Leave Out All The Rest

Chapter Five

Seto was sitting behind his desk, with his hands placed on the wood spread out as he stared at the pieces of paper stapled together securely and marked at the top indicating which subject each paper contained. The house was somewhat quiet, with Mokuba raiding the upstairs rooms with his noise, leaving the downstairs ones silent and quiet just as Seto had tiredly requested him.

It was 08:15 PM and ever since Yami had given him that silent look before leaving the Manor grounds, Seto had been sitting in his office with the things Yami had brought over splayed out in front of him for his eyes to get fixed on in that silent, contemplating, wondering way.

After a while of nearly driving himself mad with wonder, he decided to just finish up the work he had and then ask Téa about what happened today, rather than just sit down without getting anything done and wasting Yami's effort like that.

Why did Yami do that? Did Yami just randomly feel like helping others out? Or was he that proud that he couldn't bear the thought that Seto helped him out like he did last week? What could possibly have caused Yami to risk his father's wrath and leave the house when he wasn't supposed to just to give him those stupid notes? Hell, why did he even bother?

His mind was going in circles; no matter how far it went, it just went back to question one: why did Yami even bother to exhaust himself enough to do that? Why, why, why…

When the clock ticked 12:30AM, his head was reeling with those thoughts and he felt so lightheaded. He got into bed and the moment his head hit the pillow, he was fast asleep, and last thing he remembered before he entered the dark haze of sleep was Yami's small, sad smile and his wide crimson eyes, staring at him with an indecipherable expression.

When Seto walked in through the school gates the next day, still feeling lightheaded with his thoughts and, now, with lack of peaceful sleep, the first person he met was Téa. She looked flushed for some reason, but Seto knew, by the cold look in her blue eyes that it wasn't a very pleasant reason. She looked furious but contained.

"Good morning," he mumbled, as she fell into pace with him while he walked towards the school building.

"Same to you." She replied. Seto gave her a sideways glance, but waited for her to speak first. Which she did after a few moments, "Seto, did you take what I told you and went to Yami and started blackmailing him to do stuff for you?"

Seto stopped in his tracks at that. She stopped as well and turned to stare at him, a promise in her eyes that if his answer was yes then he wouldn't like what she will do.

"No!" Seto protested, his eyebrows coming closer in an indignant frown. She raised an eyebrow and stared at him, so he repeated, "No…no, no, no! How low do you think I am to use something like that against another person, regardless who they are?" So yeah, he was offended.

Téa frowned in doubt and muttered, "Do you know he took down notes for you yesterday in class?"

"Yes, he came over to the Mansion to give them to me," Seto said, a hurt look in his blue eyes.

Téa stood still for a moment, then shifted her weight to the other foot and tutted, "Shit, he's not supposed to go out…"

Seto guiltily put his eyes down and mumbled while starting to walk towards the building once again, "Yeah, he looked uneasy yesterday."

She pouted and followed him inside, "I'll see what happened today. He didn't pick up the phone last night."

Seto felt so uneasy and suffocated at that; did something happen to Yami because he was out giving him his notes? Did his father discover that he went out without permission? What happened?

To make things worse, first bell for the day went off and Yami still didn't show up. Seto felt worry gnawing at his insides because Yami was in school about twenty minutes before that bell. He sat fidgeting in the homeroom, stealing glances towards the door and then to Téa, who was doing exactly the same, with a horrified, extremely-anxious expression on her lovely features. Michael was trying to find out what worried her like that, but she didn't tell him anything, just held his hand and Seto glimpsed that she squeezed it slightly, as if to reassure herself.

He, however, did not have the luxury of having someone to offer comfort like Michael was doing for Téa. So he settled onto ordering a complete, extremely-thorough and ridiculously-strict check for the bags and sentencing the confiscated items to life imprisonment in the Student Council's office. He knew how colorful the names he was called were after he was done, but he was much too occupied by thinking of Yami who did not show up in school even after the lunch-hour to care about those names.

Throughout the whole day, however, he made sure to carefully take down the things they did in class twice; once for himself and once more on separate sheets for Yami. When the bell rang signaling the end of the school day, he was placing the papers inside a file, when Téa walked up to his desk and hissed, "Something is wrong. Something went very, very wrong last night."

Seto swallowed and ran a hand through his hair and mumbled, "Obviously, you're right." He got up and safely put the file inside the bag and asked, "I want to give him these notes. Are you going to his place today or…?" he trailed off.

She sighed, "He told me not to do that anymore. I haven't done the whole jump-in-through-his-room's-window thing for over a year now. I see him only in school." Seto frowned and opened his mouth to ask for Yami's address, but she interrupted him and the idea of going to give Yami the file personally, "You think if I cannot go to his place anymore, he will feel happy if you go?"

He huffed and asked, "Fine, at least give me his number, I'll see if he can give us a solution then." She went silent and stared at him, and she gave him a little smirk. "What!" he asked, suddenly feeling defensive.

"You want Yami's number?" she asked with a little laugh.

He suddenly felt his face growing hot; that must have sounded suggestive. "Yes…now don't get ideas, Téa."

"Why not?" she asked, taking her cell phone out, and carrying on, "You guys would look hot on a date to the new restaurant by the pier."

Seto kept quiet since he didn't trust himself to talk at that moment with how much he felt his face was red.

She finally decided to shut up with her comments and gave him the number. She put away her cell phone and sighed, "I will keep trying to call him. I tried three times during the day, but he isn't picking up."

"Do you think he's okay?" Seto asked quietly as they paused in front of the school gates.

She paused a little. "No, I don't think so."

It was almost night time, and with every passing moment the open balcony no longer brought in as much light as it did the moment before it.

Yami's eyes were fixed on the darkening sky outside, as he lay in bed on his side, looking towards the doors of the balcony. He was lying curled up under the covers with his knees pulled up to his chest and with one arm hugging himself around the middle and the other arm tucked under the pillow on which his head was resting. His eyes were unblinking, as though they were just open and staring at the darkness creeping up on the entire world, but not really seeing any of it, or taking notice of the dimming room so he could get up and switch the lights on in his room.

But he wasn't planning on getting up or moving at all anytime soon. Even if he had been planning to, he couldn't, so that sort of limited his options anyway.

However, before he had taken up this still position, he had grabbed his favorite item in his large bedroom; his small, faithful pocketknife.

Every few minutes when thinking became a very painful thing to do and brought a sting to his eyes, he would look away from the window to bring the arm around his waist closer to his eyes and slide the other one from underneath the pillow with the knife clutched in it desperately and he would bring it closer to his skin and he would run it across a fresh part of his skin and watch with morbid amusement as the skin would break, look pink and ooze some weird, transparent fluid, before the pink and transparent look would retreat to give way to the dark, angry red that would flood the wound like an angry river would. And then, that river of red would over flow from the wound and pour out of it to slide sluggishly across his tanned skin and drip lazily down to the beige sheets or to land on his gray sweatshirt.

And now, he once again found that thinking hurt him badly…really badly. So, he tried to run to a pain that was easier to understand and he brought out the knife and placed its blade on a clear spot which he barely found amongst the mess that was his arm. He gently applied pressure. His skin refused to give and he kept his eyes fixed in fascination that never seemed to die although it was the same sight every time he did this. He applied more pressure, but his skin held its ground stubbornly. He eventually tired of that particular sight and he slid the knife down.

The angle of the blade, and the pressure he was already applying, caused the skin to break. Once again, he watched in fascination the change of colors that was taking place inside the cut. He kept the blade embedded in between the lips of the wound and he observed the contrast the sight made, with the warm red color and the cold, metallic one.

The pain was so comforting in such an odd, twisted way that made him slightly sick to his stomach at himself.

Yet, he was in so much more pain than he had originally planned to be in when the silence was interrupted when his cell phone suddenly started ringing. He flinched violently at the unexpected sound and then froze completely when the blade was driven much, much deeper than intended in the wound. He turned his face to bury it in the pillow to stifle the loud moan of pain that broke through his mouth when his body protested at being jolted in that way and when a dull, cold ache shot through his entire arm. It was not the first time this happened that the phone rang; actually, it was well over the eighth time this afternoon and the eleventh since 10:00 AM. Five times, it was Téa calling and the remaining six times, it was a weird, unknown number. And each time the phone rang, he'd get scared like this time. But each time before this one, he didn't have the knife planted in his arm.

Finally, he decided to eventually give up and answer, and by the way tell whoever the irritating prick was to piss off so he could continue lying there in peace or if it was Téa, listen to her talking, since that seemed to always calm him down. He took a deep breath to brace himself for the pain that would soon attack and he let go of the knife to stretch it towards the nightstand to grab the phone. He was panting heavily by the time he clutched the phone with his fingers. He waited for a second then looked at the screen, only to see that anonymous number on it. He frowned and answered, "Hello?"

"Yami?"

He frowned and blinked at the voice which sounded familiar to him, yet the identity of its owner hovered teasingly on the edge of his mind, "Who is this?" he asked, cradling the phone between his ear and his shoulder and reaching for his profusely bleeding arm to try and staunch the gushing of blood out of the cut.

He had been expecting anyone, anyone at all, to say their name to answer his question. But he still couldn't help the shock he felt inside from expressing itself on his features when the person answered, "It's Seto Kaiba." He stayed silent for a few seconds, making Seto say, "Yami, are you…"

"What do you want?" he cut in rudely.

"You didn't come to school today."

Yami scowled heavily at that, "So?"

"Why?"

"None of your business, Head-Boy."

He heard Seto sigh on the other end and to his irritation, he felt a pang of guilt at his rudeness. "You're right; it's none of my business. I just called to tell you that I have taken down today's notes for you."

He raised an eyebrow, "Why? It's not like I pay attention at all in class anyway. It doesn't matter if…"

"But I still felt that I must do it. We're nearing the exams and I'd like to think these notes may help you out." It was Seto's turn to interrupt him. He sounded determined and did not accept Yami's objections to what he said in any way. "Now, I would like to know if it is okay for me to come over and give them to you."

Yami's eyes widened in horror and without thinking, he shot up in bed, crying, "No!" the adrenaline from the horror he felt at Seto's suggestion quickly wore off and he was left in so much agony, he hardly kept himself from crying out with the intensity of it, and settled onto moaning low from behind his teeth, "Shit."

There was a pause on the other end and Yami prayed through his pain for Seto to just ignore what he just heard, but no such luck. "Are you okay?" Seto asked carefully and Yami cursed in his head.

"Umm…Y…Yeah," he lied, feeling horribly even more miserable about lying to Seto like that. Okay, yes, he didn't give a rat's ass what others felt about being lied to by him, but hey, Seto was the one person in this world other than Téa who gave a shit about him to actually do what the brunet just said he did. What an awfully ungrateful way to show his appreciation.

"You sure? You seem to be…" Seto insisted, pausing for a bit, before resuming, stressing on every letter, making Yami extremely uncomfortable and alarmed, "in pain. Are you sick? Is that why you missed school today?"

Yami swallowed, "Y…Yeah. Sick. That's it."

"What is wrong? Did you go to a doctor?"

Yami took a deep breath in silence, feeling more and more suffocated by the questions that were so, so well-framed that they made him feel as though Seto knew more than he was letting on. Though the idea of going to a doctor most definitely made him laugh out loud in bitterness; last time his father cared enough to take him to a doctor or get him medical attention was on the day he came back from work to find the corpses of his wife and Yugi, and find him almost dying of blood loss. Something trivial such as throwing up nonstop and coughing up blood for an entire day because of the good pounding he received yesterday evening, didn't really strike his father as important enough to take him to the doctor. Besides, who would want to get questioned on how he acquired the injuries that caused this disturbance in his system? If Yami was his father (he cringed at the thought) he wouldn't want to be questioned about that.

"No, Seto, I haven't. I'll be fine tomorrow, I'll come to school tomorrow." He mumbled in a miserable little voice, wanting this conversation to end, because, for some weird reason, he felt pressure building behind his eyes and his chest tightening horribly. "I'll get the leave note tomorrow as well, I promise."

There was pin drop silence on the other end once again, then Seto said, "I have not gone through the trouble of asking Téa for your cell's number, or calling you at all, to that matter, just to make sure you get the stupid leave note, Yami. I wanted to give you your notes and make sure you're okay. If you are sick, you should go to a doctor, and I want to make sure that that takes place as well. So don't insult me by saying such things and making it seem like I called for a cheap reason like making sure you get a stupid leave note, alright?"

Yami swallowed back the lump that formed in his throat and choked him while Seto spoke these words; so indeed, Seto did give a shit to just call and see if he's dead or still alive or whatever in hell it was called to live in this godforsaken place. It made him feel warm slightly, but the warmth sent an aching pain through his heart forced the tears, which initially just pricked his eyes, out and down his cheeks. "Okay, I'm just…err…" he swallowed again when his voice started wavering, then resumed, "Why are you calling?"

"I told you. I wanted to give you those notes and check on you."

Some part of Yami wished he had switched on the record-call option so he could have solid proof that Domino's ice-box, Seto Kaiba, was actually saying that to some irritating, bratty drug-junkie. He must be wanting something else. There must be some ulterior motive. There must be!

He was going to open his mouth to say something, when suddenly, very loud, noisy bangs were made on his door and his father's voice came, loud and booming as ever, "HEY BITCH, OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR."

Yami closed his eyes for a few moments and spoke embarrassedly through the phone, wishing that he was somewhere else at that very moment and doing something else, "Listen Seto, thank you a lot for the notes and all, but I will take them from you tomorrow, alright? Thank you a lot, but I must go."

"Is everything al…"

"Yes, everything's f…" he was interrupting when his father's voice cut his short.

"Did you hear me, cunt! Fucking open the door."

Yami cringed and curled tighter around himself, as if trying to protect himself from a not-so-unknown enemy trying to assault him and without even thinking, his terror at the fact that Seto must have heard that blinding him, he lashed out, not noticing how much this outburst will cost him and not noticing that the speaker of the phone wasn't covered, "QUIT YOUR BITCHING! ALREADY HORNY OR WHAT? SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR LIKE FIVE MINUTES…"

He put his attention onto the phone now and realized with chagrin what he just did when he heard Seto saying in a slow voice, "Yami, what is going on?"

"Nothing! Now I must go. Thanks a lot for the concern, Seto. Goodnight," and he lowered the phone, ignoring the hurried 'wait' he heard Seto say, and he hung up.

His heart was fluttering wildly in his chest. What have you done, what have you done? His mind screamed at him in terror and he whimpered in his throat at the horrifying silence coming from the other side of the door. He placed a hand to his mouth, terror rendering him frozen on the spot, feeling sicker than he ever was since last night. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. He should not have said that. He really should not have said that to his father.

Finally, it was only after five minutes that he untangled himself from his paralyzing terror and he got up with difficulty to walk with dread to the door. His hand hovered over the handle for several seconds, as his survival instinct screamed at him to run…be somewhere else. Anywhere, anywhere at all safer than what was waiting for him cunningly, ruthlessly on the other side of this big, heavy wooden door. Anywhere away from the pain, misery…hell anticipating his presence on the other side of this solid block of wood that was a fake illusion of protection, since it never did cosset him in any way from the monster behind it.

Finally, his logic won over that wild, basic instinct and he realized that he had nowhere to go to, and had no any other option but to open that door and get whatever life has dished out for him. As usual.

He turned the knob and opened the door, pulling another fake façade of calmness and indifference on his features. Just another lie to try and protect whatever tattered remains of his pride, which he no longer believed existed at all.

His father was standing there with his muscular arms crossed and his hips resting on the railing that the rest of the house and the downstairs section were beneath. Tall, slender, well-toned body, with a wild-looking, seemingly-disheveled mane of black hair and a deathly-handsome face, with the most intense features of it being the cold, ruthless crimson eyes, which were the same shade as Yami's and were enunciated by the very sharp edges of his face, the long, straight nose and thin-lipped mouth, its harshness increased by the hard shape of his jaw. He had a slight, elegant goatee on his chin and with the cold, merciless expression in those crimson eyes he passed onto his son, Yami was easily convinced why people associated persons of such elegance and with goatees to Satan and antagonism as a whole. Or at least, he was convinced that this particular person, his father, the respectable businessman, Mr. Motou was the perfect impersonation of Satan in a human form.

Yami prayed he got out of this one alive.

He walked out of the room and stood in front of the tall body, so much larger than his, and he took a deep breath and looked up.

A second or two later, he found himself flying down to the ground underneath his father's feet when one heavy, ruthless palm slapped him with so much force that he lost his balance and his injured, slight body was thrown down in such a way. He blinked, still stunned by the blow and a small part of him realized that there was the slight, coppery taste of blood in his mouth. His lungs suddenly remembered how to contract again after they froze just like he did when he was struck and they started expelling the air in them too suddenly for him to cope up, so he started coughing violently.

He was going to raise his hand to his mouth to cover it up when he saw the blood splutters on the linoleum floor with black and gray designs on it, when he gasped in pain and forgot all about his mouth and raised his hand to his father's hand that fisted cruelly in his hair and pulled him up by it, and tilted it upwards so he could stare at the cruel, cold crimson orbs. "Your eyes…remain…on the ground…whore," each part was reinforced by a violent tug on his hair that sent jolts of pain throughout his whole body.

Against his will, he started crying all over again, fear making him forget about that suddenly-funny thing called pride and making him start defending himself in the only way he could, "Dad, I…"

He was once again interrupted when he was slapped once more on the same side of his face. He whimpered and blinked in pain, realizing that he was being dragged by his hair towards the stairs only when they were right at the top of them. His head ached so much and he was hyperventilating now, unable to breathe properly through the fear and tears.

"You embarrassed me in front of my guests, freak. Bitching? You haven't come near to seeing how bitchy I could become Yami," Samuel said dangerously, pulling him up once more to stare into his tear-streaked, reddened and bruising face with a dispassionate expression. Yami whimpered and his hand tried holding on tightly to his father's, as if like that, he would be able to untangle the inhumanly strong hold on his hair. "You're gonna pay for what just happened, Yami. I promise you that."

And without a second's hesitation, he swung Yami away from him, forward towards the stairs.

Yami's eyes widened in alarm, and the scream that was going to break through his lips died in his throat before it was even vocalized, as his arms shot out, trying to hold onto anything, anything to halt the fall that would most definitely kill him…trying to catch a part of his father's body, to implore him to feel sympathetic for his child…

But he found nothing to even hinder the fall. He fell back due to the momentum of his father's toss and the emptiness behind him that made his heart feel as though it was rising in his throat. The only thing he managed to bring out of his mouth was a tiny, imperceptible gasp of surprise, terror, desperation…he didn't know.

He didn't even know what happened next.

The next thing he was aware of was that he was once again being dragged somewhere by his hair. He felt sick with pain in somewhere in his chest whenever he breathed and he coughed violently, and hence that made the pain impossibly worse, and he successfully managed to make himself sick. He turned his head down to the ground and retched violently, coughing and splattering and moaning in pain when Samuel's hold on his hair tightened and when he was forced to follow on his hands and knees.

He was surprised that he wasn't dead, or with a broken backbone.

Yet, he wasn't so sure if he was lucky because he was suddenly tossed forward again and he fell sprawled in the middle of what he vaguely recognized as the living room. He stayed curled up on himself there, waiting for his breathing to become less painful, something which did not happen at all, until he was grabbed once again, this time by the arm, and he heard the sweatshirt he was wearing getting ripped and felt it being torn away from his body. He sobbed when the cold air hit his skin, but the desperate, pained sound turned into a gasp when he was roughly manhandled to get turned to the other side, so that whoever was sitting on the armchairs and the couches of the room would get a clear view of the hideous tattoo he had on his back and shoulder blades.

"There you go, gentlemen. This evening's entertainment…"

Yami closed his eyes and let his mind wander elsewhere, far away…safe…

Pride? He needed someone to get him a dictionary so he would get to know what that word meant…

Next day, when Seto went to school, he was in the same mood like he was yesterday evening…full-blown panicked mode. When he was sure that Yami really did hang up, he had jumped up from his seat behind his desk in the office in KaibaCorp's skyscraper and he called Téa to hysterically screech at her what he heard over the phone. She had screeched back at him just as much, but he didn't think she was nearly as panicked as he was.

Well, he had wanted to do something like call the army forces and go over to Yami's place to bring the whole thing on Yami's dad's head…but Téa said that they absolutely will not do anything of that sort.

Which was why he thought that she was not even close to alarmed, never mind as alarmed as he was.

Téa was once again waiting for him by the gates. He could see her while he parked his car in the parking, leaning on the brick and metal fence with her arms crossed in front of her chest. He got out and took his schoolbag with him and walked directly up to her. "Good morning," he said.

"Same to you," she said and Seto got an odd sense of déjà vu. She stood in the same position, not even hinting that she was about to start moving towards the school building. He looked at her and she seemed to sense his question so she said, "I am waiting for Yami to get here. If he doesn't, I am not going to attend classes and I'll go see him."

So she wasn't waiting for me then, Seto thought and he nodded, taking a place beside her and assumed the same position like hers. "Well, I'll wait with you then."

She stared up at him searchingly for a bit, before smirking to herself and looking ahead at the direction where Yami was supposed to show up, and she giggled, "So did you consider the idea?"

"Which idea?"

"A date…with Yami?"

Immediately he pushed off the wall and glared heatedly at her, "No!" Liar, a voice at the back of his head giggled. Okay, so maybe the thought crossed his mind yesterday once…or twice…or a little more than that. But he was not about to share that with Téa! She definitely needn't know that. "Stop thinking like that."

"Like what?" she asked innocently and he made a face at her and didn't answer her. He leaned once again on the wall and watched the passing students who shot him dirty looks, all remembering their beloved items which were confiscated by him yesterday. He ignored them and stared ahead, his fear and anxiety growing more and more with each moment passing without Yami showing up. He still couldn't believe the rudeness the boy was addressed with by his father. And he still shuddered over the indication of the words Yami screamed out at his dad.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair and was going to ask Téa if she had called Yami once more last night after he told her what happened, when she suddenly straightened and stood on tiptoes for a moment, craning her neck and narrowing her eyes slightly in some direction in front of her, before her eyes went back to their normal shape and she said in a worried way, "Yami's here."

He followed her gaze and he stared at the elegant Chrysler from which Yami was stepping out of, slinging his school bag on one shoulder. Seto stared at the car and a small part of his mind screamed, I should get one like that. The car screamed: filthy rich.

He was aware that he was not the only boy on the school campus gawking like a moron at the car. Every single male on the school grounds stopped, and ignored everything around him, including those speaking to some of the hottest girls in the entire school, and just stared with an open mouth at the extravagant car from which the school's supposedly biggest psycho stepped out of it.

Seto blinked and focused his attention away from how sexy the car was and how he must buy one immediately, and watched as Yami stiffly bent down a little to speak through the open window to someone inside. Téa was already walking towards him, but she was doing it really slowly, as if to draw less attention to herself. Seto started walking towards the car as well, just as Yami straightened, failed to hide the look of raw agony from his face, and pushed away from the car, not even caring to give it a second glance.

Téa reached Yami before he did. She stopped in front of him and said something that didn't reach Seto's ears where he had stopped, unsure of whether going to speak to Yami right now was such a great idea. From where he stood, Seto felt his stomach lurching at the sight of the other boy. Something was wrong; something was very, very wrong about his entire appearance, something that made him look more fragile, more vulnerable today.

And then, Yami raised his eyes from where he had them cast down at his feet as Téa spoke to him urgently while he kept silent. He raised them and they were looking directly at Seto's. And in them, Seto read defeat, brokenness, humiliation, suffocation, surrender and a small, helpless, terrified little boy with nowhere to run and with no safe arms to run into when the whole world gets too crazy and starts to condemn him for minor things he had no control over while turning a blind eye and deaf ear and numb existence to all the things that were just so completely wrong.

Téa's words obviously were not answered, because Yami placed his hand on hers and he said something, which made her stop talking altogether and step back with a resigned, defeated look. He turned his eyes to the ground once more and walked towards the gates, where he paused for a moment beside Seto, his eyes still fixed on the ground, before he started walking on once more.

Seto turned around to call him back, when Téa's voice came from behind him, "No." He turned to her so she shook her head and repeated, "No. He's going to see Bakura now. And trust me…he…" she paused, and pain surfaced on her face and she completed, "He needs whatever he is going to buy from him."

For the rest of the day, Seto made sure to obey Téa's request to leave Yami be for the moment, and he merely settled onto watching from a distance. Yami was extra-quiet; usually, whenever a teacher remarked about his lack of participation in class, he would make sure to snap a reply back at whoever the poor person was. But today, even as the Math teacher passed a comment about him that had the whole class (except for Téa and Seto, of course) to either laugh or smile in amusement, he just kept his head down and kept writing in his notebook furiously, ignoring the whole world around him.

Seto was torn between his stoicism and indifference, and another weird, insistent urge to just rush over to Yami and take him in his arms to take him away from all of this ignorant, stupid, mindless crap going on around him. He had a headache by the end of the day from trying to fight both the want to not shun everyone who dared mess with Yami (like he glared at the Math teacher, making him clear his throat embarrassedly and drop the whole issue) and fight the worried, concerned glances he kept shooting towards Yami all day long.

Finally, the final class in the whole day arrived and Seto got more and more uneasy; Yami looked quieter and more exhausted than he ever looked not only throughout the whole day, but also in the whole time he'd known him.

Mr. Anderson thankfully skipped Yami's name during the uniform check and did not comment when he saw Yami sitting down on the ground, with his back pressed into the wall of the gym, and his knees drawn up to his chest, a dazed, unfocused look in his crimson eyes.

He was pissed, however, when a few of their classmates pointed at Yami and started laughing, commenting on how high he was at the moment that he would not be able to tell if somebody pounds him to next week and back again…like they were planning to do.

Seto walked in front of Yami and he raised an eyebrow and glared at all of them and said in a low voice, "I promise you, that if anything happens to him, even if you haven't done anything, I will personally make sure that the whole group of you is not to be let inside any school in Japan. Am I clear?"

They stared at him sourly and turned away, muttering something about fun-spoiler and irritating and crazy people flock together, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. He just glared at them for a bit more, so they started focusing their attention elsewhere and he dropped the glare and turned to stare at Yami sympathetically. He found a pair of emotionless, expressionless crimson eyes staring up at him, so he blinked and asked, "You okay?"

Yami's eyes were filled with an ice-cold expression that actually sent a slight chill down Seto's spine and he said in a venomous voice, "Now, Seto, don't look at me like that…I might start thinking that you are pitying me for some reason." He paused and got up with perfectly-coordinated moves and grace that had Seto staring in awe at him for a while, and he added, "I don't deal well with that sort of expression. Especially when I am on the opposite side of it."

Seto blinked and stayed silent for a while, in which Yami just stared up at him in defiance. Something was really wrong with Yami's face. He looked a bit closer and his eyes widened very slightly in realization when he saw the very faint difference between the colors of particular areas on Yami's face. It was a very faint difference and only one who was searching for something different in particular would notice it. His stomach lurched and he was feeling sick; fake tan? Was Yami's face so bruised that he needed fake tan to cover it up?

"What the hell was going on yesterday?" he asked, keeping his revulsion at this atrocity intact. That's right, Yami said it too; sympathy was not the correct technique to use in this situation. Something needed to be done, but simply being sympathetic was not it.

"Stay out of it," Yami snapped, fire in his eyes.

"No thanks, I won't stay out of it. I'd like an answer to my question too." Seto insisted, crossing his arms.

"Go fuck yourself, Kaiba," Yami hissed at him and started walking away.

However, Seto grabbed him by the upper arm, and without breaking a sweat, swung him back into place against the wall, drawing a sharp gasp of pain and surprise from his mouth. He made sure to make his glare as cold and piercing as possible as he pinned Yami to the wall by his arm and towered above him and venomously hissed, "What was that?"

Yami was still gasping for breath for a few moments after that, but he stared up at Seto and repeated rudely, "Go fuck yourself, you irritating, self-centered prick. What gives you the right to ask such a thing?"

"What gives me the right is that I was on the phone with you when someone just called you…" he couldn't get the words out, even if he was mad as hell right now. "That!"

Yami went silent and flushed dark red. Seto did not let him go and did not say anything either. Eventually, Yami's eyes turned to his and he said in resignation, "Okay, Kaiba, what exactly do you want?"

"I want to know what the hell is going on." Seto said firmly.

Yami closed his eyes briefly, then grabbed Seto's sports t-shirt and, somehow managing to break free from Seto's hold, dragged him to the empty locker-rooms that had the showers and all attached to it. Seto frowned and raised an eyebrow, but waited to see what the hell Yami was doing.

When they were inside and when Yami made sure that the whole place was empty save for them, he locked the door behind them. He turned to Seto and said, "Don't move, trust me, this will be good." And he came closer and Seto just watched him carefully, wondering what the fuck's going on, especially since Yami's tiny hands went to the hem of his track pants.

"Whoa! What the hell are you doing?" he half-yelled out, grabbing Yami's wrists and pulling them away.

Yami blinked calmly at him and smiled all of a sudden, a soft, warm smile that took him by surprise, and he came closer, wrists still trapped by Seto's grasp and he stood on tiptoes and craned his neck upwards. Seto blinked as he realized Yami's intentions and his brain froze totally and forgot everything about what he wanted to ask and why they were here in the first place. He could only just stare at Yami's sexy, twinkling, half-lidded crimson eyes and drag his gaze down to the very appealing wine-colored lips that were approaching his.

He didn't even know what came over him; he let go of Yami's wrists and he let it happen, Yami's lips attaching gently to his, the other teenager's tongue boldly and curiously discovering his mouth and tasting it playfully, while his now-free hands wandered to finish its incomplete task of undoing the drawstrings of the Nike track pants.

Instead, his hands rose up and he placed them on Yami's neck and he titled his head to the side slightly so he could get a better angle and he started to respond rather eagerly to Yami's approach. Everything about the incident yesterday evening was forgotten and instead, he was more preoccupied with the way Yami's fingers were touching his skin from beneath his t-shirt and how the other small hand was wrapped so deliciously and firmly around his suddenly-raging arousal inside his pants. He moaned when Yami's mouth found a very sensitive spot on his neck and sucked on it gently, while both his hands were now at the hem of his pants, pulling them down along with his underwear.

He was lost…lost in some far away, blissful heaven where there was only sweet heat, delightful sensations, unearthly touches…and Yami. Nothing else was needed.

Within a few more moments, Yami had dropped down to his knees in front of him and had his small, extremely warm lips wrapped around his throbbing flesh and he was working on it with surprising talent and skill that had Seto groaning once more in pleasure and clenching his eyes shut when the sensations became too delightful for him to bear anymore.

Within a minute or two, he had shot his load in Yami's mouth and was panting heavily as the boy rose up after gently placing a small kiss on his hip bone and readjusting his clothes back to how they were. He leaned heavily on one of the marble counters in the room, waiting for the foreign weakness in his knees to pass while Yami placed his right hand on his cheek and kissed him deeply on the lips once more, making him taste Yami as well as something else which a vague part of his mind told him was his own essence.

He was responding to the kiss passionately when he suddenly realized what just happened. He flinched and he pulled away, exclaiming, "What the fuck did you just do, Yami?"

Yami smiled sweetly at him and said, "I just gave you a blowjob."

He felt himself inventing a new shade of red at that and he couldn't gather his thoughts long enough to retaliate. What had he done? How the hell did he let himself get so carried away? Even after what Téa told him? What had he done?

And to make things worse, Yami smiled a bit more and titled his head sweetly to the side and said, "Now, please, just forget what you heard yesterday, alright? And if you need any more convincing, just tell me. You're cute and I won't have trouble doing a repeat of what happened just now."

Seto felt his stomach heaving at what he heard. He raised one hand to his mouth to stop himself from throwing up and just when he succeeded in pushing back the nausea he felt, Yami said while leaving the room, "If you feel like taking it a step further I don't mind that either."

When the door closed behind Yami, the only sound in the locker room was the sound of Seto emptying his stomach of all of its contents.

A/N: ^_^ hello there, dearies… sorry for the half-hour delay :D I was out.

I'd like to say a quick thank you to people like Dragonlady and Yami Neferbre and Princess Lolita *hugs* and every other person who has read this work so far.

As you might have noticed I put up Yours to Hold as well… I wasn't so sure which fics to put up next so I started with the complete and somewhat okay-written ones… Please do tell me if you'd like to see something in particular reposted.

I love you all 3

Hathor…