Summary: Sometime after the end of the Battle City Tournament, Kaiba begins to deal with his loss, isolation, and his feelings for his little brother.
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi. Just borrowing!
Warnings: NC17 for m/m sex, and various kinds of wrongness.
Chapter four: Enter the game
In beta mode, Kaiba could choose which of his Special Attack monsters to activate. His original intention -- and the sensible thing to do -- was to begin with one of the lower-attack monsters and try them out one by one.
Kaiba was feeling far from sensible. He activated them all, randomized the order of their attacks, then strapped himself into the pod and entered the game.
After a moment's disorientation, he stood in the field that was the game's entry point. There was a fresh breeze coming down from the mountains in the north, carrying on it the scent of wildflowers. Fluffy white clouds floated high in the sky, and the afternoon sun warmed his back. Unseen birds twittered in the woods to the west and south. He stood for a moment, taking deep breaths and trying to calm himself. This part of the game was pure Legendary Heroes; he hadn't altered the landscape or the environmental parameters of the game at all, only the inhabitants and the player's physical responses. He knew this field like the back of his hand, and let its familiarity wash over him.
Then he stroked his hand lightly down the front of his pants, to test this virtual body's sexual responsiveness -- and nearly jumped from the surge of arousal that burned through him. He stared down at himself, a little surprised by the fierce erection that tented his trousers. Perhaps he'd better turn that down a little next time.
Or not. This was what he was here for, after all.
He shifted a little, stamping his feet, as if against a cold chill. The valley to the west was where the game's storyline played out, but the monsters were everywhere, and could attack at any time. He only had to choose whether to make his stand in the woods, or on open ground.
Standing around waiting for trouble to come to him had never been Kaiba's way. He began to walk towards the woods, keeping his step firm, his head high, his thoughts resolutely focused on the game.
There was a tap on his shoulder. He whirled, setting himself automatically into defensive stance.
Dark Magician. Yugi's favorite monster, and Kaiba's chief rival. The spellcaster stood tall in his flowing purple and violet robes, arms crossed jauntily with his staff in one hand, an amused smile on his pert mouth.
Kaiba's hand flew to his wrist for a card to defend himself, but found only bare skin. In his haste to plunge into the game and blot out what he'd done to Mokuba, he'd forgotten to put his deck in the machine.
Forgotten? Or had he subconsciously chosen to enter the game without his cards? And why should he fight? He was here to be attacked. He deserved to be attacked.
But not like this. Not by Dark Magician. Why this monster, of all the Special Attack monsters he'd created? Why Yugi's monster? He took a step back, mind in a whirl, casting about for a way, any way, to defend himself without his deck. He had no weapons -- nothing that would work on a Duel Monster, anyway, especially one as powerful as Dark Magician. Against any human opponent, he didn't need anything but his fists and feet, but all his martial arts training would be useless against Yugi's monster.
Could he outrun him? Trick him? Hide from him? Not out here in the field, but maybe if he made it to the woods....
Kaiba turned and ran.
He'd taken no more than five steps when the Dark Magician's staff caught his ankles and sent him sprawling. He rolled and flipped himself to his feet, facing the Dark Magician. Yugi's monster gave his head a tiny shake, and waggled his finger, as if chiding a naughty child. But he made no further move towards Kaiba.
The Dark Magician was toying with him, playing cat and mouse. Kaiba tried to remember all the special behaviors he'd added to the monster, but the Dark Magician was a quirky fellow even without modification, and it was hard to predict how the new programs would interact with his normal behaviors.
"Look," Kaiba tried, "Can we talk about this?"
The Dark Magician smiled silkily, and reached out his staff to tap Kaiba in the chest. In automatic reaction, Kaiba swung his arm up to knock the staff away, only to have his arm bounce off harmlessly. It was like hitting a fencepost set in concrete. "I'll take that as a 'no,' " he said, then spun and sped off again.
This time he made it nearly to the edge of the wood before the sharp, electric blast of the monster's Dark Magic attack hit the small of his back. Pain shot through him as his muscles failed, and he fell heavily to the dirt, nerves twitching. It took several attempts just to roll over onto his back and stare up at the monster looming over him.
The Dark Magician's expression had not changed. He stood over Kaiba, arms crossed, wide violet eyes regarding Kaiba with cold amusement.
Kaiba waited. There was nothing else he could do. Sweat trickled down his temple, and his heart thudded against his ribcage. He was afraid, and he wanted out.
He could call off the game. In beta mode, a simple spoken phrase would stop simulation. He didn't have to go through with this.
And then what? Shut down the game and go back to Mokuba?
He waited.
The Dark Magician leaned down and held out a hand. The faint smile still played about his lips, the violet eyes remained impenetrable. Kaiba hesitated, then took the monster's hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. The Dark Magician's hand was cool and smooth, yet there was something uncomfortable in its touch, a slight buzz, as if it were generating an electrical field.
The Dark Magician lifted him up off his feet and held him dangling in the air, looked him over with a casual glance, then set him down, hooking the staff around his waist to corral him in. Up close, the Dark Magician loomed over him as if he were a small child (and the thought passed briefly through his mind that this was how Yugi saw the world all the time), a mysterious and imposing presence, crackling with that same electrical energy Kaiba had felt in the touch of his hand. Kaiba found himself straining back against the staff, sweating with apprehension, despite his determination not to be intimidated by Yugi's pet monster. He went over everything he knew about the Dark Magician's programming, with and without the added special behaviors, hoping to come up with some way to negotiate with or trick the monster, to mitigate the full force of the direct attack. Being toyed with this way was far more upsetting than a straightforward assault would have been. He wished the Dark Magician would just get on with it, and do whatever it was he was going to do.
The Dark Magician pulled him close with one yank of the staff across Kaiba's lower back, pressing his thigh between Kaiba's legs. Squirming, Kaiba found himself rubbing against the solid thigh. Shivers of arousal, lit up by reluctance and fear, flickered through him. He clutched at the Dark Magician's robes, pushing himself away and holding himself up at the same time. He stared into inscrutable violet eyes. As much as he wanted to stare down that gaze, Kaiba found himself forced to look away.
Cool, hard fingers took him by the chin, and turned his face back. This time, Kaiba managed to hold the monster's gaze, but only with the help of the hand holding his head steady. The Dark Magician's thumb stroked Kaiba's lower lip, its faint electricity making his mouth tingle. Helplessly, he closed his eyes when the thumb slid between his lips, and his mouth worked, sucking on it, letting it move deep into his throat. Tears pricked at Kaiba's eyes; only long years of determined practice in refusing to cry held them back. He couldn't bear what was happening to him -- succumbing to the clichéd advances of a programmed monster, Yugi's monster, not even human, not Mokuba.
Abruptly, the Dark Magician released him, letting his staff fall away, pulling his thumb from Kaiba's mouth, and taking a step back. Head tilted, the monster regarded him unblinkingly, awaiting his next move.
Kaiba knew that if he could only manage to submit, it would all be over soon. He didn't want to run. It was humiliating to be reacting out of fear and confusion, when the outcome was inescapable. Better to accept it with some sort of dignity. But then the Dark Magician made a feint -- just the slightest twitch of his staff in Kaiba's direction -- and, spooked, Kaiba took flight, running with all his strength toward the woods.
As he ran, dodging between trees, Kaiba began to think that perhaps he'd gotten away after all. The Dark Magician didn't seem to be following. Kaiba couldn't think of any reason the Dark Magician wouldn't come into the woods, but perhaps there was some obscure rule about spellcasters and trees....
Then he ran around a huge oak, and nearly ran straight into the Dark Magician, leaning casually against the tree trunk, arms crossed, violet eyes half-lidded. Kaiba had to scramble to bring himself up short, turn sharply, and head off in the other direction.
But before he'd gone a step, the monster's arm shot out and grabbed his wrist. Kaiba snapped to a halt, nearly thrown to the ground by the impact, and cried out in pain as the monster's grip twisted his arm.
Panicked, he began to fight in earnest, throwing kicks and punches with deadly force and precision. He might as well have been fighting a tank. The Dark Magician stood calmly, keeping an iron grip on Kaiba's wrist, and let him spend his strength in futile blows.
He was still pounding one-handed on the Dark Magician's chest -- more out of frustration than any real effort to escape -- when the monster picked him up and held him to his chest in a harsh embrace, wrist still gripped tightly behind his back. Kaiba began to struggle again, furious and humiliated -- and even more helpless than before. He fought wildly, without any of his usual skill. At the back of his mind, the thought pricked at him that he had programmed this monster specifically for this purpose, that he was getting exactly what he'd thought he wanted. But now -- he hadn't known, he hadn't understood that it would be like this. Did he still want it? Did he really think this was going to stop him wanting Mokuba?
He didn't know. He didn't know why, but he couldn't make himself stop what was happening; and he couldn't stop fighting it.
He had begun to quiet a little when the Dark Magician set him down, still holding him by the arm, and looked him over with a penetrating stare. The monster's expression had grown charged; there was now something creamy and satisfied in it, as if to say that Kaiba had performed his part well, but the preliminaries were over, and it was time to get down to business.
Kaiba felt his apprehension ratchet up into something approaching terror; his heart raced and his knees trembled so badly he could barely stand. But he felt a measure of relief, as well, that the cat and mouse game was finally over. He was caught, and there was no more need to fight. He drew himself up with what dignity he could muster, nodded slightly, and waited.
The Dark Magician smiled. Then he set his staff aside and released it -- and it remained where it stood, its tip barely touching the ground, yet as solidly planted as any of the trees in the wood -- and took Kaiba by the shoulders, maneuvering him firmly until his back was pressed against the staff, the rings carved around the smooth wood digging into his spine. Kaiba felt the same faint electricity running through the staff as in the monster's hands on his shoulders, a low hum of magic and power. He wondered if Yugi ever felt this electric buzz from his favorite monster. Did it excite him? Did he dream of the Dark Magician at night, the cool smooth hands on him, the mysterious smiles? Did he imagine the monster riding him, and lie with his small hands wrapped around his cock, face screwed up in effort? Did he wake sweaty and confused, bedclothes a tangle, hips in a pool of cooling semen?
No. No doubt it was only himself who had these awful thoughts. Yet the image of Yugi wrapped in the arms of his monster remained strangely compelling.
The monster moved closer to Kaiba, again pressing a thigh between Kaiba's legs, and Kaiba found himself growing hot, pressing back, the low hum a stroke of electricity along his cock that made him close his eyes and sigh. I am a sick, sick man, he thought.
He didn't even flinch when the Dark Magician took his wrists and held them together behind his back, although he couldn't help a flutter of apprehension when the monster began conjuring something soft and clingy and strong, like a spider web, that soon had his arms bound securely together behind the staff. Now he was certainly not going anywhere.
But he couldn't help testing the bonds, and the Dark Magician stood back, arms crossed, smiling his secret smile, while Kaiba jerked and pulled at the web that held him fast to the staff. And the struggle aroused him, and the staff rubbing up and down his spine and teasing over his butt aroused him, and the Dark Magician's creamy smile aroused him, until Kaiba could no longer fight, and stood with his chest heaving and his erection straining painfully at the fabric of his trousers.
The Dark Magician reached out and slid one finger down the front of Kaiba's trousers, and flipped the button open with his thumb. Kaiba froze, pressing back against the staff. Surely he should have been prepared for this, but the move to undo his clothing shocked him, and suddenly Kaiba was struggling in earnest again, desperately twisting away from the monster's hand. The Dark Magician put a hand on his shoulder to hold him in place and continued to unfasten Kaiba's trousers with slow, deliberate fingers.
Kaiba bit his lip and took a few deep breaths to try to settle himself down. His reaction this time was sheer nerves, he knew -- the truth was, he'd never actually had sex with anyone before. And, technically, he wasn't going to now -- it was all simulated, but it certainly felt real, from the drops of sweat trickling down his ribcage to the pounding of his heart to the scrape of fabric over his cock as the Dark Magician eased his shorts down over his hips....
The Dark Magician leaned down and pressed his lips to Kaiba's, delicately lapping at Kaiba's mouth with his tongue. Kaiba's heart leaped: he hadn't expected this. To be chased and thrown down, tied up and stripped -- these things he expected, but to be kissed by a monster -- briefly, he tried to recall how this behavior might have gotten programmed into the Dark Magician's attack, but soon gave up thinking for the taste of the monster's mouth, heat and dark spice and the same tingling electricity he felt whenever the monster touched him. It was good. It was really good. He'd never even kissed anyone before -- well, except for his brother, and that was wrong, too wrong to feel this good. Not that this wasn't wrong, a whole different kind of wrongness, but -- hell. Kaiba opened his mouth and met the Dark Magician's tongue with his own, sucking and licking and straining against his bonds to get as close to that electric body as possible, losing himself in the kiss --
He jumped and cried out when the Dark Magician's hand covered his cock. Delicious little electric sparkles licked up and down his length, and he broke the kiss, gasping into the Dark Magician's neck, and thrust helplessly into the monster's hand. This was good, too. Scary good. Maybe a little too good, because his trousers were falling down around his ankles, restricting the movement of his legs, too, and the Dark Magician's fingers were playing beneath his balls and teasing farther and farther back, and it was getting hard to catch his breath, and he wanted to be untied because he could no longer tell the difference between squirming with pleasure and struggling to escape, and he was about to have another attack of nerves --
The Dark Magician picked him up and lifted him over the staff, and lowered him to the ground on his back.
Where he lay, with his bound arms beneath him, his trousers tangled around his legs, looking up into the cool violet eyes of the monster crouching over him. He felt exposed and dirty and there was an ache in his groin that he didn't think would ever go away. The Dark Magician smiled gently and stroked his face, soothing him. His vision blurred, and when he tried to blink it clear, drops of moisture trickled from his eyes down the sides of his face. They were only virtual tears, he told himself, and didn't count. Something else that needed adjustment the next time he played the game....
The Dark Magician sat back on his knees, and pulled Kaiba into his lap, cradling him in his arms. He kissed Kaiba's cheeks, and delicately licked the tears from the corners of his eyes. He stroked Kaiba's cock with slow, leisurely motions. Kaiba buried his face in the Dark Magician's robes. He no longer noticed the bonds tying his arms behind him, or the clothing tangled around his legs. He felt that he was disintegrating, body and soul, melting into nothing.
The Dark Magician turned him, until he was facing outward, sitting in the monster's lap, then lifted him, and slowly began to lower him onto his cock. The Dark Magician's member was long and slender and slick, and seemed to enter Kaiba forever, thrumming with electricity, opening him up like a the pages of a book. Kaiba felt his heart begin to beat in time with the throbbing of the magician's cock inside him, filling him until there was nothing else but the huge rushing tide, in his ears and mouth and guts and eyes, and at last it poured out of him, draining him, and he fell to the ground an empty husk.
Kaiba awoke sometime later -- how long, he didn't know -- still strapped into the pod. He groaned as he shifted in the chair. Every muscle in his body ached, his clothing was sticky with sweat, the front of his trousers were soggy with semen, his throat was raw, and his face was wet with tears. He brought up one hand, slowly, to wipe them away. The game... worked.
Although his mind felt somehow short-circuited. Images and sensations tumbled around in his brain, purple and violet and electricity, breath of wind on his exposed lower body, soft sticky webs woven around his arms, mysterious smiles, cool fingers, dry throat, cock stretching him until he broke apart and blew away like a Duel Monster defeated in battle. He couldn't even catch a single image to focus his mind on, let alone decide how he felt about any of it.
And he was exhausted. Bone-deep weary, body and mind. He felt as though he really had just been chased down, tied up, and fucked senseless by a monster. Maybe there was a fault in the game. Maybe he should check the feedback sensors. Maybe....
Kaiba rubbed his eyes. There was still water dripping from them. Some sort of unexpected physical reaction, because he wasn't crying. He should have brought a handkerchief, but how was he supposed to know? The back of his throat burned, and he was so tired. He would just close his eyes for a minute and rest, and then he'd start checking out the sensors. Just for a minute....
But the next thing he knew, it was morning, and he was still in the pod, feeling, if anything, more stiff and sore and exhausted than before. His sleep had been restless and harried with dreams, full of images of ravening monsters, lost duels, pain and fear and horrible release. He was not entirely sure he hadn't gone back into the game, maybe more than once, maybe even repeatedly all night long, taking on monster after monster, resting only when he'd been ejected from the game for losing all his life points.
Either way, he'd gotten no rest. His temples throbbed, and he hurt everywhere, and he wanted to just go back to sleep, but he had to pee, so finally he unstrapped himself and climbed stiffly out of the pod.
In the bathroom, he stood in front of the mirror and stared at his reflection. His face was pale, with smudges of purple under his eyes. His clothing was rumpled and sweat-stained, and there was a stiff dried patch on the front of his trousers, ringed with flaky white. He brushed at it ineffectually, and sighed. He looked like shit and he felt worse. Had the game made things any better? Or had it just made them worse?
Never mind. Get some real sleep in a real bed, and he'd worry about what it all meant later. Mokuba ought to be leaving for school soon, and Kaiba could have the bed to himself all day. He hated himself for wanting to avoid his brother. All he wanted was to fix things so that he and Mokuba could be happy together, and all he was doing was making it harder and harder to face him.
Wearily, he left his laboratory and headed to his room. He just couldn't think about it now.
He ran into Mokuba coming out of the bedroom.
The brothers stood in the hallway, staring at each other uncomfortably. "Mokuba."
"Big Brother. You didn't come to bed last night."
"I was working late," Kaiba said. He pulled his duster closed to hide the stain on the front of his trousers. "I fell asleep in the laboratory."
Kaiba knew his little brother as well as he knew himself. He could see the question form in Mokuba's mind, see him begin to ask Are you all right? and then stop, knowing he'd get no answer. He wanted to reassure him, to say, I'm all right, everything will be all right, but he couldn't speak either. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't be a lie. Kaiba had never hated himself as much as he did in that moment. "Mokuba...."
Mokuba looked up at him searchingly. "You look tired."
"I'm fine," Kaiba said automatically, cursing himself inwardly. He tried to smile. "I'm going to go to bed now. You go on to school."
Mokuba nodded, but made no move to go. "Did you call Yugi?"
Kaiba suppressed a surge of irritation. Damn it, forget about Yugi, he wanted to say. It's nothing to do with him. But Mokuba was only trying to help, in the only way he knew how. It wasn't his fault he didn't know what the real problem was.
And this was one thing he could do for Mokuba. "I'll call him right now. I promise."
Mokuba nodded. A promise was a promise, and nothing else needed to be said. He threw his arms around his big brother's waist and held him tight. Kaiba gripped Mokuba's shoulders and swallowed, blinking away the sudden blurring in his eyes. Then Mokuba stepped back, smiled, and went on his way to school.
Kaiba leaned back against the wall, rubbing his eyes. All right. Mokuba was appeased, temporarily, but now he had to call Yugi. He sighed, but did not even consider backing out of his promise. He had no idea what he'd say to Yugi, but for Mokuba's sake, he would think of something.
Stopping only to get a glass of water for his dry throat, he went into the bedroom and sat on the bed while he reluctantly tapped out Yugi's number on his cell phone.
"Hello."
"Yugi...." He still didn't know what to say.
"Kaiba? Is that you?"
"Yes, it's me. I...."
"How are you? I haven't seen you since...." Yugi sounded cheerful, if confused.
Kaiba took a deep breath and forced the words out. "I would like it if you would come to see me this afternoon."
"Oh! -- Okay, I can come after school. Around four?" Thank the gods, Yugi didn't hesitate, or ask why.
"Yes, that's fine."
"Okay, see you later!" Yugi rang off, and Kaiba switched off his cell phone and fell back on the bed.
He didn't want Yugi here. He didn't want to talk to him.
He wanted Mokuba.