Handoff
Pegasus kept the journal in one hand, doing his best not to give into the instinct to tuck it away and close to himself. He had given Mokuba his word.
On top of that, he had given him an envelope. The refusal was strange and jarring, what else could describe rejection of a stone in a glass world?
"If I tear out the page, it'll loosen the binding." Mokuba had said.
It was a well made journal but he was right. Never mind all he had offered was an envelope. Never mind Mokuba had just seen how easily one finger gutted paper. The reason he sacrificed a bit of privacy was to preserve a gift. Something cherished and shared. No matter how many times Seto exchanged this book with his baby brother, no matter how many tender words passed between them, he hadn't been the one to earn it. To offer it. That right belonged to Pegasus, and rooted him to what this really was. Clear lines. Clear purpose. Nothing muddled.
"Good morning, Kaiba."
"I need a new razor, this one is dull."
"Who in their right mind left a razor in there?" Pegasus pushed breakfast through the hatch and meticulously examined the disposable to be sure it had all its blades.
"Crawford."
"You're not getting two gifts in one day, you'll want what I've brought infinitely more."
"I'm not facing you looking any more like a homeless person. The clothes are bad enough."
"Are you going to reject my first gift in months without knowing what it is? That isn't very wise, you know."
"I just asked for a razor."
"You're still too young to really grow hair, I've seen worse than your patchy mustache." Pegasus held up the journal. "This is my offer." He took a pen from his breast pocket and tucked it under a finger, against the soft cover.
"You want me to write a best selling captivity memoir for you to pedal as fiction under your name?"
"So testy. Not sleeping well?"
"You took KaibaCorp, one of us has to preserve reality."
"One of us has no grasp of his present reality."
Present? Was that him saying it was about to change?
"I've never been much of a writer." Pegasus would read every word, immediately or down the road, there was no sense in sacrificing what he needed for something so impractical.
"So draw blueprints," Pegasus replied. "Keep your mind sharp."
"I can do that without the paper." Give it to Ryou. No. That was a stupid thing to even think.
"It would make him cry to know you didn't take this, so I suppose it's the one thing I'll spell out for you. In this journal Mokuba is going to write one page a day for the rest of the year, and you can fill one page in response." He lowered it slowly toward the hatch. "If you take it."
"Why would I ever assume you'd offer something like that? I was just supposed to telepathically know?" Seto's irritation simmered as he crossed the room.
"I take it that's a rain check on the razor." Pegasus said, opening the hatch.
"Yes. Give it here."
Seto's hand gripped one end, an inch of so of the journal on his side of the glass. Pegasus held firm to the rest. "Now Kaiba-boy, what do we say?"
Cigar smoke fogged the glass but could never stain it yellow. He had always wondered as a boy why Gozaburo papered the walls.
"Please."
