisingly shy and unsurprisingly brief. "Okay, then." Kaiba turned back to the road, started the engine and sped home as fast as he could.
Yami couldn't resist stopping by the next day around lunchtime. Yami hadn't thought beyond holding onto what they had, beyond giving Kaiba space and time and all the things Yami now had a lifetime supply of.
But the knowledge that Kaiba wanted to see him, that Kaiba wanted more…
Kaiba looked up briefly as Yami entered his office then returned his attention to the electronic personnel records on his desktop. Yami walked over and stared at the list of names, at the rows of photos of middle-aged men.
"I checked the serial numbers of the mines that have been found intact. Even after Gozaburo was gone, someone kept selling them." Kaiba scowled. "I thought I'd destroyed our stockpile, but they were stolen right under my nose." Kaiba's fingers tapped on the desktop. "Mokuba sent me the personnel records of everyone who left Kaiba Corporation in the year following Gozaburo's death. I've accounted for most of the senior officials. The rest don't have the company knowledge or skills." He enlarged two photographs. "These two are possibilities. They both dropped off the map." Kaiba shook his head. "Neither seem like worthy adversaries."
"Then it's not them," Yami said firmly.
Kaiba slammed his hands down on his desk. "There's nothing left!"
Yami stared at the list of names. "What's that red line for?"
"Before and after Gozaburo. I didn't bother with the people who left before I took over."
"Why not?" Yami's smile flashed out. "Tell me Seto, how would you describe your adversary?"
"Smart. Able to think ahead. Willing to take risks…" Kaiba stared at Yami.
Yami nodded. "Would someone like that wait until Gozaburo had lost? Or would he have set up his plans in advance?"
Kaiba laughed. "The first rule of gaming… know your opponent."
Kaiba narrowed his search. They stared for a moment in silence at the faces that remained. Only one was smiling back.
Yami stared at the confident expression, at the eyes which seemed to swallow all light. He felt a brush of recognition. He'd never met the man; he'd been fighting him and others like him for millennia. Yami's grin turned feral; this had all the thrill of turning over the winning card in a duel.
"Who's he?" Yami asked.
"Daichi Taka. One of Gozaburo's lieutenants. Ambitious. Smart. Determined. He disappeared a month or so before I started my takeover. I was never sure if Gozaburo had fired him or if he'd quit." Kaiba scowled. "I didn't care," he admitted. "It was one less headache I had to deal with."
"It's him."
Kaiba glanced from the image on his desk to Yami and back. He nodded.
"Now that you have a name and a place…" Yami said.
"It's time to follow the money trail." Kaiba sat down. "This could take days."
"Let me know when you have it."
Yami was in the game shop when Kaiba's one-word text arrived. "Done."
Sugoroku smiled and waved when he asked to get off work early. Tamashiro was getting ready to leave when Yami arrived. She nodded in greeting and waved him towards Kaiba's office, making sure to notify her boss first.
"It was Daichi Taka alright," Kaiba said, looking up from his computer as Yami entered. His hand shook slightly as he moved between the icons on his desk.
Yami's eyes narrowed. There were bruise-dark smudges under Kaiba's eyes; the angles of his face seemed sharper, more finely drawn. Yami wondered how long it had been since Kaiba had slept.
"What happens next?" Yami asked.
Kaiba sighed. "Clean-up. I have any number of do-gooders waiting to risk their lives on my say-so the moment I provided the information. They're in position with the drones I programmed with the deactivation codes. Now that we know the exact location, the strike team can send them in and disarm the mines before anyone inside realizes what happened. The drones will also disable their electronic and communications systems for good measure. It should start soon. I can even watch on a camera feed. Then I can sit back and accept the praise for fixing things, while everyone politely ignores the fact that I was the one who caused the problem in the first place."
"Stop that," Yami said quietly.
"What?"
"Refusing to take any satisfaction in what you've done, as if savoring this moment will add to the death count."
Kaiba stood up. He leaned on his desk a moment and then circled the room, stopping at the windows to lean his head against the glass. He didn't want to argue with Yami. He couldn't agree. "We were supposed to go out tonight. Mokuba's at the mansion already."
"Then let's go home and join him. We have a televised feed to watch."
"Some date night," Kaiba grunted.
Yami smiled. "Date night can wait. This is friend night. And that matters more."
.
Thanks to Bnomiko for betaing this chapter and helping me sort out what to leave in and what to take out as the story starts to wrap up.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Splintered Star for helping every time I need to make Kaiba sound like he actually might know something about computers and engineering.
And thank you to Tonksnalshae on tumblr for fanart of Yami in the outfit he wore to Kaiba's birthday!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Yami and Kaiba haven't been off by themselves since that day they spent at Kaiba's island, unless the time they spent alone with each other in a Death Simulation Chamber counts. Even after realizing how much he wants Yami, I could still see Kaiba being unable to figure out how to fit Yami into his life.. and then pushing aside the whole question. Once brought to his attention, of course the obvious answer to how to see more of Yami without seeing less of Mokuba or taking time from Kaiba corporation would to cut back on unnecessary activities like sleep. Whether anyone but Kaiba would consider this resaonable is a more open question.
I've had a couple of people ask when (and if) the final chapter will roll around. Currently, I expect the final chapter to be Chapter 40.
Tumblr Note: I'm on Tumblr as Nenya85, mostly posting manga frames and screen shots and rambling on about them. If you're interested in checking it out, the link is on my biopage.
Review Note: I reply to all signed reviews. I also post a summary of my replies on my Dreamwidth account. My username is Nenya85. Please note that I will no longer be posting on LiveJournal.
Thanks to everyone who's reviewed. I really look forward to hearing from you (to be honest, it makes my day!) I try to write the story in my head to the best of my ability – but it's incredible to get a glimpse of how it looks to someone who's reading it. I can't express how encouraging it is. Please review.