Disclaimer: I clearly don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! because if I did it would not have been a children's show on account of all the sex.

FYI: You've been reading this far, so I assume man on man action doesn't bother you, but if it does you might want to skip this chapter...

"Welcome to my world of truth
I don't wanna hide any part of me from you
I'm standing here with no apologies
Such a beautiful release
You inside of me"

~Underneath, Adam Lambert

Chapter 32

Upon landing in Hamburg, Alistair followed Seto's instructions to a T and got into the taxi that was waiting for him.

"Guten Abend," he greeted the driver, eager to put the German he'd learned into practice.

"Sie sprechen Deutsch?" the driver, a Turkish man, replied, slightly surprised; most foreigners that he drove to and from the airport couldn't string two words of German together.

"Ein bisschen. Ich komme aus Domino," he added. "Ich heisse Alistair. Alistair Ravensdale." The driver recognized that Alistair truly only knew a little German and was simply exploiting what little he did know. Still, it was better than the people who got in and immidietely asked: "do you speak English?"

"How long are you staying here?" he asked in heavily accented English.

"Just a few days," Alistair replied, dismayed that he couldn't have continued the conversation in German. "I'm one of Kaiba Corp's pilots. We're in town because of the Kaiba Land grand opening."

"Ah, Kaiba Land, I've heard of it. My kids want to go."

They chatted the rest of the way to the hotel which turned out to be located in the heart of downtown Hamburg.

"We are here," the driver announced.

"Oh, wie viel kostet das?" Alistair attempted, hoping he had enough money and then realizing he didn't have any local currency. The man smiled.

"Your boss already paid for it."

"Oh, ok. Vielen Dank!" He got out of the taxi and waved. The driver rolled down his window and said:

"Enjoy your time in Germany," before driving away. Alistair slung his backpack over his shoulder and walked up the front steps of the hotel which was housed in a striking old-looking stone building with beautiful abstract carvings snaking up the front. As promised, Seto was waiting for him in the lobby with a look of annoyance on his face.

"Took you long enough," he snapped, crossing his arms. "I have better things to do than wait here all night for you to decide to show up."

"I'm sorry," Alistair apologized. "It won't happen again."

"Good. Now follow me. The instructions are in my suite. And you better hope that your listening skills are better than your ability to get anywhere on time." He swept from the room, past the young man sitting at the front desk who had been eavesdropping. Alistair sighed before following after him.

Seto kept up his façade of indifference until Alistair closed the suite door behind them.

"You can leave your backpack anywhere you like," he said, gesturing uncaringly around the gigantic room which included a living room complete with a huge flat-screen TV, sofa, coffee table and a half-size dining table, a walk-in closet, a fully furnished bathroom, and of course a bedroom with a king-sized bed. Alistair looked around in amazement and set his bag down next to the coffee table.

"I'm not sure whether to be impressed or disgusted," he murmured, taking in just how decadent everything was.

"For what I'm paying for it you better be impressed."

"I don't even want to know."

"It's not like I'd tell you even if you asked," Seto sniffed. "I'm not gauche, unlike some people." He was referring to Pegasus who took every opportunity to flaunt his wealth.

"Are you planning on going anywhere else tonight?" Alistair asked.

"No, I was planning on going to bed, and you should too." Apparently the innuendo was too subtle because Alistair added:

"Good, then can I have the room key? I want to explore a little bit." Seto furrowed his eyebrows.

"It's almost eleven-thirty at night here. Don't let the time difference fool you; you'll regret it in the morning."

"I won't stay out long; I just want to look around. Who knows when I'll ever get the chance again?"

"Nothing's open except the clubs and maybe a couple of fast-food restaurants."

"Going to a club might be fun."

"You're joking, right?"

"No. Why do you care what I do anyway? You're going to bed." Given that he wasn't about to admit that he'd been hoping to put some of his newfound knowledge to the test that night, Seto had no choice but to relent.

"Alright, fine, here." He fished the key-card out of his pocket and slapped it into Alistair's palm. "I recommend making sure you get a taxi by two before everyone else claims them. Oh, and let me write down a couple of phrases you should know in case they don't speak English." He walked into the bedroom and pulled a pad of hotel stationary and a pen out of the beside table's drawer and proceeded to phonetically write out what he thought might be helpful and handed that, along with two hundred Euros, to Alistair who quickly set them aside on the coffee table next to the key.

"Thank you," he said, continuing to unbutton his jacket. "I'll try not to spend it all in one place."

"Funny. Just try not to get so drunk you can't find your way back, stay away from any establishment that looks anything less than legitimate, and don't flash your money unless you want to get robbed. That means no giving ridiculous amounts away to beggars."

"Yeah, yeah." It's not like he'd gone the last nine years just bouncing off walls with his eyes closed and was in fact more than likely better equipped to handle being on the streets in a foreign city in the middle of the night than Seto, but he didn't feel like starting an argument so he merely tossed his jacket onto the couch and began attempting to take off his tie.

"I'm serious."

"Ok, fine. And could you help me with this?"

"I told you before: don't yank it so hard; it's not that difficult." He reached out to loosen it.

"Easy for you to say; you do it practically every…day…" Alistair said slowly as Seto trailed his fingertips down the tie, gripped it and pulled the redhead to him by it.

"Forget the club," Seto said seductively, his eyes boring into Alistair's, his free hand coming to rest on the redhead's lower back. Alistair could hardly dare let himself believe that Seto meant what he thought he meant.

"Only if you think you can show me a better time," he answered with a smirk.

"I know I can." Seto pressed his lips so firmly against Alistair's that Alistair had to wrap his arms around the brunette's neck in order to stay upright as Seto continued to ravish him with searing kisses. It was just like the first time they'd kissed, only this time the exchange was not fuelled by anger, but lust and passion.

By the time the pair made it to the bed Seto had practically completely unbuttoned Alistair's crisp dress shirt and Alistair had relieved Seto of his white suit jacket and tie and had his hands halfway up the CEO's back.

Alistair allowed himself to fall backwards onto the pristine, royal blue coverlet with Seto on top of him, kissing along his exposed neck as he unfastened the last three buttons on Alistair's shirt. Alistair sat up and tossed it aside as Seto began undoing the buttons on his own light blue button-up.

"Hang on," he said, getting off of Alistair to go turn the bedroom light off, unbuttoning his shirt as he went and throwing it over of one of the desk chair on his way back. In the meantime, Alistair had taken off his belt where it joined his shirt on the floor and as Seto got close enough, he got up and grabbed the CEO's monogrammed belt buckle, unfastening the silver clasp and unhooking it so that he could yank the zipper on his pants down, kissing the brunette a final time before lowering himself to his knees on the thickly carpeted floor.

As Alistair began to go down on him, Seto exhaled sharply and put his hands on Alistair's bare shoulders, his head tipping back slightly. He let the redhead carry on for a bit, sighs of pleasure escaping his lips at regular intervals, before pulling him to his feet again, kissing him deeply, and then throwing him back onto the bed.

While Alistair caught his breath, Seto kicked off his perfectly tailored white suit pants, followed by his boxer-briefs, and set to work yanking Alistair's pants down which, given that he was a few pounds lighter than when he'd worn them last, wasn't hard. He uncaringly threw them behind him where they landed in a crumpled heap next to the room's mahogany desk.

In the meantime Alistair sat up to pull his underwear off. His objective achieved, he pulled Seto down on top of him and they continued to kiss with the added enjoyment of lying skin to skin.

Suddenly Seto stopped kissing Alistair though he didn't move his mouth more than an inch from the redhead's.

"Do you want to do it?" he asked, borrowing the phrase Alistair had used before despite how stupid he found it. Alistair couldn't quite stop himself from smirking slightly.

"I thought you wanted to 'take it slow.'"

"So is that a yes?" Alistair shrugged.

"Why not? It certainly won't be the worst decision I've ever made." He put a hand on the back of Seto's head and pulled slightly, forcing him to close the meager gap between their lips.

"Lie on your stomach," Seto said huskily after a few more minutes of heavily making out. Alistair stared up at him in momentary incomprehension before he understood the implication. "You didn't think you were going to, what's the expression, 'top', did you?" Seto asked in an amused voice as he sat up to open the beside table's drawer.

"You'd never let me, so no, I didn't. Anyway, I don't think it matters." He rolled over onto his stomach. "As long as you know what you're doing," he added. Seto didn't reply, instead focusing on opening one of the small plastic square packages that he'd gotten out of the box of condoms Roland had bought for him and then making sure he put it on the way the instructions had illustrated.

"What are you doing?" Alistair asked impatiently, hoisting himself up on his elbows to get a look at what Seto was up to.

"Trying to make sure I'm not forgetting anything," Seto answered vaguely.

"This is sex, not a math test!" Seto shot him a look over his shoulder.

"It's a good thing one of us is using his brain…Do you even know how this works? Don't answer that; the answer is obviously no." Alistair rolled his eyes.

"What's there to know?" He crawled over to the brunette and wrapped his arms around him from behind. "Just fuck me," he whispered in Seto's ear before lying back down on his stomach, causing a slight shiver to run down the CEO's spine. Still, though he wanted nothing more than to just take Alistair there and then, he resolved to finish what he was doing first. The former Orichalcos soldier would thank him later. Pulling a small purple bottle out of the drawer where he'd set it next to the pack of condoms, he flicked the lid open, drizzled some of the cold lube into his palm and set the bottle back in the drawer before proceeding to rub the substance over the condom. That done, he returned his attention to Alistair.

"This is going to hurt," he warned him. "At least at first. That's what I read anyway. So you might want to brace yourself, but try to stay relaxed."

"I'm not giving birth," Alistair grumbled. "And if I were any more relaxed I'd be dead." He was quickly becoming annoyed by the matter-of-fact way Seto was going about the entire affair.

Seto ignored his tone and ran his lube-covered fingers down the length of Alistair's back, preparing to test out some of the things he'd read about.

Alistair was about to ask Seto what he was doing and why his hand was sticky when he was hit all of a sudden by a completely unfamiliar sensation that wiped all the thoughts from his mind. It was a completely different feeling from a blowjob, he hazarded that it was better, though completely foreign. He started to squirm as Seto slid a finger inside him, and gripped the pillow, not even bothering to attempt to keep quiet.

Seto couldn't believe that what he was doing felt that good, but found the redhead's moans of pleasure an incredible turn-on. He removed his finger, hesitated a moment, very aware that he couldn't undo what was about to be done, then realized that he didn't care: he wanted Alistair, simple as that.

It hurt, just as Seto had said it would, but Alistair gritted his teeth and sucked it up. No pain, no gain.

Seto could feel Alistair's body stretching to accept him and tried not to go too fast, at least at first. Once he was sure that he wasn't hurting Alistair anymore he was able to let go.

He lay all but flat across Alistair's back, his arms on either side of him, and kissed along any scrap of exposed flesh he could reach.

Although every thrust caused a wave of pleasure to crash over both of them, Seto wanted to look down into Alistair's face, not at his back.

He pulled out long enough to tell Alistair to get on his back instead before continuing, this time with more ease.

Alistair looked almost exactly as he had in Seto's fantasy. His bangs were wet with perspiration, his eyes were half closed, and his lips were parted. Seto didn't think he'd ever seen anything more beautiful.

"Seto," Alistair murmured, reaching up to touch the brunette's face, his entire vocabulary reduced to that one word. "Mmm Seto."

Seto, balancing using only his abdominal muscles to hold him up, took Alistair's hand off his face then grabbed his other wrist and pulled both arms over his head, holding him down before leaning in to kiss him.

It went on like that for another fifteen minutes until Alistair came all over his stomach, the spasms causing Seto to cum soon thereafter with a soft groan.

He got up momentarily to throw the condom in the trashcan before returning to Alistair, choosing to lie across his chest while Alistair wound his hands into Seto's sweaty brown hair.

Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, though Alistair continued to muss Seto's bangs.

"It figures you'd be loud," Seto said finally, looking into Alistair's face and grinning.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alistair demanded hotly.

"Whether we're standing on opposite ends of a dueling arena or less than two inches apart you're always yelling about something." Alistair sniffed, unabashed.

"I bet you'd be just as loud."

"I doubt it, not that we'll ever find out."

"I'm glad to hear that you're generous enough to always save the best part for me." They lay in silence again until Seto's curiosity got the better of him.

"So, did I manage to show you a better time than you would have had at some third-rate nightclub?" He asked the question as though he didn't care about the answer even though he most definitely did. Alistair pretended to think it over.

"You were almost as good as the last guy I had."

"You told me you'd never slept with anyone before!" Seto said accusatorially, sitting up and crossing his arms. Alistair rolled his eyes.

"Relax, I'm just kidding." Seto allowed the redhead to pull him back down.

"Ha ha," he grumbled as Alistair continued to laugh before returning to absently running his fingers through Seto's hair.

"What made you change your mind about doing this anyway? You obviously planned ahead."

Seto Kaiba wasn't one to divulge anything that he didn't have to, but there was something about the darkness and a feeling of vulnerability that came no doubt as a result of what they had done. He found himself telling him, at least in part.

"I realized I wanted to." Something else clicked into place in Alistair's mind.

"That's what was in that bag you got from Roland; condoms and that other stuff."

"Yeah."

"Why here at a hotel in the middle of Hamburg, Germany? Why not last night?"

"First of all, you were hardly in any state to be doing this last night, and second: I didn't want Mokuba to be able to hear."

"Two very valid points."

"Duh." Alistair frowned.

"If I'm so stupid why do you keep me around?" It was something he'd been wondering for some time. All he ever seemed to do was annoy the CEO, so why…?

"Is that a genuine question?"

"Yeah. I mean, at the risk of sounding like an overly emotional creature: what do you get out of being with me?" Seto pondered the question, which was a good one. What was it about Alistair that made him so different from anyone else he had ever met?

There were plenty of occasions where he'd wanted to wring the redhead's neck, he found his naivety annoying, he could be rather slow on the uptake sometimes, and he was overly emotional with a fiery temper, but he was also fiercely loyal and kindhearted, and more often than not the scathing remarks that Seto was prone to making seemed to roll right off of him. He didn't let Seto walk all over him either, and he'd even offered his support when Seto hadn't deserved it. But it wasn't just those qualities that made Seto want to 'keep him around'; it had more to do with how Alistair made him feel about himself.

"You make me want to be a better person," he answered finally. "Like that time at the restaurant. I never in a million years would have a: given that man my money, b: invited him to dinner, or c: gotten him a job, but because you were there…I don't know, it made me want to." He didn't mention that before Gozaburo had gotten to him he had done things like that all the time lest Alistair discover just how far he'd fallen over the years. "Not that I'm intending to let you make me go all warm and fuzzy or something absurd," he added quickly, his tone hardening. Alistair chuckled softly.

"I don't think you could if you wanted to." He was very pleased to hear that being with him had such a profound effect on Seto.

"So what about you?" Seto asked, feeling like it was Alistair's turn to be put on the spot. "Why do you put up with me?"

"Because I love you," he answered without hesitation.

"Yes, but why? I've been told on more than one occasion that I've got a bad attitude and that I'm a selfish cold-hearted bastard, and I haven't exactly always treated you very well…"

"I guess it's because you make me feel safe. You're someone I've learned to let my guard down with, which isn't something I've been able to do for years, I feel like you understand me, and you were always there for me right from the beginning, even before you had any reason to, taking my body off that plane, stopping me from throwing my life away, waking me up from my nightmares, forcing me to face my past, and even coming to my rescue when you thought I was in trouble. As soon as I woke up in that hospital and realized that you were there for real I knew that everything was going to be ok.

I'm not saying that I can't take care of myself, but it's nice to know that you'll be there to protect me, even if it's mostly from myself." After seeing the look in Alistair's soft gray eyes Seto impulsively kissed him with much more tenderness than he ever had before. Alistair knew that the gentle kiss was Seto's way of saying 'I love you.'

"I'm taking a shower," Seto said a moment later, getting up to do just that. "Are you coming?" he added from the doorway.

"Coming?" Alistair asked, startled given that Seto had never invited him to share a shower before. "I guess, sure." He got up and followed Seto to the bathroom. "What happened to your thing about modesty?" he inquired slyly once he had slid the plate-glass doors to the cubicle sized shower shut. "You were always so staunch about that." Seto shrugged.

"It hardly matters now." He turned the handle on the wall, causing a jet of warm water to burst into life. As Seto turned his face up against the spray, Alistair noticed a round scar on his upper left shoulder.

"What happened there?" he asked, prodding the spot with his fingertip.

"It's nothing. It happened a long time ago," Seto replied evasively. He didn't care to tell Alistair the sob story of how Gozaburo had put his cigar out on his arm for not paying close enough attention when he'd been talking. He could only hope that Alistair would take the hint and not pry about that or any of his other scars.

Alistair didn't press the issue. Gozaburo may not have been responsible for ruining his life, but Alistair still hated him for ruining Seto's.

"I won't let anyone hurt you ever again," he vowed, hugging Seto around the waist as the water continued to drench both of them, unknowingly making a mirror statement to one he'd made before.

"I feel safer already," Seto said, smiling slightly at Alistair's childlike righteousness.

"I'm serious." Alistair gripped him tighter. "I know that you're too macho to admit that what he did hurt you, or that you need someone to be there for you, but ask yourself this: if you're always playing the hero for me and Mokuba, who's going to save you when you need it?"

"You I suppose. That is what you're getting at, isn't it?"

"You're damn right it is."

"You are so insufferably naïve; you're almost as bad as Yugi and his merry band of dweebs. Lucky for you you're not quite at their level of cheesy friendship speeches just yet. That being said," he turned to face Alistair who was still hugging him, "I appreciate the thought. I guess Mokuba isn't my one and only cheerleader after all." Alistair quirked an eyebrow.

"If you wanted to see me in a cheerleading outfit all you had to do was ask."

"Tempting as that sounds, I think I prefer seeing you in nothing."

They soon decided that the shower wasn't the place they wanted to go for round two; the water kept getting in their eyes, and got back into bed.

Author's Note: I was aiming for 'tasteful' while at the same time not just skipping all of the juicy details.

There's just one more chapter after this in which I'll tie some things up, so stay tuned for that!