Shadow: Part two, vaguely belated. (-snorts- 'Vaguely', she says, whilst affecting a winning smile.) Watch me attempt not to twitch as my elder brother slaughters masses of pixellated people at full volume in Fable II's Tattered Spire less than a metre away from me, all at the ungodly hour of two o' clock in the morning. Sibling bonding, huh?

Notes: Same as last chapter.

Lords of Misrule

Yami didn't quite understand why Mokuba's room was full of brightly-coloured paper when he went to see the boy on the morning of the twenty-third of December, knocking on Mokuba's door and stepping into a world decorated with rolls and rolls of shimmering fluorescence and cheerily chortling paper snowmen.

"Mokuba…?" A little of the spirit's strange accent had faded away over the four days of his corporeal existence, but his syllables were still oddly emphasised. It was…charming, and it made Mokuba smile when he poked his head up over the mound of gifts he was attempting to wrap, signalling to Yami his position in the overcrowded room.

"Over here!" Mokuba waved one-handed from where he was kneeling on the floor, his other hand holding flat a piece of paper on one of his part-wrapped presents.

Yami went over to him, hovering on his feet as he attempted to overlook the younger boy's work. "You…" he struggled for a moment to recall the appropriate word, "busy, yes?"

"Yes," Mokuba agreed, but with a smile and an outstretched hand to pull the other down to kneel amidst the chaos with him. "I'm wrapping Christmas gifts. Would you like to help me?"

Yami looked at him, confused by the quick delivery of speech, and the jumbled terms he wasn't used to in the everyday speech he'd overheard already in the manor.

"Would you," Mokuba repeated a little more slowly, pointing to the once-spirit, "like to help me?" He gestured to the mess around, and then himself, with a hopeful expression.

Yami caught on and nodded, already motioning for the boy to show him exactly what it is he wanted him to do. "Sa'as, khenmas." Mokuba's turn to look blank, and Yami's turn to make sweeping gestures to the mess of paper and tape around them, miming what he thought Mokuba wanted him to do.

"Oh!" Mokuba looked pleased at the other's acquiescence, releasing his hold on the wrapping paper and diving upon the Spirit, ribbons and sticky-backed decorations taking to the air as Yami was literally bowled over by the younger boy's enthusiasm.

A sardonic voice from the doorway cut in over Mokuba's glee, and Yami's rather undignified flailing. "…You know you both look like a set of deranged mimes let loose in a greetings card store, don't you?"

"Seto-nii!" Mokuba popped up from having tackled Yami, beaming at the languid form of his brother leaning against the bedroom's doorpost. "How long have you been there?"

Lazily, blue eyes scanned the chaos that was Kaiba Mokuba's personal domain, lighting rather amusedly on the flustered Spirit still half-sprawled out amidst the sparkling wrappings. "Long enough to see your dazzling display of intellectual communicative skills."

Yami understood practically none of what Kaiba had just said, but the brunet's tone had been enough. Still a little pink from Mokuba's overeager assault he pushed himself up into a kneeling position, frowning at the youth in the doorway. "Kaiba…"

The CEO only snorted at his rival's sparse words, the mild rebuke for too small to have any effect on Kaiba's ego. He nodded to his brother, ignoring the narrowed scarlet gaze fixed his way. "I'll leave you to your wrapping, Mokuba. Make sure you clean up after yourself when you're done."

"Will do!" The response was all but chirped out, Yami eyeing the youngest Kaiba sibling with vague worry (what had the boy eaten for breakfast?) as Seto snorted once more, turning on his heel and meandering off.

Yami found his conversations with Mokuba to be interesting ones, dialogue consisting both of speech and gestures - some over-excessive to the point of ridicule as the black-haired boy tried to communicate his complicated, far-flung ideas to the vocabulary-deficient ex-pharaoh. There was, naturally, a lot of hand-waving involved, exaggerated facial expressions and drawn-out vowels as both attempted to overcome the seemingly insurmountable language barrier, the younger of the two often descending into peals of laughter at the various absurd sounds and motions his companion came up with, Yami often returning the favour and chuckling at Mokuba's light-hearted antics.

Yami had picked up the controllers to Mokuba's gaming consoles once more, communication with the prepubescent easing his slide back into technological gaming as Yami once more began to pick up the rules with his usual style of alarming ease. Yami still lost to Mokuba more times than he won, but the scores were a lot more even, Yami beginning to take pleasure in the activity instead of his previous frustration.

And so – the evening of the twenty-third. Presents neatly wrapped and labelled Mokuba and Yami had tidied up the mess in the boy's room, the two separating for a few hours to do their separate things (Mokuba to read, and Yami to draw in his notebook), regrouping to eat in the kitchen before resuming their home in Mokuba's room, hauling out whatever console had been nearest to hand and playing video games for pushing six hours straight. At one point Mokuba fetched pizza to sustain them, at another cans of fizzy pop, but still they kept gaming until eventually Yami rose to his feet, muttering something about needing the toilet. Mokuba obligingly paused the game and flopped on his back, sucking idly on the lollipop he'd started on a few minutes previously as he waited for the other to return.

The pre-teen must've dropped off to sleep at one point, because he suddenly came around to the sound of distant shouting, his neck a little stiff from lying in an awkward position for too long. The game was still paused, and Yami wasn't in the room, so that meant –

Sloping out of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes, Mokuba could hear the shouting better. Two familiar voices, both clearly furious, one blazing away in sharp Japanese whilst the other adopted a queer, fired-up mixture of the same tongue and what had to be Ancient Egyptian. Seto…and Yami. Wow. Mokuba was quite impressed that they'd managed to go two whole days without a row.

The yelling (still escalating in volume) was coming from Seto's study. Trotting his way along there Mokuba reached the room right about the point the climax of the argument was reached, the boy stepping back just in time to avoid getting stomped on as an irate Yami all but flounced past him, unseeing, clearly put out.

Mokuba waited for the echoes of a door-slam to sound in the mansion before cheerfully sticking his head around the doorpost of his brother's study, pointedly checking his watch when Seto looked up at him and removing the lollipop from his mouth with a quiet pop. "I can't believe you just had a half-hour argument with someone who doesn't speak a word of Japanese."

"He speaks enough," was the snappy retort, Kaiba's hackles still up even though the one who'd raised them was then absent. "The wider his vocabulary grows the more irritating he gets."

"What were you arguing about?" A curious question.

"I…" Kaiba opened his mouth, brain obviously working hard behind his expression, and then closed it, adopting a vaguely embarrassed air. "I don't recall." He quickly brushed over the comment. "It doesn't matter – Yami should learn when to keep his opinions to himself."

"Like you do?" Mokuba couldn't help but voice the cheeky query, grinning as his brother levelled a flat, unimpressed look his way. "Well…I like that he's here." The boy added, as an afterthought. "He's interesting."

"As long as you're interested, it's all fine then." There was more than just a dash of sarcasm in Kaiba's words, but the underlying sentiment was still a fond one – not that the brunet could ever be compelled to vocally admit it.

Mokuba came forward to the desk where his brother sat, beaming when Seto reached out to absently ruffle his hair. "…I wonder how the magic did it…" Neither of them really needed to specify what 'it' was.

An automatic dismissal from Kaiba, "It's not magic."

"Nii-san, how else do you explain what you saw? You said yourself he appeared from nowhere when you hit the Millennium Puzzle."

"Just because we cannot immediately explain the exact nature and reasoning behind occurrences does not mean that those selfsame occurrences automatically become creations of 'magic'." Seto sounded rather dangerously close to 'lecture-mode'. Mokuba – inwardly – sighed. Sometimes there were drawbacks to having a super-genius for an older brother. "The world itself is built on natural laws that we, as yet, cannot fully grasp the full meaning of, and yet find ourselves subject to all the same. Science and the human rational will find an explanation for all things eventually…it's just a question of waiting for the time for technology to catch up and give us the answers."

Mokuba was smart enough himself, seizing on the thread of a handle his brother had left available for him to grab hold of in his argument. "What if magic is one of those undisclosed laws that you were talking about?"

"If such a thing as 'magic' existed, we would be able to scientifically measure it."

Mokuba frowned. "Some things are impossible to scientifically measure, nii-sama; we just have to accept that they're there. They're…relative." He'd had to search for the word. "Like temperature, and time."

"It's just a question of time," Kaiba rather stubbornly repeated. "We'll have all the answers eventually, and things will be undeniable then."

"I hope I'm not around then," Mokuba said, a little quietly.

His brother looked at him. "Oh?"

Mokuba nodded. "There'd be nothing to wonder about anymore."

Jounouchi came over to the Kaiba mansion on Christmas Eve, cheerily skipping past the security with Mokuba's permission and all-but bouncing up to the front door.

Kaiba opened it, and saw the blond.

Kaiba promptly attempted to shut the door in said blond's face.

"Nii-sama!" Mokuba, looking forward to seeing his friend, had bounded down to the entrance foyer just in time to see his brother's actions, chidingly pushing the world-weary Seto aside so he could fling the door open wide, leaping brightly into Jounouchi's arms. "Jou!"

"Forgive me, Mokuba…" The words escaped Seto as a sigh, the brunet addressing no-one in particular as he spoke to the air, Mokuba too busy babbling greetings to their guest. "I was trying to keep the pets outside."

Yami heard, smothering his smile with one hand as he trailed down the stairs to the foyer, a little taken aback by the person at the door. "Jounouchi?"

"Yami!" The spirit could only stand shock-still when his friend suddenly ran at him (having deposited Mokuba) and tackled him with a hug, squished by Jounouchi's overwhelming enthusiasm. "How are you, man?"

"I…" Yami recognised the question, Mokuba having used it often, "good, Jounouchi. Thank you. What…" He trailed off, surprise losing the question he'd had at the tip of his tongue.

"What are you doing here?" Kaiba asked it in Yami's stead – and because he wanted to know as well, irritated at Jounouchi's presence in his relatively peaceful home.

"It's Christmas Eve!" As if that explained everything. "Christmas Eve should be spent with family!"

Dryly, Kaiba raked his gaze over the blond, who was still currently attempting to crush his ancient houseguest to death. "You're not related to any of us." (A nigh-audible 'thank god' underlay the statement.)

"Friends are th' family you choose for y'self!" One hand pointed jubilantly in the CEO's direction, as if daring Kaiba to disagree, Yami taking the opportunity to escape Jounouchi's fervent stranglehold and gasp for breath against the nearest wall.

Kaiba couldn't help but nitpick, glaring at the presumptuous blond. "You're not my friend."

Mokuba, naturally, overheard the latter comment. "Seto!"

…And so progressed most of the rest of the day. Jounouchi, Mokuba and Yami camped themselves out in front of the television and their videogames, grabbing whatever was to hand from the fridge when they grew hungry. Kaiba, begged by his brother, came down in the early evening, sitting reading rather aloofly by himself in the corner of the room as the others whooped and cheered – or at least, as Mokuba and the mutt whooped and cheered.

Yami, still, was a much more demure presence, joining in with the conversations as best as he good, occasionally passing comment on some atrocious moves pulled by his friend and Mokuba and other times just…just watching the two gamers, smiling contentedly to himself, seemingly completely unaware of the brunet who'd looked up from his book to watch him, silently, in turn.

The time came for Jounouchi to leave. Kaiba vanished back upstairs to his study and his work, and Mokuba and Yami accompanied Jounouchi to the door to see him out. The blond was loud to the last, ruffling Mokuba's hair and giving Yami a hug before disappearing off into the winter night. The door shut behind him, the mansion suddenly seemed a much quieter place.

"Christmas Eve…" hesitantly, Yami voiced the question that had been bothering him for most of the day, drawing Mokuba's questioning gaze to him, "is for family?"

Mokuba wondered where the query was going. "…Usually, yeah." He nodded, so his meaning was clear.

"I…" Yami drew to a halt, resting one hand against the nearest wall, looking…what? Mokuba couldn't quite place the Spirit's expression, his own confusion deepening. "This is Mokuba's and Seto's time." His use of the possessive pronouns was still a bit shaky, so Yami favoured basic nouns – peoples' names -, however childish they made his speech sound, they were used correctly. "I intrude?"

The lilt in the other's words saddened Mokuba, lending the air of a question to Yami's statement. The boy wasn't sure whether the ex-pharaoh had intended the entire sentence to be a query or whether he was just querying the strange verb –

"I am sorry." Yami…looked guilty. That was guilt.

Mokuba, on impulse, moved forward to snatch up the Spirit's hands, unable to bear the remorse in the elder male's expression. "Don't say sorry." His words were simple for the other to understand - he'd become accustomed to speaking that way. "It's good to have you here. I like you here."

"Mokuba -"

The pre-teen quickly leapt in, overriding what he felt sure was going to be an argument against his declaration – really, Yami and his brother were way too similar sometimes. "Besides, Christmas Eve is technically for lovers in Japan, anyway. Couples. People in a romantic relationship."

"…'Romantic'?" Mokuba released Yami's hands to make the shape of a heart with his fingers. "Oh! …Kaiba and you-? Um – you…celebrate?"

…Had Yami just implied-? Mokuba blanched a little, determined to send his thoughts down that road, and quickly shook his head. Yami just hadn't been able to articulate himself very well; that was all. "Seto-nii and I don't have significant others, so…" he shrugged, smiling, "we don't really celebrate Christmas Eve."

"Oh," again, the rebuttal dampening the vague cheer that had been rising. Yami really hadn't meant what Mokuba had…originally thought.

Mokuba wrapped his arms around the other's waist, trying to convey comfort and warmth into the sudden depression. He looked up, deliberately bright, and smiled at the Spirit. "Christmas is for friends, and you're my friend."

Yami, translating the words, slowly smiled back at him.

It was a long-established fact, known to all and sundry, that Kaiba Seto was a workaholic. The CEO simply didn't understand the meaning of the word 'break', on the go from the moment he rose from his (usually most reluctantly taken) rest to the time when he fell asleep (some days at his computer, from exhaustion). The youth worked quite efficiently on very little sleep – a few of his employees had been heard to remark that it would be downright scary should their boss actually take regular rest; if the brunet could achieve so much with so little downtime, what could he achieve at his full capacity? (Said employees would usually get the 'jitters' at that point, down whatever caffeine was closest to them, and try not to shiver too much as they left their gossip to return to actual work.)

And so, late night/early morning depending on one's interpretation, two hours into Christmas Day, Kaiba Seto was in the kitchen in his mansion he usually frequented, in search of some coffee to aid him in his quest for insomnia for another two hours.

He knew the room by heart, not bothering to switch on the light as he headed over to the cupboards where the instant was kept, too distracted to bother with the outrageously expensive percolator he'd bought not so long back, simply because he'd seen it in a store he was passing one day whilst bored, and bought it for the hell of it.

The light switched on in the hallway behind him. Kaiba didn't bother to turn around immediately, but his senses automatically sharpened, stretching out for anything new, anything different and –

That smell.

Subversive, sweet and strange the smell touched Kaiba's senses, drawing the brunet's head around quite unconsciously to trace its source and the rest of the male's body with it –

Kaiba turned, and noticed Yami.

The other had clearly just come from the shower, draped in a long white bathrobe with his drying hair lying over his shoulders and padding into the dark kitchen almost silently with bare feet. His skin was still damp, gleaming in the lights from behind him with a smooth, natural glow, coloured still by the warmth of the heated water he'd no doubt just stepped from.

The intrusive, subversive scent came from him.

"You smell like a fruit bowl."

Yami nearly died (again, if his cock-and-bull Egyptian story had any truth in it) at the sound of Kaiba's voice in the night, stumbling back rather ungracefully a step or two out of reflex, slamming the kitchen lights on at the switch.

Kaiba hissed, raising a hand to cover his abused eyes from the sudden blinding change of lighting, only putting down the limb when his irises had adjusted. "Give some warning before you do that!"

"You – you…" Yami flailed, temper quickly overcoming his shock when he saw it was only Kaiba in the room, "you lurk! You surprised me!"

"Well, you should be in bed!" Thinking back on the conversation he was currently having later in the morning, Kaiba was forced to conclude it was the caffeine-deprivation that had made his arguments sound so pathetic. "Do you normally wander around other people's houses at two am wearing nothing but a bathrobe?!"

Yami ignored the latter question, unable to follow the fast-paced words. "You should be at bed, too! Do you not sleep, Kaiba? You come here to surprise me instead?"

"I have better things to do!"

"Yet you lurk?" It was a pointed question, Yami drawing his bathrobe tighter around himself as he glared at the taller other.

"I do not lurk!" Kaiba was most offended at the very suggestion. "I can't lurk in my own house!" Yami raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't! And – and it's not my fault you smell like a fruit bowl!"

Yami looked confused at the last cry, his bewilderment showing clearly on his face. Although the sentence had been relatively simple Kaiba had spoken a little too quickly (and angrily) for the other to catch it, the statement startled from the CEO in his hissy fit not something originally intended to be come out.

Without thinking Kaiba pointed to the other, "You," he touched his nose, "smell," and then to the required bowl of fruit on the sideboard, "like a fruit bowl." And then he realised he'd just done exactly what he'd been calling his younger brother for earlier that day. "That is, I mean to say I -"

Yami was smiling, looking vaguely embarrassed. (Where had his anger gone?) He'd understood what the other had said. "Shower," the ex-pharaoh tried to explain. "The…bottles?"

"…The bottles in the shower?" Yami nodded. "You mean the shampoo and conditioner…?" Another nod, slightly more tentative. The Spirit clearly didn't know what they were called in Japanese, but must've been accustomed to using them when he'd shared Yugi's body –

Kaiba stopped his thoughts right. There. There was absolutely no way he was giving any credence to the fairytale yarn Mouto's little band of lackeys was so fond of yapping on about.

The brunet turned back to the all-important task he'd originally came to the kitchen for – namely, making coffee. "Do you want some coffee?" He threw the question over his shoulder, Yami having padded a few steps closer during their weird hybrid of a discussion and row.

The shorter male looked at him blankly.

"Coffee," Kaiba repeated, a little exasperated.

Still, the blank look.

Kaiba picked up the jar the instant was in, and dropped it into his companion's hands. "Coffee." He took it back; unscrewing the lid and waving the container before the other's nose, letting the bitter smell touch the air. "Do you want some?"

Yami, realising he was being offered whatever was in the jar, slowly nodded again, taking a seat at the kitchen table when motioned to and watching as Kaiba brooded to himself, setting the kettle near him on to boil.

Although Yami's vocabulary was getting better, the Spirit was still a far-cry off perfect. (And that was without even starting on the deplorable state Yami was in concerning the written word.) Conversation was still slow, and stilted and – oh, why? Kaiba was a genius, damn it all – he and Yami were both geniuses; surely they could come up with some means of communication that didn't involve copious amounts of hand-flailing and pointing?

Kettle boiled, Kaiba poured the hot water into two mugs, mixing in the powdered instant and carrying the two cups over to the table. He grabbed some milk from the fridge before he took a seat opposite his houseguest, pushing one mug and the milk towards the other.

Yami smiled at the sight of the milk – Kaiba supposed that was one type of food that couldn't have changed much since the Egyptian New Kingdom -, following Kaiba's mimed lead to pour a little of the white liquid into his cup. The coffee swirled with colour, lightening to a lighter brown, and Kaiba watched as the Spirit raised the mug to his lips for a drink –

And then Yami spluttered, Kaiba watching in sudden amusement as the bathrobe-clad male pulled one of the most interesting faces he'd seen for a long while, grimacing, choking and apparently attempting to wipe his tongue all at the same time to rid himself of the bitter taste.

"Gah!"

Kaiba found himself with another mug of coffee dumped before him, Yami darting off to snatch a glass from one of the kitchen cupboards, filling the tumbler with milk and downing it quickly. That done, the ex-pharaoh resumed his seat, pouring himself some more milk and nursing his drink, looking utterly woebegone.

Kaiba hid a smile behind his newly-gifted mug of milk-sweetened caffeine. "Is that better?"

Yami scowled at him, hearing the mirth in the brunet's tone. The expression completely lacked all intimidation, however, Kaiba's mind still too fixated on his rival's rather humorous display of only a few minutes previously. Yami's hair, too, was still loose and drying about his shoulders, smoothing the sharp angles of the other's face out, making the Spirit look entirely too…soft for the heated glower, especially when it was combined with the fluffy bathrobe. And as for the milk…

Yami was doing a most remarkable impression of a petulant kitten.

The Spirit must've seen something in Kaiba's face, for the infamous red eyes narrowed, sulky ire stirring once more with the jabs to its master's ego.

"Kaiba – you like milk?"

"I like it well-enough…" Kaiba still too amused to be properly on his guard.

"Good." Yami smiled sweetly, and then threw the lot – still ice-cold from the fridge – in his face.

Kaiba blinked.

The milk dripped.

Yami patted the other's head in a mockery of affection, and then wrinkled his nose when his hand came back, rather obviously, damp from the milk. "Sleep well." And then he was gone.

…

Kaiba dropped his mug of coffee, and then proceeded to yelp as the hot liquid hit his leg.

Shadow: (To the tune of 'I Saw Three Ships'.) And Kaiba got attacked by Yaaaamiiii, on Christmas Day, in the morning~. X3