Thanksgiving had come and gone without any great notice - Kaiba ended up regretting that he agreed to spend it with Yugi and his friends. He spent a night with people he hardly recognized, hearing stories of history that he wasn't a part of… It was all very confusing, and that confusion lent itself to annoyance. Annoyance gave way to anger, and anger made him avoid any more long encounters with Yugi or his friends; Wheeler was the exception, and that was only because he had to work with Wheeler on a daily basis. Even those encounters were brief and often times rude.
Kaiba worked relentlessly as always; it got to the point that he abhorred any interruption, even from his secretary. For that reason he snapped, "Get out," where he heard the door to his office open. He didn't even look up to see who had entered; he didn't care.
"Now is that any way to treat your only brother?" Kaiba's head shot up, and for tearing himself away from his work he was rewarded: Mokuba was standing in the doorway, smiling. He looked different. His hair was messy as ever, but cropped to his shoulders. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
"Mokuba!" He smiled. "I didn't expect you back so soon."
"Yea, I got lucky," Mokuba replied, jumping onto the sofa; he made himself at home, like he had never left. "You slept last night?"
"Yes," Kaiba answered dutifully.
"And you slept in a bed?"
"Yes. Stop worrying about me." He paused, examined his brother thoroughly. "When did you cut your hair?"
Mokuba laughed. "I, ah, didn't; two little boys at the orphanage decided to cut it for me while I wasn't looking. It wasn't their fault; they overheard me complaining about it being too long the day before. They thought they were helping."
"I told you whining would get you in trouble." Kaiba said it affectionately.
Mokuba snorted. "It's fine. So, tell me all about what you've been doing; your letters leave a lot to be desired."
Kaiba shrugged and turned back to his computer. The younger boy in him wanted to rush over to his brother, hug him tight and tell him all about… well, everything. How different Domino felt, and how empty it had been without him. The adult in Kaiba knew that would be stupid, knew that they weren't boys. The adult prevailed, and he spoke calmly as he worked; "It's different. I had to hire a lot of new employees."
Mokuba clicked his tongue. "That's a shame. What about Yugi and everyone, are they still here?"
Kaiba nodded. "They're all here…"
"Terrific! I can't wait to see them!" Mokuba rubbed his hands together, but Kaiba only smiled slightly and shook his head. His brother was so strange about friends. He had been a social butterfly after they moved; Kaiba had constantly been shooing random kids off his porches and balconies by the time Mokuba was fifteen. Within months he was known as "the old man Kaiba" among Mokuba's friends. He had barely been 20.
He kept working, and Mokuba was silent. Mokuba whistled, paused, whistled again. He stopped and made a feeble attempt at conversation. "So Marianne is still here."
"Marianne?"
"Seto! That's your secretary!" Mokuba sounded comically appalled.
"Oh," Kaiba said deviously. "That's her name."
"I don't know why people work for you," Mokuba said. "You're so cold as a boss."
"Hmph." He kept working, and Mokuba went back to whistling. It didn't last long.
"Seto, isn't there ANYTHING else to say?"
Kaiba shook his head. "I have a lot to get done before this afternoon."
"Ah, like hell," Mokuba said, rolling his eyes. "I'm going to go bother employees."
Kaiba laughed softly. "Like when you were a kid?"
"Just like that, except I don't expect to get as much candy." Mokuba winked.
"There are a lot of new employees, so be careful who you haunt," Kaiba warned. "And don't disrupt the ones who actually work."
Mokuba nodded, standing and going to the door. "I know. Seto, we're going out for dinner tonight," he dictated, leaving no room for argument. "We're leaving no later than six, and we're going to have fun, got it? I didn't come home to watch you work yourself sick."
Home… Was Domino really home for Mokuba, or had he used the word loosely? "Understood," Kaiba said obediently. Mokuba was the only one who would get away with ordering him around like that.
"Good. I'm going to go bother Daniels; he always liked me."
Mokuba was gone before Kaiba could warn him that Daniels had been replaced.
Promptly at 5:50 a laughing Mokuba sauntered into his office, Wheeler on arm. Wheeler was laughing too, his face flushed; his tie was undone and slung around his neck. Mokuba beamed at his brother. "Seto, ready to go?"
Kaiba stared at Wheeler. "Almost. Are we bringing Wheeler along?"
"Of course; we already called everyone else!"
Everyone else…? Kaiba frowned. "You know I don't like big social gatherings."
"Oh, it's just Yugi and his friends; you should be used to them. Especially Joey… why didn't you tell me that he was a lawyer? I nearly had a heart attack when I saw him!" Why was Mokuba so energetic?
"YOU almost had a heart attack? I almost didn't recognize you, all grown-up!" Wheeler said affectionately, punching Mokuba's shoulder.
"Yea, well, you're the old man here." Kaiba refrained from mentioning that he was the same age. Mokuba ordered, "Now hurry up and let's go. We're all going out for dinner!"
"Where?" Kaiba asked, saving his file and standing.
"Mexican food," Mokuba said with a grin. "I've had a craving for it since… hell, since I left."
Kaiba cringed inwardly but didn't say anything. He would suffer through a party, through Mexican food, just as long as Mokuba was there. When he and Mokuba went back to the house they could talk… They could be together.
Being back in Domino didn't seem so bad.
At least, for a ten-minute period it seemed okay. Then Mokuba opted to ride with Wheeler - which left Kaiba angry enough to want to throttle Wheeler… and the entire ride to the restaurant to fume about it. Maybe he was pouting, but there was something profoundly… painful about Mokuba coming back and seeming unmoved by it. So different. So far away, when Mokuba was the only person in the world that Kaiba DIDN'T want at arms-length.
When they arrived in the restaurant they were led to a table; Mokuba was almost bouncing cheerfully, and Wheeler was making fun of him for it. The first thing that Kaiba heard was Bakura proclaiming, "Whoa! Mokuba? You've grown up!" The white-haired male was sitting on Tristan's lap - quite the conspicuous pose, if Kaiba's opinion counted as anything. Yugi was there too, smiling and scolding Bakura teasingly. In fact, everyone looked completely happy and natural.
Why did he suddenly feel out of place?
"Hasn't he?" Wheeler exclaimed proudly, as though Mokuba's growth was somehow his doing. It made Kaiba want to do something possessive, to remind them exactly who Mokuba was. "The news didn't do him justice."
Mokuba blushed and took a seat beside Bakura and Tristan, pulling Kaiba to the seat beside him. Kaiba didn't really want to go, but followed anyway. "So, when did you two get on a lap-sitting basis?" Mokuba asked with a grin.
"Not long ago," Tristan commented. "Why? You want to borrow him for a bit?" Bakura elbowed Tristan in the chest, and Yugi laughed at the display.
"Heh, who needs Bakura? I bet you've got yourself a hot little piece of work back in China, right?" Wheeler asked wickedly, dropping into the seat beside Yugi. Mokuba just winked and laughed, blushing ever so slightly.
Mokuba spent most of the night either laughing or telling stories about where he had been and what he had done. Kaiba didn't understand how he managed to get any of his food into his mouth with all the talking he was doing. On some level Kaiba knew he was just being bitter; it wasn't at all how he had expected his reunion with Mokuba. In fact, he wasn't just bitter… he was jealous. They hadn't seen each other in over a year, and Kaiba just wanted to be alone with Mokuba, to know that the boy - no longer a boy, Kaiba had to reminded himself - was near. Proximity meant more to Kaiba than words.
Luckily his cell phone rang, ending his train of thought before he could fully complete it. He excused himself, leaving the restaurant to answer it. It hadn't been anything important - a minor problem at work, something he could have easily fixed at the table - but Kaiba needed the excuse to leave for a moment, to gather his wits. The whole restaurant felt stuffy, no better than silence. At least in silence Kaiba was really alone. But feeling alone when Mokuba was close… well, that was something entirely different. Kaiba stood against the outside wall of the restaurant, not far from the door but enough in the shadows for him to feel comfortable. Isolated.
Unfortunately someone had the gall to join him - Wheeler. He frowned as the blond held out his black jacket. "Forgot this." Wheeler was leaning casually against the wall; he was digging into his pocket with his free hand. Kaiba took the jacket from Wheeler but didn't put it on. He stared off into the night, ignoring the figure just inches to his left, perfectly comfortable thinking in silence.
The silence was interrupted by a flick-click. Another. Kaiba crinkled his nose against an invading acid smell and looked over at Wheeler. The blond was lighting a cigarette. Wheeler was smoking. Kaiba resisted the urge to scoot away; he had always hated smokers. "That's a disgusting habit."
Wheeler held the cigarette out, looking at it critically. He shrugged. "Yea, it is," he admitted. "Nervous habit."
Nervous? What reason in the world would Wheeler have to be nervous? "Hmph. Only the weak make excuses." Wheeler glared at him and dropped the cigarette to the ground, crushing it with his toe - eyes on Kaiba the whole time. Defiant. "You should take charge like that more often, Wheeler."
"Joey."
"Wheeler."
"You called Yugi by his name when you were enemies," Wheeler argued heatedly. "Why can't you at least fake civility?" Kaiba just looked at Wheeler, looked down at him really, as though he was inferior. He was. Wheeler continued, "Hell, even 'Joseph' is better than 'Wheeler'."
"Joseph makes you sound intelligent," Kaiba mocked.
Wheeler's glare intensified. "Maybe you're no better than you were years ago. You're still an asshole. You still don't give a damn about anything outside your own little world. I don't… ah, fuck you." Wheeler started fiddling with his lighter, idly lighting it and letting it go out repeatedly.
"Whatever. I'm the asshole that's in charge of your paycheck." Kaiba pulled on his jacket, watching Wheeler fiddle with the lighter. He went to reenter the restaurant, to leave Wheeler behind. He didn't turn as he ordered, "Joey, don't light up when I leave." Hmph. That was about as civil as he was getting. He went inside, but waited by the door for a moment before he looked back through the window.
Wheeler wasn't smoking.
Finally - after nearly an hour of reminiscing and story telling - the dinner came to an end, and Kaiba finally had some time alone with Mokuba in the limo. They were silent for half of the drive.
"Seto, are you still so hateful?"
The question was so sudden and so intense that it caught Kaiba off-guard. It came in complete opposition to the playful mood that Mokuba had been exuding all night. Instead he sounded more like the eleven-year-old that Kaiba remembered. "Why do you ask?"
"You didn't have a bit of fun tonight." Mokuba sighed. "It's been forever… Haven't you let everything go yet?"
"You know me," Kaiba said ruefully. "I never let go without a fight."
"Even when letting go would make things better." Mokuba moved to sit beside Kaiba and let his head fall onto his older brother's shoulder. "I missed you."
Those three words make the entire night worth it. He knew Mokuba hadn't forgotten about him. How could he have suspected otherwise? Perhaps he needed to hear it out loud. "I missed you too."
Mokuba smiled up at him cockily. "I know. But I bet by the time I leave you'll be tired of me."
Never. Kaiba didn't respond.
"So what do you plan to do for Christmas? I always wanted to have a big Christmas dinner party-"
"You sound like a woman," Kaiba teased affectionately.
"Do not! It's just that it's always been the two of us, and now that you're friends with-"
Kaiba stopped that plan before it even finished. "We're not friends."
"Would you quite interrupting?" Mokuba scowled. "You're so stubborn, Seto."
"And you suffer from delusions of grandeur."
"But we're all adults now, and no one is out to kill anyone. All those talks about tranquility and peace in the season could be true! Would it hurt to be just a little friendly?"
"It could." Kaiba smiled.
Mokuba paused, twitched, and then chuckled softly. "Did you just make a joke?"
"It doesn't seem likely."
"But you did! C'mon, Seto," Mokuba pleaded. "Next year we can hole ourselves up in some secret mountain location and spend the holidays with no one but each other, but just this year can't we do something special? Something different? You know, like marking our triumphant return."
"My return and your vacation," Kaiba corrected. He wasn't going to forget that Mokuba's stay was temporary; that would only make it harder when he left again.
"Well, yea," Mokuba admitted. "But the point is we're back. This city is yours, remember?"
Kaiba nodded. "You used to tell me I should buy it out and rename it Kaiba City."
Mokuba laughed. "Sort of silly, huh?"
"Very." Kaiba sighed. "But appealing to my nostalgic side isn't going to make me let you throw some Christmas party in my home." He refused to relent; not a chance in hell was he sharing his time with Mokuba.
"Damn. Well, Scrooge or not, you're going to have a great Christmas this year - I'll make sure of it."
"I should be the one making those promises."
Mokuba shrugged and yawned. "Role reversal. Just go with it."
Just going with it wasn't something that Kaiba liked to do, even if it was to please Mokuba. He tried to think of something else to say - something meaningful, something worth wasting time and breath to say - but nothing came.
Proximity was enough.
"We're here, Mr. Kaiba," the driver's voice floated back to them, interrupting Kaiba's thoughts. He hadn't even noticed that the car had stopped.
"C'mon," Mokuba said, leaving the car. They walked in silence. Mokuba broke the silence as they crossed the threshold of the house: "What are the chances that my old room is ready?"
"Good." The room had been ready for Mokuba's arrival for nearly two weeks. "Very good, I'd say."
"Great. Are you working tomorrow?"
Kaiba nodded but added, "But I intend to take Saturday off so we can be together, okay?"
"That's cool," Mokuba agreed. "Wake me up tomorrow. I'll come to work with you." He yawned again, stopping where he stood to stretch. "I'm headed to bed. G'night, big brother."
"Sleep well." Kaiba watched fondly as his younger brother retreated to his room.
- author speculations... - (it sounds either important or pompous, lol)
I return from vacation, and am happy to present this. ^^
Hanachan is great. ^^ Why is directly related to the story of this chapter... which I will be telling in place of the usual you-me dialogue that usually sucks anyway, lol.
This is the THIRD version of Chapter 4. I decided that the first one was cute but useless to the story, and didn't fit since I had changed some stuff anyway. So I deleted it, and what was then chapter 5 became chapter 4. About 3 or 4 days before I intended to post that chapter 4, I started to feel really edgy about it -- so I decided to go to Hanachan and ask what she thought. And she summed up what I guess I might have already suspected: it sucked. (well, she said it was boring, but in reality it just sucked, lol).
Actually, the whole chapter was easily summed up in the first paragraph here -- there was only one significant event that I had to play with and move. That's why Thanksgiving doesn't have it's own chapter*: nothing particularly interesting happened, lol. I mean, Kaiba even left before they ate. It just introduced a lot of things that were completely irrelevent to the story, and wasted a lot of time. SO what you see here would have ORIGINALLY been chapter six, lol.
[* that and thanksgiving is so long past that it's almost bad to go into it, lol. but, like I think I already said, when I first started writing the story, it was just that time of year. ]
Mokuba turned out to be a bit of a wise-ass, hehe. I wanted to show him off as older but with some mixture of wisdom and intelligence (he's wiser in the next chapter, lol). I enjoyed the interaction between the brother's. I just hope it came off right.
Haha! And so the secretary gets a name. I figured for all her hard work, she needed one. :)
Well, it was finally time for Joey to stop being so passive and say something to Kaiba -- even if he was sort of pouting. I liked that part, but I'm not so sure if it came off right. As for him smoking... well, everyone has bad habits, and I could somehow see him picking that one up. Interesting, you know? Or I thought it was. But hey, they finally had something of a not-work-related conversation. Kind of.
Tristan & Bakura (Ryou, in this case; not Yami Bakura. just to squelch any confusion) -- that was one of those things that was mentioned in the chapter-that-is-no-longer, coined up in one line on Joey's part: "It's a long story involving my ex-couch, a package of cherries, and Bakura. There's a reason I don't have a couch anymore." I figured that Tristan and Bakura being shacked up wasn't a very big deal, lol. Though one (or both) of them might come into play later as a little more important.
..::responses to reviewers from chapter three::..
[[ Hey! Here's hopin' everyone's respective holiday celebrations and New Year's went well! ^^ ]]
lady dragon, gohan hugger,eyes0nme19, ranma higurashi, tanya maxwell: ^^ thanks, guys (who probably aren't guys, lol; I'm too generic!) It's great seein' you guys; it makes me all warm & fuzzy, lol.
tadashi: maybe this is an unwanted visual, but given the height difference, can you imagine those two in bed? *giggle* that would be interesting to watch. ... wow, that was majorly perverted sounding. yea, I guess it is sort of pot-hole-ish. Uhm... I'm sorry? Lol. ^^ I swear I'm not trying to pick on you right now -- I just think I'm funny.