One of thirty drabbles in the setting of Bellamy Taft's "Glass" in honor of her birthday month. Thanks for all that you do!
The morning after his birthday he fished undissolved sugar from his coffee and ate it straight from the spoon, its half-hearted crunch a reminder. It coated his throat on the way to Seto, cloying and vaguely bitter. During breakfast he didn't pass coffee through the hatch. Didn't indulge bringing his own mug in some cheap ode to an empty victory. The syrup from earlier clung to the back of his teeth, and when the headache started, he dismissed all thoughts of it. There was no rush of caffeine to stave it off, not truly, but he had the remnants of something perfect in the crevices of his mouth. And it was enough.
"You seem upset."
"Do I?" Pegasus asked, his tone a touch too bright. "Maybe a bit broody."
"You can't brood over their response while refusing to be forthcoming. If you have something to say, you're better off just coming out with it."
Pegasus didn't step closer to the glass but took a second to gauge the distance between his fingers and the space where yesterday's smudge had been.
"How would you react if I stopped coming down here?" He took in Seto' stare, the length and weight of it, the overwhelmingly pensive quality it gave the air. "Relax, I'm just posing a hypothetical."
"Then get to the point."
"The point is to see how you would react. No more clipped conversations, no more musings about Mokuba, just my guards and the laundry."
Whatever thought Seto gave the scenario, he did his best to veil. The length of his silence said plenty – everything.
"See how uncomfortable it is? The very idea of having so much left to say and do, only to never have the chance. There's an ocean of things left to say, enough that a glimpse would suffocate you –" already had – "but the time for all of that is long gone. Of course it would be easier – on everyone – to unload what I have to say instead of waiting out what I have to teach. But I have faith in you, Seto. I'm not here because you deserve it. I'm here because you're a better confidant than the others, and one day you'll get it."
Seto counted soundless breaths to keep himself from wading too deep into his own emotions.
"That sounds like a threat."
"Everything does from this side of the glass. If you were going to stage a strike, you should have accounted for that."
"I took a shower."
"I built a fishbowl."
"You just admitted I don't deserve this."
"I admitted that she doesn't."
Seto bowed his head to look at the untouched plate. "Neither does Mokuba."
For a moment it felt like he was getting somewhere, even if that was exactly what Seto wanted. But he had put Mokuba and Cecelia on an even playing ground, and quite simply, they weren't.
"As I've said, you have everything necessary to come to the right conclusion."
"And what's that?" Seto asked tiredly. "That Mokuba's lack of involvement doesn't matter? That an eleven-year-old should somehow have a hand in making up for her death? We didn't take her from you."
It was a sad turn of events, but not unexpected. Pegasus nodded, turned up the music so loud the glass reverberated its echo, and watched the guarded flush of horror cross Seto's face when he took his finger off the speaker.
"Are you sure?"
Seto couldn't hear the question anymore than Pegasus could hear the demands for him to return.
All the same, it would never leave him.
When a stray sugar granule worked itself out between teeth and tongue, Pegasus bit down.