Disclaimer: Sticks and stones may break my bones but Yu-Gi-Oh! doesn't belong to me.

"Every now and then the stars align.

Could it be that you and me are the lucky ones this time?"

~Lucky Ones, Lana del Ray

Chapter 28

Seto lay on his back in the pool, looking up through the skylight at the stars, the water still choppy from the lap he'd just finished. He found himself mesmerized by the twinkling lights that were such a mystery to him; astronomy wasn't something he'd ever been taught, and he supposed that was why the night sky fascinated him so: it was something beautiful that he couldn't understand or explain. Why people like Yugi were so hell-bent on believing in magic when there were so many real mysterious things in the world wasn't something Seto could grasp.

He realized his skin was starting to prune and knew it was time to abandon his musings and get out of the water. Besides, he didn't want to keep Alistair waiting too long.

"You could knock," Alistair complained good-naturedly, looking up from his book when a freshly showered Seto walked into his room forty minutes later. "I might have been lying around naked for all you know."

"I didn't get to where I am now by being polite." Seto crossed the room and sat on the leather couch, resting his feet on the nearby glass coffee table.

"Truer words have never been spoken."

"Do you still want a job?" Seto asked, apropos of nothing. "Not with my company, just in general."

"Of course. I can't just live as your mistress."

"Very funny. Look, I talked to Roland today and he thinks he can find someone who will make you up some papers and IDs and a passport. You'll also need a new license, but that's easy. What do you want your name to be? You can keep 'Alistair', but you'll need a last name. You can use your real name, but you'd be better off picking a new one."

"What about yours?" Alistair asked jokingly. "Alistair Kaiba has a nice ring to it."

"You're a riot. Just think about it and let me know, but know that until you decide I can't get anything made and you can't get a job. Not a legitimate one anyway."

"Alright, I'll think about it." Though truthfully he'd already thought about it on the flight back to Domino. Now all he had to do was ask her if that would be alright.

"Good."

"Do you know how to ride a motorcycle?" Alistair asked suddenly.

"Of course," Seto replied automatically, though it wasn't really accurate. In truth he'd played a lot of video games with motorcycles in them and ridden one in real life once. "Why?"

"Liar."

"What's your point?"

"Let's go for a ride."

"Right now?"

"Why not? It's not even cold enough out to see your breath. Come on!"

"It's almost midnight."

"So? Unless you've completely changed your habits in the time I've been gone you don't even usually get home until right about now."

"Where would we go?" Alistair shrugged.

"No idea. Just out."

"Hmm…"

"Come on, live a little. Or are you scared? Because I'll have you know that I'm an excellent driver."

"Yeah, getting my brother's leg broken really highlights that." Alistair crossed his arms.

"That wasn't my fault. Ok, maybe partially, but it's the only accident I've ever gotten into. So what do you say? Do you trust me?"

Interesting choice of words, Seto thought. Did he trust Alistair? "Just don't get us killed," he said finally. "And so help me, if you get my leg broken…"

"That'd be an excellent start to the Grand Championship Tournament: Seto Kaiba, Duel Monsters champion and almighty CEO of Kaiba Corp hobbling out on crutches to welcome everyone to Kaiba Land."

"Let's just go," Seto muttered as Alistair continued to laugh.

The night was clear and though far from warm, the air no longer contained the cold sting of winter. Neither Seto nor Alistair bothered wearing anything warmer than their respective trench coats (Seto chose his purple one as his white coat was still at the drycleaners). While Alistair readied his bike, Seto informed Saito that the two of them were going for a ride but would be back soon. Though he kept a professionally blank face, Saito was curious. It wasn't like his boss to take a ride on the back of a motorcycle in the middle of the night with the likes of Alistair. It was almost as though they were…together. But that couldn't be, could it?

Seto pulled the black helmet that he'd acquired when he'd thought, briefly, that he wanted a motorcycle over his head and opened the visor while Alistair pulled his black riding gloves on.

"I thought I might take you up to where I took Mokuba. On the mountain. As long as you don't have Roland tail us we should be fine."

"Very funny. I'm serious Alistair: don't get us killed. More to the point: don't get me killed." Alistair swung his leg over the bike and turned the key in the ignition causing the engine to gun into life.

"When we stop you have to put your feet down too, okay? I don't think I can support both of us" he said, releasing the footrests, then patting the space behind him on the seat. Seto warily swung his leg over the machine and sat down, resting his feet on the indicated pieces of metal.

"And you're sure this thing can hold both of us?"

"Scared?" Alistair asked tauntingly.

"You wish."

"Hold on then." He pushed his visor down and Seto did the same before cautiously reaching out to put his hands on Alistair's slim torso. Alistair could tell that Seto was trying to hold onto him with the least amount of contact possible and grinned before abruptly taking off down the driveway and out the open front gate at breakneck speed causing Seto to have to grip him more tightly to avoid being thrown off.

As the two roared off down the street, Seto's purple coat flying dramatically out behind them, Saito closed the gate, more convinced than ever that something was going on.

Once they reached the mountain road Alistair eased off the speed a bit and for the first time since the ride had started, Seto was able to relax. Sure though he was that Alistair was a good driver, he could never be completely at ease if he wasn't the one in charge of whatever vehicle he found himself using.

Looking around, he realized he'd never been this far up the mountain before and consequently had never seen the landscape from this height. The forest was quite dense, so even though the leaves and plants were only just starting to grow back he could hardly see the forest floor as they drove by.

Finally, they reached the summit. Unlike when he'd taken Mokuba, Alistair didn't make a dramatic, sliding stop because he was afraid that his and Seto's combined weight would topple the bike if he tried, so instead he merely pulled up to the end of the road before stopping and kicking the kickstand down so that the two of them could get off.

Seto was not at all used to riding something like a motorcycle and that combined with the nippy air had caused his joints to tense up so that his first several steps were shaky. He was regretting not having worn gloves and quickly shoved his hands in his pants pockets.

"What do you think?" Alistair asked, indicating the impressive view of the city on one side and the forest on the other after he and Seto had removed their helmets and set them aside.

"It's cold," Seto replied grumpily.

"You sound like an old man. Where's your sense of wonder? We're standing at the top of the world and all you can think about is how cold it is? It's not even that bad."

"Speak for yourself," Seto grumbled, starting to shiver. Alistair ignored him and proceeded to look up at the sky. Away from the light pollution of the city, many more of the stars were visible.

"It's so beautiful," he murmured. Still looking upwards he added: "this is what I was fighting for you know. When I was working for Dartz. I really like flying and riding my motorcycle, but I'd give it up to just live somewhere like this, maybe with a river or something nearby where I could go swimming."

"What, so you're a hippie now?" Alistair raised an eyebrow.

"You say that like it's a bad thing. Like I said: there are things about the modern world that I enjoy, don't get me wrong, but there's something about nature that's special. It's one of the reasons I love to fly: I could stare at the clouds for hours, and being up there with them is amazing. And up there, there are no borders, no time, just you and the sky. You fly, you know what I mean."

Seto did in fact. It was one of the reasons he'd wanted to able to pilot and have his own jet. The sky was one of the few places where he felt free. No one watching him, no one to monitor his every move, just him and the clouds and the stars.

Trying to ignore how cold he was, Seto looked over at Alistair who was still staring raptly at the sky with a look of rapture on his face, his lips slightly parted.

It was moments like this that made Seto care for Alistair as much as he did. He could live vicariously in the idyllic world that Alistair saw just by listening to him describe it. Where he saw a cold mountaintop with a couple of scraggly trees, Alistair saw something beautiful, something that was worth living and fighting for. Seto wished that he could truly see what Alistair saw instead of the gray world that he lived in, a world where everyone was out to get each other, every relationship just a means to an end. He hoped that in time, if Alistair stuck around, he could teach him how to see it too, because as it was the only world that Seto saw any beauty in was the one he created using algorithms.

"Do you know where the North Star is?" Alistair asked, breaking the silence. Seto shook his head, not sure he even knew what the North Star was. "It's right there." He pointed at a star that Seto realized was brighter than the others. "My mom really liked astronomy, and when I was little she used to take me outside at night and show me the different constellations and tell me the stories that went along with them. I've forgotten almost all of them now, but the North Star's story, at least the way my mom told it, is that there was a boy who loved to climb mountains. He travels around the world climbing all of the tallest mountains until one day he finds one that is taller than every other mountain he's ever climbed before. It's too slippery for him to get a grip, so he decides that the only way to get to the top is through the center of the mountain which is hollow.

As he climbs up through the hollow center of the mountain, he dislodges a bunch of rocks which seal the hole behind him. Finally he reaches the top and even though he realizes that he won't be able to get back down and will die there, he's proud of his accomplishment.

His father, unable to find him, calls to him and he calls back from the top. When he realizes that his son will never be able to return to him, he turns him into a star, the brightest one in the sky so that everyone can see how amazing and courageous he was." He didn't know what had prompted him to tell Seto that and felt a bit stupid until Seto spoke.

"When I was younger, maybe seven or eight, I had a really high fever and had to stay in bed for a couple of days. My parents would take turns reading to me out of a book of fairytales that we had, plus some other picture books. My favorite was about a boy who either got bullied at school or was just a loser, I don't remember, but he could see dragons that no one else could see and he tries to take care of them or something and then realizes that he should take them back to where they came from and builds this sort of dragon shaped airplane and leads them back home and then there's some sort of 'feel-good' ending but I don't remember it. It was called 'The Mechanical Dragon.'"

It was the first time he'd talked about his parents since leaving the orphanage and Alistair recognized how personal the story was to Seto and felt very special to have gotten to hear it.

"I guess you've always liked dragons, huh?" Alistair asked, sitting down on the ground and wrapping his arms around his knees. Seto continued to stand and look off into the distance.

"Yeah. I used to tell my parents that when I was older I wanted to have a plane that looked like a dragon, just like the boy in the story. Once I discovered Blue Eyes, I knew that that was what it was going to look like." He smiled slightly at the memory.

Alistair found that there was something tragically beautiful about the fact that while Seto had had to grow up far sooner than anyone should, he was still very much a child at heart who wanted to fly a plane shaped like a dragon and open a theme park and develop worlds of make-believe in which people could lose themselves for a few hours.

Soon after the wind started to pick up and they decided to drive back home. As they returned to the motorcycle Seto said:

"Thank you for taking me to this place."

"You're welcome," Alistair replied, his eyes meeting Seto's. Seto found himself putting one arm around Alistair's waist, the other on the nape of his neck, and pulling the redhead against him. Alistair, slightly surprised, reciprocated by putting his arms around Seto's neck and leaning up to kiss him. His lips were cold, but quickly warmed.

This was what he had been searching for when he'd gone home with the men he met at bars; someone to hold him, someone to make him feel like he mattered, someone to love him. That person was Seto.

Seto, likewise, felt as though he'd found something in his relationship with Alistair that he hadn't even realized he was missing. Alistair surprised him, challenged him, forced him to question things, and had not only seen the wall that Seto had put up around himself, but dared to climb it. He understood and accepted Seto for who he was, flaws and all, and had done so without being motivated by wanting something from him.

Even though his fingers were numb by the time they got back to the mansion, Seto was able to appreciate the second ride more than the first, although he decided that he'd much rather drive than be a passenger.

"What time is it?" he asked Saito as they paused at the gate, his fingers unable to do much more than push his visor up. Saito checked his watch.

"It's going on one-thirty sir." Seto sighed. He didn't regret the trip, but wished they'd gotten back sooner.

By the time the pair reached Seto's room, the day was starting to catch up to him. Seto began pulling his clothes off as soon as they entered the room, though true to habit he placed all of them in the hamper and returned his jacket to its' hanger in his closet before changing into his pajamas, white this time. Alistair stripped out of his clothes and started to throw them unceremoniously on the floor, but at the last second chose to walk the ten feet to the hamper and toss them in instead before following Seto to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

As the two crawled into bed a few minutes later they seemingly automatically returned to the same position as the night before: Alistair nestled against Seto who put his arm around him.

"Do you have Trudy wash your sheets in your cologne?" Alistair asked jokingly. To his surprise, Seto answered in the affirmative.

"It smells better than laundry detergent." He shrugged one shoulder. "Why, do you not like it?" Not that he was going to change it even if Alistair didn't.

"No, I do. But isn't that sort of…" He had been going to say 'wasteful' but then remembered who he was talking to.

"Believe me, I can afford it," Seto replied with more than a slight trace of haughtiness, mistakenly thinking that Alistair was going to say: 'isn't that sort of expensive.' "I made it myself."

"The cologne?"

"That is what we're talking about, isn't it? Yes. I don't want to use something that thousands of other people have. I'm surprised you didn't know that seeing as you claimed to know everything about me."

"I'm sure I knew where you got it from, but I couldn't know you made it yourself," Alistair said defensively. "Anyway, I like it."

"I can order a bottle for you if you want," Seto said, yawning. Alistair decided not to admit that the reason he liked the way the cologne smelled had a lot more to do with the fact that he associated the scent with Seto than because he wanted to smell like it himself. "You need to gain some weight," Seto added, his fingers playing across Alistair's stomach. Alistair rolled over so he was looking into Seto's face.

"And you need to stop being such a control freak." Seto smirked.

"Why? It's worked out for me so far." Alistair rolled his eyes.

"I can see that your ego didn't shrink at all in the time I was gone."

"Probably not, but you seem to like it." Alistair snorted and then realized that Seto probably hadn't meant it as a sexual innuendo. He'd been hanging around immature idiots for too long.

"Who would have thought," Alistair marveled, laying his head in the hollow of Seto's neck. "You and me. And to think that a year ago I wanted nothing more than to take your soul."

"I can only imagine the looks on the dweebs faces if they knew." Seto could clearly picture the shocked look on Yugi's face and Wheeler's slack-jawed disbelief. His expression suddenly darkened. "Alistair, if you really want to stay here no one, and I mean no one, can know; it would ruin me." Given Pegasus's success in the conservative business world, Alistair couldn't help but feel that Seto was being overly cautious.

"Who am I, Rapunzel?" Alistair asked, nettled, sitting up enough to lean his chin on his hand. "You gonna keep me locked in your house?"

"Don't be absurd, I'm just being realistic. My image is a very important component of Kaiba Corp's success, at least for now."

"What, you think if the teenage girls know that you're sleeping with me they won't buy your Duel Disks anymore?"

"That's not what I said."

"Then what are you saying?" Alistair demanded.

"That I don't want to be followed around by the press any more than I am already, which I've only managed to avoid so far by not doing anything worth covering. But if anyone finds out about you…" He didn't even want to think about it. The media was something he liked to deal with on his terms only.

"What makes you think that anyone would even care?"

"Don't be naïve. What do you think those rags they sell at grocery stores are full of?"

"I'm surprised you even know what they sell at grocery stores."

"Just be discreet, that's all I'm asking. Or leave. One or the other."

"I'm not playing this game with you Kaiba. Screw you and your stupid ultimatums." Alistair wretched the sheets off of himself and stormed from the room. Seto sighed and rolled over in bed. He wasn't sure who he was more annoyed with: Alistair for being touchy or himself for being…whatever it was that had set Alistair off. He rolled over again. Clearly he wasn't designed to be in a relationship. He rolled onto his back. Was that what this was then? A relationship? He supposed so. Which meant that he should probably try to reconcile with him. He reached for his phone to check the time and groaned. There was no way in hell he was getting up at six-thirty. He abruptly swung his legs off the bed and left the room to go to Alistair's where the redhead was presumably trying to work off his anger.

He entered the room without knocking, and as he'd thought, Alistair was in the middle of a set of sit-ups.

"What do you want?" he asked, pausing to shoot Seto a reproachful look.

"To…"Seto paused, knowing there was a fair chance he'd choke on the sentence he wanted to say. "To say that I'm sorry," he mumbled, the words strange in his mouth.

"Did you just apologize to me?" Alistair asked, his anger overshadowed by disbelief. Never did he think he'd live to see the day that Seto Kaiba would say he was sorry for anything.

"Where any of my words in some way unclear to you?" Seto asked irritably, crossing his arms. Alistair stared at him.

"No," he said slowly. "Thank you, I think. Do you mean it?"

"I don't say things I don't mean. You should know at least that about me by now. Although I'm not sure what pissed you off so much…"

"The fact that you a: think that anyone would give a damn about who you're sleeping with and therefore b: have decided that I am to remain a secret toy that you get to keep locked in your house. I want a life of my own! And I want it to include you, but I don't want it to revolve around you. If you just didn't care about what people would think-."

"Let's get one thing perfectly clear: I don't care about what people think, I care about what they'll buy from me. The only reasons why I don't want anyone to know are so I don't have to deal with the Paparazzi hanging around here trying to take pictures because I've lived through that once and it's the most annoying thing I've ever dealt with in my life, two, because believe it or not, but there are people I do business with who care about things like that and wouldn't take me as seriously, and three, because if people know about this, you'll get sucked along for the ride whether you like it or not.

But if we do this my way, you get to live a normal life, and have a normal job, and come and go as you please. I can't do that, Mokuba won't really be able to do that. And speaking of Mokuba, do you know how many times people have used him to get to me? More than I care to count."

"I can take care of myself thank you very much."

"I know, you flew into a warzone to prove that point, but you also have to acknowledge that even though you think you're street-smart, and too clever to get hurt, you're not. And I don't want to have to collect your bloody, bruised up body from some warehouse after paying some low lives a ridiculous amount of money just to get you back." Alistair didn't want to agree with Seto, but he had to (grudgingly) admit that he had a point.

"Fine. We'll do it your way."

"That doesn't mean what you think it means either. You keep saying that you think I'm going to keep you prisoner here, but you're wrong. All I'm requesting is that you not tell anyone about this and make sure no one ever sees you leaving or coming here. Other than that I really don't care what you do. Get a job, don't get a job-."

"I will get a job," Alistair interjected reproachfully. Seto sighed in exasperation.

"Whatever." Alistair thought about it and had no reason to complain about Seto's proposal seeing as he now understood that he could do as he pleased.

"Ok, I won't tell anyone," he promised, praying that Darren would keep his mouth shut. "Let's go back to bed," he added, stretching and yawning. Seto rolled his eyes. "What?"

"Your child-like propensity for flipping back and forth between anger and neutrality is not your most attractive attribute."

"Like you're one to talk. Some old man wouldn't sell you his Blue Eyes White Dragon card so you forced him into a duel that ended up landing him in the hospital and then proceeded to rip the card that you'd so desperately fought to get your hands on in half in front of him. You're just the poster-boy for maturity." Seto flushed.

"How did you know about that?"

"Security camera footage. You monologued about him not being worthy of owning such a powerful card for over five minutes before proceeding to overwhelm him with your shiny new holographic technology."

"I stand by that. The only duelist worthy of wielding Blue Eyes is me."

"And why is that exactly? Because you want it to be? It's just a card Seto. And it might be your favorite card, but that doesn't mean that there are people more or less 'worthy' of using it."

"You don't understand." Seto couldn't explain why Blue Eyes was so special to him, it just was. It had been since he knew it existed. There had been no question in his mind that it was his, no matter that Pegasus had created it. "Now can we please go back to bed? Some of us have to work in the morning." Alistair nodded and stood up.

"Can I bring Sewell?" At the sound of her name, the cat raised her head up from where she'd been sleeping on Alistair's pillow.

"I'm too tired to even care. Sure, why not? Just come on." Alistair scooped Sewell into his arms and followed Seto out the door.

"You'll like Seto's bed," Alistair told the calico, tickling her under the chin. Sewell, who still didn't care for Seto, mewed, unconvinced.

Back in his room, Seto settled into bed for the second time and Alistair crawled in beside him after depositing Sewell at the foot of the mattress.

"I think I've picked out a last name," he said just as Seto was falling asleep. "Since you asked about that earlier."

"Already?"

"Ravensdale. I want to be Alistair Ravensdale."

"That's subtle. Where'd you get that from, the credits to a British porn movie?"

"I didn't know you were into porn," Alistair teased. "Although I guess if you weren't getting any in real life…"

"I don't watch porn. But that doesn't mean that I don't know what a porn name sounds like," Seto snapped. "Watching porn is for pathetic losers, and besides, it's a waste of time." It happened to be true; Seto had never been able to comprehend the appeal of porn, or sex at all for that matter. From what he'd heard, sex was undignified, messy, dangerous, and overrated. Consequently he'd opted not to waste his time doing it, or watching other people do it.

"Anyway, don't you recognize it? That's Trudy's last name."

"Of course I recognize it!" Seto lied snippily. He hadn't thought of Trudy as more than just 'Trudy' in years if he ever even knew her last name. "If you're sure I'll tell Roland later today. Now I don't know about you, but I'm going to sleep."

"Oh yeah, sorry. Just hold off on telling Roland until I ask Trudy and George if that's ok." He settled in more comfortably and closed his eyes.

"Fine. I'm sure they'll be thrilled." He rolled onto his side. He momentarily tensed when he felt Alistair wrap an arm around him from behind, but then relaxed. Unlike anyone else, Alistair had permission to touch him. He had earned that.

Author's Note: Two things. One, this is the chapter that will set me up to do a sequel if anyone's interested in that, and once this story's over I think the theme of the next one will be fairly apparent.

Two, just in case anyone's wondering, the book 'The Dragon Machine' is a real picture book and always reminded me of the Blue Eyes White Dragon jet.