Disclaimer: Unless I accidentally bought the rights in my sleep I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! (which is a pity really...)
"Beautiful face. Beautiful body. Horrible attitude."
~Jennifer L. Armentrout, Obsidian
-Chapter 5-
For the next few days, Alistair barely saw either of the Kaiba brothers. He caught glimpses of Kaiba when he came home from work, often well past eleven at night, and chatted with Mokuba at meals, but other than that he was on his own.
The weather remained a perfect blend of sultry and breezy, so he spent much of his time in the garden. The artificial, manicured lawns and bushes shaped to perfection made his skin crawl, and he found the several stone fountains with water elegantly springing forth from the palms of Greek gods he couldn't identify distastefully posh, but the garden also included, among the meticulously placed trees and flowers, one untamed willow partially shielding a white marble bench overlooking a matching table inlaid with a chess board.
It was the perfect escape from the oppressiveness of the mansion without having to leave the grounds, and quickly became Alistair's favorite place to spend long afternoons thinking or reading books from the Kaiba's private library as the wind through the branches tousled his hair and the smell of the tree and earth filled his nostrils.
Alistair hadn't read much in the way of novels growing up, and had never given reading as a pastime much thought, but he found himself devouring one book after another, though he had to pause often to look up words he didn't know in an old dictionary he'd found on the library's ground floor. He enjoyed the feeling of being transported to a different world, a world where, without fail, good would triumph over evil.
Over the course of four days he read through seven books. He was currently part way into a book called Beowulf. He didn't care for the title character, finding him to be an arrogant, attention-seeking braggart, and empathized much more with Grendel, the supposed villain of the story.
As the week came to a close, Alistair couldn't help but wonder if Kaiba had forgotten to call about the aviation exam. He was eager to take the test because the sooner he took the it, the sooner he could log enough hours to become an officially licensed pilot, and the sooner he could turn his back on Kaiba forever and be the better for it. Thursday morning, five days after the motorcycle incident, he decided to confront Kaiba about setting a date for the test.
He waited in the dining room for Kaiba to show up for breakfast, but after fifteen minutes, Trudy said that he wasn't coming.
"If he's not down by seven-fifteen, he's opted to get something on the way to work, or more likely, to skip breakfast altogether." She looked deeply disapproving. "What would you like, the usual?" He answered in the affirmative, having learned better than to offer his help in the kitchen.
When she returned twenty minutes later, he set Beowulf aside and pulled up a chair for her. The tray she carried contained food for him and two cups of tea.
"What are you reading?" She asked, noting the two books, one of which was a ratty old dictionary, lying on the table.
"Bee-o-wuhlf."
"Beowulf?" She was surprised. She had assumed, given his background, that such works would be beyond him and internally chastised herself. "Wouldn't you rather read something more pleasant?"
"You know it?" Alistair asked, equally surprised. The book was very old; he'd assumed that it was obscure.
"A very long time ago when I was in school. I don't remember much about it except that it was brutal and that I didn't like it."
"It's not very happy," he agreed, biting into a piece of toast. "But I like it even though... Beowulf," he tried to pronounce the name as she had, "is really obnoxious."
"Don't talk with your mouth full," she chastised him gently, primly taking a sip of tea. "If you don't like the main character, what about it appeals to you?"
He pondered the question, trying to remember to keep his mouth shut while he chewed. "I feel bad for Grendel."
"Grendel was the monster though, wasn't he?" she clarified.
Alistair nodded, his mouth now full of bacon. He swallowed before continuing."Yes, but that's just it: I don't think he's a monster. To me, a monster has to know the difference between right and wrong and choose to do evil. I don't think Grendel does. The author makes him seem much more like an animal, and animals can't be evil. Even if they kill, they don't know that killing is bad, and moreover," he tested a word he'd learned just the day before, "they mostly just kill to survive. They either kill to eat or because they feel they're being threatened.
Hrothgar's hall was obviously built in Grendel's territory and he defended it and reaped the benefit of easy prey. But it doesn't seem like he made the people he killed suffer on purpose, he wasn't torturing them. Then Beowulf came along and cut his, Grendel's, arm off before killing him which seems way more cruel to me than anything Grendel ever did, but Beowulf is the hero and Grendel is the monster. Typical."
"It certainly sounds dreadful when you put it that way, but think of it like this: if Beowulf didn't kill Grendel, more people would have gotten hurt. Surely the safety of the men was more important than the life of one monster."
Alistair set his fork aside, his face darkening."No. They could have moved the hall. But they decided that they had more of a right to that land than Grendel just because they wanted it. And they didn't care what they had to do to keep it. They didn't care that they were killing another being unnecessarily."
Realizing she'd touched a nerve, Trudy decided to change the subject."You enjoy reading then?"
The momentary darkness in Alistair's eyes lifted. "Yes. But before this week I didn't read that much. I never had time."
"What have you read so far?"
He thought back. "A couple of fantasy novels. One of them was called The Hobbit, another one was Gulliver's Travels, there was one called Dragons of Prune or Purn or something like that, a book of short stories by some guy named Poe, I read part of Dracula but it was boring, Ender's Game, which I really liked, and now I'm reading this one."
"And you read all that in just a couple of days?" Trudy was impressed.
"I haven't had anything else to do."
"Do you know what you're reading next yet?"
"No. I was going to finish this then go back to the library and find something new. I've just been picking them at random."
"If I may, I have a suggestion. It's not fantasy, and it's not as action packed as any of those, but one of my favorite books growing up was Black Beauty. Do you know it?"
He shook his head. To be honest, 'black beauty' sounded like a porn movie to him.
"It's about a horse, written from his perspective, and documents his life. It's quite sad, but given how you felt about Grendel, you might like it. There's probably a copy in the library, but if not I'm pretty sure I still have it. Would you like me to look for it for you?"
"Sure," he agreed to spare her feelings even though it didn't sound that interesting.
Within the next hour he'd finished Beowulf while sitting out in the garden in his usual haunt on the stone bench under the willow tree. He knew he wasn't supposed to be happy that Beowulf got killed at the end, but he couldn't help but appreciate the poetic justice of Beowulf's death at the hand of a 'monster.'
Stretching, which caused the bones in his neck and back to crack audibly, Alistair yawned and picked up Beowulf and the dictionary and prepared to take it back to the library.
The Kaiba library, though seldom used anymore, was easily his favorite place in the house.
It was huge, two tiered, and paneled with the same dark wood as the bookshelves. The lighting was warm and emanated from old fashioned looking hand-fired glass orbs.
He ascended the stairs to the second tier, lush dark green carpet muffling his footsteps.
After returning Beowulf to it's shelf he pondered how to go about looking for Black Beauty. He vaguely remembered from the little formal schooling he'd received that libraries had a special way of organizing the books to make them easier to find. He knew that the first tier contained only non-fiction, but there had to be more to it than that. He studied the shelf in front of him, looking for something they all had in common. He quickly noticed that all of the books in front of him with the exception of Beowulf were written by authors whose last names started with 'B,' and smiled to himself for having so easily figured it out. He realized though, that if the books were in alphabetical order by author he wouldn't be able to look for Black Beauty since he had no idea who had written it and left the library, careful to shut the lights off behind him. Dictionary still in hand, he set off to find Trudy.
She wasn't in the kitchen and he was at a loss where to go next when she happened to walk up from the pantry.
"Oh! Alistair! You gave me a fright! What are you doing here?"
"I was looking for you. I finished Beowulf so I went to look for Black Beauty in the library but I don't know the author's name."
"Oh, of course. It was written by a woman called Anna Sewell. But don't worry about it; I'll go get it for you. Like I said: I'm almost certain I still have a copy. I'll be right back. In the meantime could you go tell Mokuba that lunch is just about ready? Ever since he broke his leg he seems to have forgotten when lunch is and that it is to be eaten in the dining room not off the floor of his bedroom while he plays video games."
With that, she disappeared back downstairs, past the pantry, to what Alistair knew to be the apartment she shared with her husband, the groundskeeper, George.
Alistair meandered towards Mokuba's room, not excited to have to spend one-on-one time with him as they'd been avoiding each other since the debacle on Saturday.
As he approached Mokuba's room, he heard the sound of gunfire emanating from the game room. He opened the door as noisily as possible so as not to startle Mokuba who seemed to be fully immersed in his sniper game. He was seated on the floor in front of one of the giant TVs with his broken leg propped up on a pillow.
"Mokuba?" he called.
"Hang on!" Mokuba replied over the exaggeratedly loud crack of his rifle. Alistair found himself counting to ten in his head to offset the feeling of panic that had started to form in the pit of his stomach. It was a game, just a game. It wasn't real.
Mokuba finally came to a save spot and paused."What's up?" he asked, turning with some effort. "Are you ok?" He noted how pale Alistair looked.
Alistair waved the question away as his pulse slowly returned to normal. "I'm fine. Anyway, Trudy told me to come get you for lunch."
"Tell her to bring it here."
"She told that you need come down to the dining room."
Mokuba childishly scrunched his nose up. "That's so far from here. Ugh, fine. I'll be down in a couple of minutes."
"Alright, I'll tell her." He hesitated in the doorway. "Look, Mokuba, I'm really sorry about getting your leg broken and getting you in trouble with your brother."
Mokuba's face took on a drawn appearance not unlike the expression worn so often by Kaiba.
"It's ok. I shouldn't have agreed to go. It was fun though, mostly. But it made me realize that maybe Seto's right; I can't take care of myself well enough to do things on my own." The mask cracked and Alistair could see how upset the fourteen year old was.
"He's not right," Alistair said firmly. "With a little bit of training you could take care of yourself. Besides, if he never lets you try you'll never know what you can do on your own."
"When I'm older maybe."
"You're fourteen, Mokuba! How old is 'old enough' to go to the mall by yourself? To have friends? Sixteen? Eighteen? Never? I understand that he's trying to protect you. I'm an older brother too, I get it, but I learned the hard way that no matter how hard you try to keep the people you care about safe things are going to happen that are outside of your control and you still lose them! Eventually you're going to resent how he treats you and leave!" Alistair suddenly realized he was shouting and lowered his voice. "Mikey was taken from me before he had a chance to grow up, but Kaiba has no excuse to keep you dependent on him. Or do you want to live in his shadow forever?" Wide-eyed, Mokuba shook his head. "Then you have to stand up to him, remind him that you're not a child anymore and that he should stop treating you like one."
"I don't know about you, but trying to argue with Seto doesn't usually go so well for me."
"Have you ever really tried?"
"No," Mokuba admitted. "I give up after he says no the first time. Do you really think being assertive would work?"
"You're not asking, you're telling him. Just tell him that whether he likes it or not you're going to do what you want to do. But maybe let your leg heal first."
Mokuba smiled ruefully."That's probably a good idea. Thanks, Alistair."
"No problem. We'd better get going though before Trudy sends someone after us."
Mokuba giggled, reaching for his crutches. "Has she gotten to you already? She's really nice, but she can be kind of bossy, even to Seto."
With Alistair's help, he and Mokuba made for the dining room post-haste where they were met by an exasperated Trudy.
"I thought I'd have to send the hounds after you two. Sit down and eat for heaven's sake!"
Lunch turned out to be roast beef sandwiches with a light salad on the side. And as always, there were steaming cups of tea alongside the water and soda.
Having been helped into his seat, Mokuba set upon the food like he hadn't eaten for days rather than since breakfast.
Alistair, still unused to eating so much food in one day, let alone in one meal, stared at his plate uncertainly. Sensing his thoughts, Trudy said:
"Don't even think about getting up until you've cleared your plate."
"I can't possibly—."
"Eat it. Lord knows you're far too skinny. Oh, and I've found the book; I'll be right back with it."
"What book?" Mokuba asked around a mouthful of sandwich.
"Black Beauty. She thought I might like it."
Mokuba nearly choked trying to keep himself from spewing food all over the table."That sounds like a porn movie," he managed finally.
Alistair was only a few bites into his salad when Trudy returned, hastily straightening her gray hair which always seemed to be coming out of her bun, and brandishing a hardcover book with a black horse on the front.
"I'll leave this here for you." She set the book on the table beside Alistair.
"What's for dinner, Trudy?" Mokuba asked.
"I thought pot pie might be nice. Plenty of leftovers for your brother whenever he decides to drag himself home from that company of his. Enjoy your meal, boys."
After lunch, Alistair had intended to start reading Black Beauty, but Mokuba asked if he'd play a video game with him, so after Trudy cleared the dishes and tutted at Alistair for not having finished his entire sandwich, the two went back upstairs to the game room.
"You can pick something. The ones on the second shelf are all multi-player."
Alistair scanned the titles, noting the thin layer of dust coating the tops of the boxes of the multi-player games and wondered again at how lonely Mokuba must get.
He selected a racing game and Mokuba eagerly loaded it, excited to finally have someone to play games with.
Alistair picked up on the controls quickly, having learned to drive first from practicing with simulations, and turned out to be quite good at it, though Mokuba was better.
They played for two hours before Mokuba proposed they try something else. He was hoping to try his sniper game in two player mode, but the look on Alistair's face when he suggested it caused him to quickly retract the idea. Of course he didn't want to play a sniper game. Mokuba silently scolded himself for being so uncouth.
They ended up playing a fantasy fighting game which Alistair also proved to be good at, and the activity kept them occupied until dinnertime. After dinner, Alistair begged off of playing more games and retreated to his room.
Lying on the couch, Alistair cracked open Black Beauty and started to read, hoping the book would keep him occupied until Kaiba came home and he could confront him about setting up the test.
He hadn't expected to find the novel very engrossing, but after ten pages he couldn't put it down. Never in his wildest dreams would he have thought he'd find himself identifying with a horse, and yet, all of the trials and tribulations Black Beauty had to endure, helpless to prevent any of the bad things from happening, trapped in a system that left him at the mercy of those in charge, were themes he was certainly familiar with. He found himself actually tearing up over the book as Black Beauty saw that a cart horse had died and hoped it was his friend Ginger who had been suffering horribly. Over the years, Alistair had seen people unto whom he'd wished the same fate for the same reason.
He set the book aside and rested his face in his palms, memories of the maimed, deathly ill, and dead people he'd seen back at the refugee camps he'd stayed in (which in reality had only really been masquerading as safe havens from the actual battleground) running through his mind.
It was in this moment of weakness that he realized Kaiba would be home soon and tried to pull himself together. He had just stood to go to the bathroom and wash his face off when he heard tires on the gravel driveway and silently cursed his bad luck. There was no way he was going to let Kaiba see that he'd been crying, so he hurriedly cleaned his face.
Having done all he could, he made his way to the foyer, hoping to catch Kaiba as he was walking through the door, but when he got there it was obvious that he'd missed him. Cursing again, this time not so silently, he wondered where Kaiba could be since he obviously hadn't gone to his room or Alistair would have run into him on his way downstairs. Perhaps he'd gone to the kitchen; Trudy had mentioned leaving out food.
The kitchen was empty as it turned out, though he did see the note Trudy had left saying she'd put Kaiba's dinner on the top shelf of the fridge. Where could Kaiba have gone?
He puzzled over it until he suddenly remembered that Kaiba went swimming every night. He would know better than to swim on a full stomach, and had therefore possibly gone straight there. As he walked down to the pool area, he thought about how best to approach Kaiba about calling the aviation school, knowing full well that Kaiba was bound to snap at him no matter what.
The entrance to the pool was a large set of sliding french doors through which Alistair could smell the sickly sweet odor of chlorine and hear the echo of someone walking wetly on tile. It didn't occur to him that he needn't sneak around, and he took a moment to watch through the glass.
The pool was a beautiful swirling mixture of white, blue, and sea green tile that extended to the walls inlaid with intricate, abstract patterns that seemed to glow by the the yellow-white moonlight streaming in through a domed skylight.
Kaiba was standing with his back to him on one of two diving boards. Without his jacket and bravado as padding, Alistair saw that he was actually relatively skinny with the lean muscle and broad shoulders of a swimmer. As Kaiba prepared to dive into the pool, Alistair had just enough time to realize that what he'd taken to be shadows were actually a series of crisscrossing scars across the plane of Kaiba's back.
As he flipped forwards, Seto caught sight of Alistair standing in the doorway which broke his concentration and ruined his form. His arms cut through the water and he surfaced quickly, swimming to the edge of the pool and hauling himself out, water dripping down his chest and swim trunks.
"What the hell are you doing here, Alistair?" he demanded, quickly crossing his arms to hide his wrist. He wished he could will his crumpled jacket lying mere feet away to him. How dare Alistair violate his sanctuary when he'd gone to such care to ensure it was a place where he could drop his guard?
The cognitive dissonance caused by the simultaneousness of Kaiba's anger and the droplets of water glistening on his pecs left Alistair uncharacteristically speechless.
"Well?" Seto insisted, crossing his arms more tightly and sharpening his glare when he caught Alistair staring at him.
Alistair forced himself to look at a point over Kaiba's left shoulder."Uh…I just wanted to know whether you called the aviation school to set up a, uh, time for me to take, you know, the test you mentioned. Sorry for bothering you."
Seto rolled his eyes. Alistair was obviously not as immune to his well-trained ability to intimidate people after all; he couldn't even look him in the face. "If I were you I'd work on my ability to communicate, Alistair. The answer to your question, however, is yes, I did. And the fact that you clearly think I forgot is insulting. I talked to my old flight instructor and told him about your unusual circumstances and he has agreed to cut you a very illegal deal. If you go in and fly with him, once with each kind of plane, he'll make a decision as to whether or not you've earned a license. If, as I suspect, he finds you to be competent, he will award you a license at the graduation ceremony in November at which time I'll test you out myself. Any questions?"
Alistair shook his head, his eyes straying first to Kaiba's tight swim trunks then his chest.
Seto noticed where Alistair was looking and tensed. Had he seen the scars on his back and was he now looking for more on his chest? He claimed to know everything about him, did he know about the closet too? No, he couldn't… But he needed to be sure. "There's nothing there!" he barked, and Alistair started. "So you can stop looking. And before you go jumping to conclusions, just know that anything you think you know about that is completely wrong."
Alistair felt himself starting to flush. "If I didn't already know how self-centered you are I'd ask why you'd assume I was even looking at you in the first place," he retorted hotly. "I'm not one of your fangirls, Kaiba-so you can keep your 'mystique' because I really couldn't care less."
Seto scowled, but his self-consciousness overrode his inclination to spar with him. "Glad we're in agreement then. Now get out and never bother me here again."
"Gladly," Alistair responded with as much disdain as he could pour into the one word before turning on his heel and marching back into the passageway, not slowing down or turning back until he was sure he was out of Kaiba's line of sight.
Once Alistair was gone, Seto quickly dried himself off and prepared to return to his room to shower, noting how his hands shook as he reached for his towel. He clasped onto his wrist so that he could feel the raised lines against his palm, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Alistair didn't know anything. His secret was safe. So maybe he'd seen his back, so what? Those could have come from anything-a childhood accident perhaps. He exhaled, opened his eyes, and was satisfied to find that his hands were once again steady.
Back in the master bedroom, Alistair sat down heavily on the couch. In his DOMA days, Valon had always teased him about his obsession with Kaiba. But even though the term 'Kaibasexual' had always made his blood boil and his cheeks burn, he'd thought relatively little of it. What difference did it make to him whether Kaiba was attractive or not? He hated him. And perhaps that hatred had simmered down to simple dislike, but that shouldn't have meant seeing Kaiba shirtless and dripping wet would affect him so much.
To find himself mesmerized by Kaiba of all people was ridiculous, and yet…Just thinking about droplets of water running over smooth muscle made him feel hot all over again. The thought that he might actually be attracted to Kaiba was humiliating.
He tried to pick up Black Beauty again, but found focusing difficult and the words started to blur together. He chalked it up to tiredness and decided to go to sleep. He had taken up the habit of sleeping under the bed and though the arrangement did nothing to abate his nightmares, it did allow him to fall asleep more quickly.
He brushed his teeth in the bathroom, pulled the comforter and a pillow off of the bed and spread them out underneath before settling in for the night.
For the first time in recent memory, Alistair was not plagued by bad dreams. Instead, he had very vivid dreams of a completely different nature that left him just as shaken when he awoke as if he'd had a nightmare, but it was an altogether different type of disquiet.
Author's Note: Though it may seem like a stretch to have Alistair 'all of a sudden' start drooling over Seto, keep in mind that he's been obsessing over this guy for years and therefore has a very specific image of him in his head (that is to say: Gozaburo 2.0), so suddenly seeing the object of his obsession (Seto) in a completely unfamiliar context (shirtless and dripping wet) is going to have a profound effect on him, in this case an unexpectedly sexual effect.