A Teaser for BEYOND Patient Readers
!THANK YOU! OVER 1000 HITS!
AND YAAAY! I'M SIXTEEN NOW!
A/N: Because I'm so incompetent, I haven't had the time to sit down and write for you all. But I do appreciate the hits, minna. Anyway, I PROMISE I WILL POST SOMETHING SOON AND A YAOI WILL BE MORE THAN A FRACTION OF THAT POST! So much has happened I can't get to it really. I'm in a school play and we work non-stop after school. I'm talking like 3:00 to 7:00 sessions here. I come home and have to do homework too. CRAP! I'M SORRY! IT'S NO EXCUSE! I'VE BETRAYED YOU ALL! Enjoy the...teaser and whatnot, tho...
Disclaimer: I don't own Yuu-Gi-Ou! nor do I own any of the characters used in this fan fiction.
Onto responses:
A Little Bit Of Happiness: Aw, my writing's not that great. 00 And I'm glad you're enjoying reading it. Oh, and I saw you noticed the pairings in this story...I'm assuming you don't approve of a few...? Yes, Pegasus x Seto-sama is one of them. Mokuba x Seto-sama could be uncovered, 'cuz little Moki does talk more than he should about how beautiful Seto-sama is. But Jou x Seto-sama is the main attraction here, so I hope that doesn't bother you. Heehee, I make Seto-sama a lot meaner than he really is. BTW, I'm uber-excited you put my Set-sama x Seto-sama pairing under your C2 community! Thanks a ton! And thank you so much for taking the loooong time off to read my story! It takes me ages to update...
BlueEyesjammys: Glad to see you coming back for more, AND with a new account! Yay! You should try out writing a story yourself...honestly, getting reviews for your work has to be one of the best feelings in the world. And yeah, I read your bio, yes--the way Seto-sama can place one hand on his hip and conceal over half the width of his waist is somewhat disturbing. I'm guessing the camera takes away ten pounds for Kaiba-kun... and yes, the yaoi is here! I hope you're not going to be too busy cringing in disgust and can manage to enjoy it. So, yes, this chapter is for you!
Thanks again, everyone. You are all awesome. The number of hits get higher and higher everyday...would love it if you reviewed more, but love ya anyway.
Love,
Michiro-Chan
XXX
"Aa, Kaiba-boii?" the flaxen-haired male chuckled as he drew back several hoary, blond strands of his debonair mane. "Hasashiburi dayone, Kaiba-boii! Aitakatta-tabetai? Ano…douzo--kitte kudasai…" (What a pleasant surprise, Kaiba-boy! I've been wanting to see you--would you like something to eat, then? Well…please--come inside…)
An enormous typhoon was beginning to brew outdoors, which left the boy of roughly fourteen trembling and sopping to the marrow right on Pegasus' majestic castle doorsteps. Thick, russet, uncombed tresses whipped within the feral tongues of the wind--drenched down to his skull and clinging to slicked, anemic features like epoxy resin. While very tempted to enter, he shook his heavy head and clasped his shoulders tentatively. Long, fair-brown lashes were dripping with something of tears, Pegasus noticed. He was beautiful as ever...so wet, powerless, and just so hopelessly beautiful...
"Uun--" (No--) His eyes captured a hidden, acrid pain beneath the cold front that would slowly strengthen as both the boy and his apathy grew older. Heh. Imitated politeness? Or maybe another one of his enchanting inducements none could ever manage to see through? Pegasus was well aware of the fact that the child was a little impostor, con artist, and pilferer. That he was a little felon dressed in a rookie's disguise.
"Shinpai shinaide--hazukashi garanaide kitte." (Don't worry--don't be shy now and come inside.)
Wearily, the sickeningly white teen trudged into the ashy blonde's home, residue trickling from his dirty, tailored garments and costly, precious dress shoes onto the hospitable founder of Duel Monsters' carpeting.
"Sore kara…" (Well then…)
Seto coughed up a bit of blood, swiping it away stoically with the back of his hand and addressed him quietly, "Tabetakunai--eigo de hanasou." (Don't wanna eat--and we're talking in English.)
"Sounano?" (Really now?) The leucous young adult's almond, bullion eyes were glistening in a rather playful loss of nerve. "Okkee, Kaiba-boii…"
But his gaze quickly changed toward the blossoming sprig of blood leeking through the attire swaddling the boy's torso, and the mottled bruises and abrasions flecking his pale, delicate flesh--clearly wreaked by a beastly hand. Pegasus made no side comments, as he knew Seto would be too stubborn to confess that the gashes and bruises caused him any pain, let alone mention Gouzaburou's name. This elegiac embryonic rose of demise resumed its dispersal only further along his upper trunk…no doubt the briny rainfall of the tycoon, which had soaked down the boy's clothes, leaking into the wound and making the pain only worse.
"And where's the little one? He's not with you--?"
"I came here alone on the aircraft…Mokuba doesn't know I'm here, nor does Mr. Kaiba." Each syllable he uttered seemed to crystallize as a fragile, broken note nearly incapable of forming sound. A sallow hand was clenched in on the wound whittled into his chest, and Pegasus continued to watch the teeming sums of blood that issued through the thinned textile and onto those frail fists--so undeserving of having such snow-white features smeared with the gruesome fluids. The annoyingly cool child made a futile effort to stop the bleeding directly at the rim of the cut--thousands of volts of pain surging throughout his body--but the torment didn't seem to be letting itself appear on that icy façade.
But impressive. The egghead had mastered English within a scope of two years, a mere iota of an accent evident beneath that bold little tone. "Alone? Honestly, I'm touched, Kaiba-boy. Well now…I suppose I'll take care of you for the time being, but I don't have a clue as to why you've crossed an entire ocean to arrive here in the first place--but I won't bother with asking. God knows what goes through that depraved mind of yours, hn, Kaiba-boy?" He gave off a slight laugh at his amusement of the situation, even if the usual sarcasm making up his tenor gave off the barest hint of waver while observing Seto's childish face shaped into a dark expression.
"I came here on strict business, Pegasus."
"And what else is new?"
He scowled, and produced a statement that, to the Industrial Illusions president, seemed like only a result of delirium. "Show me, Pegasus. Take me up on that offer. We've established connections, and I need it now more than ever…show it to…me--"
His body began buckling, but Pegasus shifted quickly enough to catch the porcelain frame. Blood trickled onto his spotless sleeve as he embraced the featherlike bulk. Even so, albatross somehow always seemed to feel so heavy to hold no matter the creature's size. "Kaiba-boy, we're taking you to rest."
"I can't go back…I can't--go…back…"
...So bizarre, yet rather enticing. Sweet exposure. Their little secret. That was always in whimsical Pegasus' taste, anyway.
Kaiba Seto looked like a blithe child as he slept. The rude awakening of daylight was what always tore him from the cuckoo storybook of his nightly trances--
There, Pegasus J. Crawford sat with one nimble thigh crossed over the other in his classic feline fashion at Seto's bedside in another of his elegant throne-like chairs, monitoring the blue-eyed beauty's lovely doze. He couldn't help but notice how much more gorgeous the youth had grown in the past two years.
The fairly intact, velvety, milky flesh of his face was a shade of cool gray no ivory horn could ever hope to achieve. The slumbering, creamy expression rested at its side--seeming to be at peace--was assembled with longer, more limber features: a heavier brow, a willowy nose, and nimbly shaped, graceful lips that resembled the cut of two white-rose petals. The beautiful crown was relayed by a supple neck and rougher collarbones, buttery-toned cheeks were sculpted with more trim and a much more defined framework to them--nearly skull-like--while long, cranberry-strewn eyelashes laced over the maddeningly clear cheekbones and played their faint shadows over the pale mounds.
Russet, coasting, dowdy tendrils framed the adoring face, and galloped their mahogany path around a moon-pale head, curling toward the ends at about the lower nape of his neck. The boy's petite yet coltish-legged figure was veiled in the throw spread over his frail form, while his chest was draped in heavy nighties, the collar of the nightshirt so huge for his narrow depth, it hung over both his shoulders. His eyelids masked eyes waiting to be open.
Pegasus knew the smallest features to his appearance so well: the tiny freckle on his left shoulder, the quirk to his right brow, the pout to his lips, and the dimple to his cheeks that opened out when he growled the little things that mattered so much. Whatever the case was--
…He hadn't looked after him or tried to save him from the obvious harm that awaited him when he returned to Gouzaburou that day. He was letting that ogre slowly kill the poor littlie. He knew it was being done through nonstop studying and through physical abuse…rape, maybe? But this little urchin he cared so much about, literally behind closed doors--he was turning his back on him. Either way, Kaiba-boy would be too stubborn to fess up and ask for help anyway. But he couldn't help but feel like it was his fault.
"Ughn…"
Seto's relaxed expression became a troubled one, and his head began to steadily swing to and fro--
'It's been so long since I've seen you sleep, Kaiba-boy. Just the same, I haven't seen you smile for even longer.'
"Aa, honto shimpa shita shimashita…" (Ahh, I was really starting to worry about you…)
"Ah--"
A cozy glow flared through the unshakable dark of his lids. Gingery lashes fluttered apart, exposing celestial blue, vision making out the hazy profile of a lightly tanned, carroty-eyed blond.
That nearly musical tone he recognized so well came again-- "So he finally wakes."
Being as weak as he was, he hardly had the strength to even open his eyes and clamber onto the support of his elbows. But noticing that the original setting had been relocated, he gasped, and swung his limbs over the bedside with a surge of dilute adrenaline.
"Na…nanda? Naze?" (Wha…what? Why am I--?) The trill of his remark voiced exhaustion beyond description. Realizing that he was speaking to the American whom he had taken upon himself an unwise proposition to chat in their language--thanks to his big, fat ego, of course--his pronunciation left his native tongue and transitioned to the slurred, uncharted realms of the English language instead. His pride was too overblown just to give up. "Agh…I have things to do…this wasn't s'posed to happen--"
His sluggish heels thudded as they collided with the floor, mind too far in the billows to realize how weak he really was after the hemorrhage from the night before. Either way, once his entire weight had been evenly distributed over both bare feet, the burden was still too much for him to bear, as his hands were forced to delve for the nightstand and shore up his trembling breadth. Dizzy spells had him on the verge of fainting.
"No, no. You passed out from the blood loss, Kaiba-boy--and seeing as how exhausted you still are, I suggest you lie back onto that bed and keep sleeping until you feel up to par." The older shook a heavy head and led him back to the mattress, only to have the doting hand smacked away.
"I don't need your help--!" Seto's expression twisted into the legendary scowl, and he heaved in, deciding that a retort was in session, but a sharp stab sent out from his stomach stopped him from continuing. "…Shimata…" He twirled his head down in agonized defeat, the two mangled arms holding up his frame giving way just for the second.
His groan was hardly heard, though it didn't go unnoticed by Pegasus. A reddish, trembling hand ventured beneath the button-down shirt and onto a scored midsection he expected to be swathed in a wool of congealed blood…but quivering nerves accessing the ends of his fingertips told his brain that his hand had come into contact with the soft cotton mesh of bandages. Frowning toward this episode that plagued his mind with suspicion, he lifted the comfortable, enormous fabric of the top that was obviously lent to him by the Industrial Illusions CEO, and saw his fine, frosty little torso tightly wrapped in bandages, the cleft of his belly making for an already very disturbing sight.
The nightstand clattered as he tugged his deathly stare back to Pegasus' and barked, "Nanda kore--!" (What the hell is this--!)
His accent remained as composed as ever. "You needed medical attention, little one. That little cut you had penetrated your stomach lining. You would've ceased to keep on living if I hadn't called for medics. I didn't allow the doctor to have you hospitalized--as much as you needed it--but I did have him stitch you up and give you a sedative to lessen the pain, Kaiba-boy. Meanwhile, I've been here, told to watch you for the time being." He paused, lips curling into a menacing grin and index finger tilting a tepid chin toward his own. "You wouldn't happen to have anything that you'd need to tell your beloved, old friend Pegasus about, hmm? Maybe a little secret? Not that I'm saying you didn't hide the damage well enough, but sadly, if you come to my doorstep, spilling blood over my Persian carpeting, conking out from the pain, and expect to lounge around my castle the next morning as if not a thing happened, I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else, my good friend. This is Pegasus J. Crawford you are speaking to. And I'd like to know how you've allowed Gouzaburou to toy around with you to your breaking point, Seto-dear."
His thin upper lip curled, exposing lethal-looking incisors as he sneered, "Don't call me that."
"Ahh, I see that Kaiba-boy is still a bit of a grump at the crack of dawn. Not much of a morning person, are you? Or are you just always in such a good mood?"
A blossom of reddish-brown turned toward Pegasus as Seto shuddered and tilted his head down in fury. "Yame…yamero yo."
His forefinger teased the hillock of his chin as he beamed. "Stop what, pardon?"
"Your…quirky…little tirades. I hate the way you speak to me…like I'm some stupid kid," he muttered, clenching his ghostly hands into fists--the only gesture of fury he was capable of carrying out without knocking himself out cold.
"Still can't bear playing the underdog, can you? Hm. Look up a bit, Kaiba-boy."
Amazingly enough, the boy did as he was told, and slowly lifted his head with the snippets of strength he managed to've kept. "Ugn…"
Feeling flesh finger his own, he decided that he was too tired to fend it off now even if he hated being touched by others. More to the point, he knew Pegasus was just going to blather on about the usual chimeras, the illusory thoughts Kaiba-kun refused to believe. He was continuously reminded of a grandparent catering to their grandchild whenever he paid visits to Pegasus' dreamy domain. Coddled, pampered, crammed with food, spoiled rotten, the works. His little brother always enjoyed himself during visits, even being as hopelessly shy as he was. Usually it was something any kid would enjoy, but Seto…he wasn't the type to admit openly that he liked the attention.
Limply, his soles veered around so that his buttocks plunked onto the bedside table and he chanced a stare before the madman, eye-to-eye. His nightie bottoms were large in comparison to his little girth, so he was forced to constantly hitch them up along his waist, making for a very uncomfortable sitting--not to mention that no migrating mother bear could be sleepier than Kaiba Seto at that moment.
"How frightfully upsetting--" Seto already didn't like the way this conversation was going. "You're taller, but I'd have to say you're still a bit on the short side for a middle-schooler your age."
He could care less about what the man had to say about him. More than anything, his hunger pangs were growing into unbearable pain. Mokuba'd snuck him a few saltine crackers two nights before--which he snubbed unless he split the share with Moki--but other than that, he'd gone hungry and thirsty for a bit over fifty hours. After all, Gouzaburou only let him eat when he finished his studies, passed expectations and such. His forearms were nestled tightly into his torso, not allowing any rumbles of his tummy to break the surface in favor of Pegsy's unneeded attention.
Even so, Pegasus didn't need sounds to see that young Master Kaiba was miserable.
The painter's dainty hand silkily probed Seto's dingy wrist, pulled up the cuff of the sleeve until he contacted scandalously skinny upper arms, shook his head, and clucked in disapproval. "And I see that your father is cheating you out of his money, eh? I distinctly told you last time to eat. You've hardly fleshed out--in fact, I think you're even more of a little waif than you were at twelve, Kaiba-boy."
Nonetheless, his palm gently traced the boy's cheek and he smirked. "You've certainly changed since I've set eyes on that face. It gets such painful nostalgia going by again. Tsk, tsk, tsk. You've lost those awfully cute, chubby cheeks. And those bags beneath your eyes are not what I'd call quite flattering…" His gaze began to tug other ways. "It makes me feel sad to see that sweet, baby face clear away, but I suppose when life gives you nothing but litter, you have to learn how to get used to it once in awhile, hm? But it's still such a tragedy. Another pair of innocent eyes in the world wiped away of all good and happiness by the vicious hand of reality."
He'd heard enough. "Pegasasu--"
"Yes, my dear little Seto? Are you upset because you see truth at its worst, now? Are you a tad frustrated seeing that unless you tell someone about it, that nothing may ever be done, and you will always remain nothing?"
The boy stiffened and grew livid. "Shut…up. Shut up, Pegasus. I don't want to hear you ramble on about what you think my standard of living is."
"Oh dear me, must you be so cruel? You're such a crotchety, cold child, Kaiba-boy. You act so much like a bitter old man sometimes…"
"And d'you honestly think that the world's shown any more compassion to me?"
"Sorry to hear that, but I get the drift that you've been putting up with it quite well nowadays. Seeing as those gashes carved you in and out--"
Seto's anger began taking control, setting him off into a rage so extreme, it resulted in the wreckage of a dearly high-priced reading lamp that'd originally taken a fine place on the nightstand. Debris of the lush porcelain scattered along the ground as he rasped and eventually screamed, "Urusei. URUSEI! URUSEEEEEI!" (Shut up. SHUT UP! SHUT UUUUP!)
The shards of glass were embedding into his feet, and forming cuts...the blood...he couldn't stand it...
The businessman had to say, he was shaken. "My, my. You're a bit ill-tempered, too. But I suppose your old uncle Pegasus knows when to call it quits. Onto other matters, then. Are you up for some breakfast? I imagine you're not going to cooperate and keep sleeping?"
Straddling onto his rickety legs again, Seto decided to make for a very unproductive escape, murmuring, "No--I have to go…go back…home…"
Only thing was, a startlingly strong grasp on his sleeve thwarted his plans. "Now stop right there, Kaiba-boy. You're not going back home anytime soon. You're staying right here with me. With the blood loss you had yesterday, you're not going to recover moving around like this. The last thing you can do is operate an aircraft--let alone during a storm--bearing in mind how trounced you were last night. I have no idea how you got here alive last night, but we're not taking another risk of letting you go off alone."
Pegasus was shocked to see the little one still resist. "Let go of me…I have to…go. I have to--"
"Kaiba-boy, you never give yourself even the tiniest break. You need rest."
"No…let go--!"
"Kaiba-boy…"
"TE DOKETE YO!" (GET YOUR HANDS OFF OF ME!)
"How would you like it if dear little Mokuba found out about this, hm?"
Suddenly, it hit him. Otouto. The memory of the coarse golds and browns of old-fashioned picture making veered within his brain to that one mid-afternoon. Yeah, all the other kids were being plucked out from the orphanage one by one by eager families, while him and Mokuba were left behind--refusing to leave without the other.
Mokuba had gazed toward him with that adoring ambition in his eyes, declaring that they would never, ever leave each other. He harked back to the elfin hand thrusted devotedly his way, and remembered his own being staunchly placed over his younger sibling's as he twittered:
'Nii-sama! Zutto isshou ni itai yo--?' (Nii-sama! Do you want to stay together forever--?)
And he replied with a brisk nod:
'Aa. Yakusaku suru.' (Yes. I promise.)
"Mokuba," he muttered.
"Come, come now. Don't be thoughtless. You're going to eat well in my home, Kaiba-boy, given that I could really care less exactly what kind of nutrition program Gouzaburou has you on, or what he's feeding you and all that whatnot." Pegasus briefly examined the arm he clasped, fairly nagging in his glance until he finally erupted into another fit of chuckles.
"What's so damn funny!"
"--What a wonderful lifestyle. Lounging in the study with piles of books to study, no toys, no sweets, no play, no baby brother…no joys of childhood. You know they have a little saying in America for that--what was it again? Ah, yes: 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.' I just hope that little Japanese boys aren't all like you, Kaiba-boy."
Seto didn't bother to hold in the upcoming growl. "This is no time to throw around your little gibes, you--"
"Shall we go for tea, then? It's always rather fun to relive the past from time to time, wouldn't you agree?"
The way Pegasus spoke sometimes, it really made him wonder...
The ninth-grader, instead, didn't respond hotly to this. Tea actually sounded excellent to him. "...I guess so."
Pegasus merely laughed. "Fuantasutiku! Ikimashouka."
XXX
GOMMENNASAI! I WILL POST SOON!