Disclaimer: This may come as a shock, but Yu-Gi-Oh! isn't actually my original idea.

"Let's make a night you won't remember

I'll be the one you won't forget."

~ Timber, Pitbull feat. Ke$ha

Chapter 6

As was always the case when he got caught up in a book, Alistair failed to notice the passing of time until his stomach growled. Glancing at the digital clock display on his cell phone he realized with a start that it would be dinnertime soon. He packed the book back into the bag he'd gotten from Yugi's grandfather's shop, stuffed his phone into his pants' pocket, and prepared to climb back to the ground and return to the mansion.

He was surprised to find that he was the first to sit down to dinner.

"Where are Seto and Mokuba?" he asked Trudy curiously as she dished out slices of lasagna.

"Up in Mokuba's room still." She sounded annoyed. "I've called to tell them that dinner's ready four times already and with you late too I was about to give up altogether and scrap the whole thing; it's only good when it's hot after all."

"I'm sorry; I just lost track of time," he apologized.

"Yes well, do try not to in future; it puts me off schedule. And could you possibly drag your not-so-better-half and his brother down here?"

"Sure." He slunk off, ashamed that he was part of the cause of her displeasure. Upon reaching the door to Mokuba's room he was surprised by the dead quiet; usually when Mokuba gamed it could be heard halfway down the hallway. He knocked lightly and tipped the door.

"Mokuba, Seto, Trudy wanted to know if you guys are coming to dinner. Guys?" He stepped into the room. Seto and Mokuba had barely looked up from game of Capsule Monsters they were playing. "Is that a no?"

"We'll be there in a minute," Mokuba said absently, his hand hovering over the holographic board, contemplating his next move.

"Ok." Feeling that he was, in a sense, trespassing, he retreated to give Trudy the message. "They're in the middle of a pretty intense game of Capsule Monsters," he explained after taking his seat at the table.

"Seto playing an intense game? I'm shocked." Trudy sounded cross. "Did they say when this 'intense' game would be finished?"

"In a minute." She shook her head, causing several strands of silver hair to come out of her bun.

"Well, you're here at least; eat up while it's still hot." She gestured towards the lasagna on his plate.

"I will. Thank you; it looks really good."

"It's my mother's recipe," she told him with a small smile. "Bon appetite."

Alistair was almost done with his portion by the time Seto and Mokuba emerged from upstairs.

"Who won?" he asked curiously.

"Seto," Mokuba answered predictably. "But it was a really close game!" Seto rolled his eyes.

"You think it was close."

"Since you're feeling so confident why don't you play a game with me?" Alistair suggested, taking another bit of lasagna. "You ever played poker before?"

"Oh yeah," Mokuba said, remembering suddenly that that was why Alistair had left in the first place. "So you got the cards?"

"Yeah. From Yugi's grandfather's game shop," Seto answered for him sourly as he sat down, the momentary pleasure he'd gotten from winning quickly ebbing.

"Hey, I told you already that I didn't know that!" Alistair snapped. "Anyway, what do you say? After I teach Mokuba the rules, how about the three of us play?"

"Why would I?" Seto asked in a bored tone. "I only play games of skill. If you want to play a game of luck ask Wheeler to join you."

"Sounds to me like you're just afraid you'd lose," Alistair taunted him, winking at Mokuba when Seto wasn't looking as the Kaiba brothers prepared to dig into their servings of lasagna. Seto raised an eyebrow.

"Do you honestly think your pathetic excuse for manipulation will work on me?" Alistair shrugged.

"It got you to Duelist Kingdom. All I did was threaten to buy up your company and you came running." Mokuba snorted into his forkful of noodles. Seto unconsciously set his jaw.

"That was completely different. You were threatening my company."

"Ok, how about this: play against me and Mokuba or I'll take over Kaiba Corp, with Mokuba's help of course." Seto rolled his eyes again as he chewed. As soon as he swallowed, he replied to Alistair's far from serious threat.

"What is the point of playing a game I already know I'll win?"

"What if you guys dueled instead?" Mokuba suggested with his mouth full. "I'd love to watch that." He knew that his brother missed Duel Monsters even if he didn't say so, and Alistair had been good enough to almost beat Seto twice.

Alistair looked uncertainly at the CEO, knowing that the popular card game could be a touchy subject. Seto thought about it. He hadn't dueled without there being anything more than his pride at stake in quite some time, and Alistair wasn't untalented when it came to the game. It could be (dare he even think it?) fun.

"Not today," he said finally. "I don't duel without preparing first. Tomorrow maybe. But we'd have to set some parameters." He contemplated it for the rest of the meal while Mokuba and Alistair talked about what Seto considered to be trivial things. It was only after he was done eating that he spoke again.

"Are you sure you want to duel me again?" he asked Alistair, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. Alistair was a little taken aback that Seto was actually interested, but quickly got over his surprise.

"Of course. I have to prove that I'm on your level with or without the Seal of Orichalcos!"

"You're a lot of things Alistair, but you're not even close to being on my level."

"We'll see about that!"

"Can I set the parameters?" Mokuba asked unexpectedly. Alistair and Seto looked over at him. "Just to make it more interesting. It'd be boring if you guys used the same decks you used before. I say you both make new decks out of the cards in our collection. And as a handicap I say that Seto can't use Blue Eyes."

"Why, are you saying you don't think I can take his dragons?" Alistair asked, pretending to be offended.

"No Blue Eyes, huh? Interesting…I like it. It's settled. Alistair: I challenge you to a duel at my duel dome this weekend. Mokuba will set the deck parameters which so far include a ban on the Blue Eyes White Dragon."

"You're on," Alistair replied with bravado. "I'm gonna take you down this time Seto Kaiba!"

"I'd like to see you try," Seto retorted smugly.

As the redhead and brunette exchanged a few more obligatory insults, Mokuba watched on with a small smile. As jealous as he was of Alistair's relationship to his brother, he couldn't help but be glad that Seto had someone to bring out the person he had been back before they had been adopted by Gozaburo.

After running out of bravado-filled comments to hurl at each other, Seto and Alistair made their way to the bedroom to engage in a much more physical pursuit. Since banning Mokuba from the hallway, Seto had relaxed more when it came to sex and as a result they had become more adventurous, though Seto's favorite position remained having Alistair on his back.

"We could never get away with doing this at your office," Alistair commented, still trying to catch his breath as they lay draped across each other in bed afterwards.

"Who said anything about trying?" Seto snapped, the heat rising in his face as Alistair's statement conjured up memories of the one and only porn movie he'd ever masturbated to.

"I wasn't serious." He glanced sideways at the brunette. "Wait, is that like, a fantasy of yours?"

"What? No. I don't have fantasies," Seto replied with dignity, his cheeks growing warmer still. Alistair raised a skeptical eyebrow but chose to let the matter slide…for the time being.

While he was settling in for a few hours of gaming before bed, Mokuba reflected on how ridiculous his dislike of Alistair had been. Sure he wasn't horribly fond of the idea of having to share Seto with anyone, but on the other hand he had on occasion benefited from having the redhead around, and he did like him. He was fun where Seto was serious and open-minded where Seto was not.

As he loaded a fantasy adventure game, he realized that at the bottom of it all he was mostly just afraid that something would go wrong. He knew, probably better than his brother did himself, that if Alistair broke his heart, Seto would never trust anyone again, maybe even including him, and that worried him. Not so much because he thought that Alistair would hurt Seto on purpose, but suppose that he stopped loving him? Or worse yet, fell for someone else. Seto wouldn't be able to handle it, of that Mokuba was quite certain.

An hour or so later and no doubt after Alistair and Seto had presumably…Mokuba tried not to think about it, the redhead knocked lightly on the door to the game room before letting himself in. If he hadn't been so actively attempting to avoid thinking about what Alistair and Seto did behind the closed door of Seto's bedroom, Mokuba would have voiced his resentment that the other two thought it was fine to just walk into his room whenever they felt like it whereas he wasn't even allowed in what he had come to think of as 'their' hallway.

"I was just wondering if you still wanted me to show you how to play," Alistair said, holding up a deck of Duel Monsters cards. Mokuba couldn't tell if the redhead was serious or not.

"I know how to play," he replied, trying not to sound too resentful on the off-chance that Alistair wasn't making fun of him. Alistair was momentarily confused before he realized what Mokuba was thinking. He pulled the top card off the deck and flipped it so the front side was facing Mokuba.

"They're just regular playing cards. But since Duel Monsters is so popular it's no surprise that someone would have the sort of clever marketing idea of making the back's look like Duel Monsters cards." If he would have looked more closely at the box the cards had come in he would have realized that the person with the 'sort of clever marketing idea' had been Pegasus himself.

"Oh. Yeah, I still want to learn. Hang on; let me find a save spot." Alistair watched Mokuba's avatar on screen crashing through a jungle landscape, fighting off several monsters before finally bursting into a clearing with a glowing yellow ring in the center onto which it ran causing a menu with a save option to appear.

After exiting out of the game and turning the consol off Mokuba turned back to Alistair, looking expectant.

Mokuba turned out to be equally as quick at picking up games as his brother so it didn't take Alistair long to teach him the basics of poker.

"Wouldn't this only work if you had more than two people though?" Mokuba asked.

"Yeah. I was thinking we could get Seto to play too." Mokuba still wasn't used to someone else calling his brother by his first name.

"I don't know…He didn't seem interested earlier…"

"He's in his office, right?" Mokuba nodded. "I'll go get him. Hang on."

Predictably, Seto was sitting at his desk reading through the conference notes from the marketing department's meeting from that afternoon.

"Why don't you take a break from that?" Alistair asked, leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe. Seto looked up, smirking.

"You're so demanding." Alistair shrugged and entered the room. He came up behind Seto and started massaging his shoulders.

"You look like you could use a break," he said, leaning down and kissing along the side of Seto's neck. "Come upstairs." Seto regarded the report on his screen. There were only twenty pages left. That wasn't undoable.

"Hmm…I suppose I could just finish reading this tomorrow morning…"

"So you'll come?" Seto smirked again.

"In a manner of speaking." He got up and pushed Alistair into the wall behind him. As he leaned in to kiss him however, Alistair pressed a finger against the brunette's lips, effectively stopping him.

"We don't want to keep Mokuba waiting."

"Mokuba?" Seto asked, his lip curling back in disgust. "That's sick Alistair." Alistair stared at him in momentary confusion before he remembered that Seto knew nothing of his real intent in coming downstairs.

"I didn't mean it like that!" he said quickly. "What kind of person do you think I am? He and I just wanted to play poker with you. I taught him a version where you only need three people." Seto suddenly realized that he'd been tricked. He sighed.

"Fine."

"And afterwards I thought you and I could play a different game."

"What game?" Seto asked warily.

"I haven't decided yet."

They made for interesting poker players, Mokuba, Alistair and Seto. And who won ultimately came down to the way that they placed bets. Alistair and Mokuba were prone to taking bigger gambles which, if they won, paid off. Seto on the other hand was much more calculating about how many pieces of candy (what they ended up using in lieu of poker chips) to bet on each round and also had a much better poker face than the other two and in the end he won, though not by the margin he would have liked.

"Well that was stupid," he announced as Alistair shuffled the deck and put it back in the box.

"I thought it was fun," Alistair shrugged and Mokuba agreed.

"I don't know why; you both lost."

"Does the expression 'it's not about whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game' mean anything to you?" Alistair asked.

"No." Mokuba laughed.

"Seto doesn't play games for fun; he plays to win! And he always does," the teen explained, looking fondly at his older brother. "Only people like us play for fun."

"What do you mean 'people like us?'"

"The people who know they'll never win anyway," Seto answered for him, his tone condescending.

"If that's the case than I'd sooner lose every game I ever play than build up a reputation as a winner. Never having fun while playing a game doesn't seem very enviable to me."

"That's the kind of thing a loser says," Seto countered with a sneer.

"When you duel Yugi and lose, do you consider it a waste of time?" Mokuba's eyes widened. He couldn't believe that Alistair had the nerve to bring up Seto's duels with Yugi; that was dangerous territory. Seto was taken aback as well; no one had ever directly brought that up to him before except Pegasus. He narrowed his eyes.

"What's your point?"

"You didn't answer my question. Do you think that dueling Yugi is a complete waste of time because he wins?" Seto set his jaw in preparation for delivering a dismissive, sarcastic retort. "Never mind. Don't answer that; but think about it." Suddenly Mokuba had a flash of insight into what it was about Alistair that Seto liked. Unlike most people, Alistair wasn't afraid to challenge Seto and to push back against the brunette's abrasive persona. Joey Wheeler and Yugi Mouto tried, but Joey always lost his cool and Yugi was in the unfortunate position of having defeated Seto in three duels, one of which had been broadcast to the entire world and was therefore not a person Seto was likely to listen to.

He thought about it some more after Seto and Alistair had gone. He was starting to grasp Seto and Alistair's relationship, though there was still a piece he didn't understand. Did his brother think of Alistair as attractive? Mokuba figured he must, else the two wouldn't be sharing a bed, yet he couldn't wrap his mind around it. How could a man be attractive the way a girl was? He mentally compared Alistair to Hilary and came up blank.

Meanwhile, in Seto's room, Alistair was trying to convince Seto to agree to a plan he'd come up with after their conversation in the game room.

"Why would I want to get drunk?" Seto asked, crossing his arms. "It shrinks your brain, it makes you act like an idiot, it makes you throw up, and it gives you a headache in the morning."

"It would loosen you up."

"I don't want to 'loosen up.'"

"Deep down, wouldn't you like to be able to relax? No one could possibly enjoy being as uptight as you are all the time."

"Yeah, well, I do."

"Bull. Your back is so tense it's like trying to massage a boulder."

"So don't try to massage it."

"That's not the point and you know it."

"Could you do us both a favor and stop trying to change me? Can we just go to bed? I have to finish reading that report tomorrow." Alistair sighed in frustration. He knew that he was right and that Seto was just being pigheaded for the sake of being right. And he wasn't about to let the brunette get away with it.

"I challenge you to a duel!" Seto yawned.

"We're doing that on Saturday at the Duel Dome."

"What, are you scared to lose?" he taunted. "Come on, it wouldn't be anything official; we don't even have to use duel disks. We could make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot every time you lose life points or something like that." Seto regarded Alistair critically.

"Do you actually care about me having fun or do you just want to get me drunk?" he asked suspiciously.

"Both," Alistair answered honestly.

"I don't even have alcohol."

"Sure you do. Down in the wine cellar." Seto tried in vain not to let his confusion show on his face. Alistair gaped at him. "You didn't know you had one?"

"Of course I did," Seto lied. The truth was that he didn't know all that much about the mansion given that he only frequented a handful of rooms, but he wasn't about to admit that to Alistair. Alistair had half a mind to give Seto a good long lecture on the obscenity of having a house so big you don't even know what all the rooms in it are, but knew that it would be a waste of breath.

"Of course you did. Anyway, so what do you say? I could run down and grab a bottle of something. It would only take a minute…" Seto thought it over. He didn't much care for being manipulated by Alistair, nor did he want to get drunk; a state that would force him to lose control. That being said, his deep-rooted competitiveness balked at the idea of turning down a challenge. Alistair, you are such a horrible influence…

"You are aware that you're going to lose, right?"

"I'm actually pretty sure that we won't finish the match."

"Oh please. Are you suggesting that I'll become so inebriated I won't be able to duel? Don't make me laugh." With a much better poker face than he'd managed while they'd been playing the card game Alistair said:

"We shall see."

While down in the Kaiba mansion's wine cellar (which contained much more than just wine as he discovered) Alistair began to question his plan. All of the things that Seto had said about alcohol were true after all, but not only that; he was suddenly concerned by the idea of introducing alcohol to someone in a very good position and mindset to abuse it. But would he? The brunette was not one to let go of control lightly which led him to believe that Seto probably wouldn't ever touch the stuff again. But then again, if he got a taste of what it felt like to let go…

Ultimately Alistair's curiosity outweighed his concern. He was extremely interested to see how Seto would behave under the influence of the large bottle of vodka he eventually selected.

When Alistair returned with his deck and the vodka, Seto suggested that they duel in the library so that they wouldn't bother anyone if (as was all but inevitable while playing Duel Monsters) it got loud.

It occurred to Seto as they were setting up the dueling mats that he'd had to dig around in the game room for ten minutes to find that this would be the first time that he'd be playing Duel Monsters "for fun" since… he couldn't remember when.

"I think I'll go first," Alistair said once everything was ready, scanning his hand before drawing a card.

Within ten minutes of each of their respective first turns Alistair defeated Seto's Vorse Raider with his KC-1 Crayton. Tightening his jaw at being the first one to lose life points, Seto aggressively twisted the lid off the bottle of vodka and brought it to his lips, intending to take a defiant swig. But as the first drops of the cool liquid trickled into his mouth it was all he could do not to spit it out. How could people endure such a vile-tasting drink long enough to get drunk from it? Trying and failing not to make a face, he drank as much as he could tolerate before setting the bottle down hard. He coughed as the vodka burned his throat.

"You ok?" Alistair asked in concern, wishing he would have had the foresight to tell Seto not to chug it like that. Seto swallowed several more times, a strange heat in no way caused by embarrassment creeping up his face, before saying:

"Of course. It's my move!"

Several rounds and a few ego trips later, Alistair was down to 1700 life points and Seto was down to 2200, but because of the way that they'd gone about dealing damage (Seto taking large chunks at a time and Alistair gradually chipping away) Seto had had way more to drink than Alistair; the way the latter had planned from the beginning. Not that Alistair wasn't his fair share of wasted.

He was hard pressed to admit it, but Seto was starting to have some serious trouble focusing on the duel. Not only was he finding it difficult to keep his strategy straight, his depth perception was way off causing him to keep knocking cards off the table.

With an unnecessarily dramatic gesture, Alistair played his Swords of Revealing Light magic card, effectively freezing Seto's two Blue Eyes White Dragons. Under any other circumstances, the move would have left the brunette very annoyed indeed, but as it was he didn't feel remotely ruffled since he'd just drawn a card that could circumnavigate the effects of Alistair's swords. He smirked, but there was no real malice behind it.

"Say goodbye to your magic card!" he declared triumphantly, slapping his own card onto the table.

"Not so fast!" Alistair parried with a trap. "Not only is your magic card destroyed, but my trap saps 500 of your life points! Now we're even!" It was the redhead's turn to flash a smirk. Again, normally such a move would have really pissed Seto off, but he was—could it be?—having too much fun for it to bother him. He obediently took another shot of vodka (which incidentally had stopped tasting terrible five rounds ago) and turned back to Alistair.

"Good move," he said without the tangible sarcasm that usually would have accompanied such a remark.

"Thank you." Alistair's lips curved into a smile. It was then that Seto realized Alistair's hypothesis about them not finishing the match had been correct.

Mokuba was jolted awake by a loud and resounding crash. Sleepy and disoriented but concerned he listened intently. He heard laughter and someone saying: 'shhh', then silence. Irrational as he knew it was to think so, Mokuba got out of bed and crept to the door, scaring himself into believing that the mansion had been broken into. He cautiously entered the hallway and tiptoed to the end where he pressed his back against the wall, knowing that if he peeked around the corner there was a good chance that whoever was there would see him. His heart pounding, he snuck a quick look which, as it turned out, alleviated his fear, but at the same time seemed almost stranger than if there had in fact been burglars.

Peering around the corner again, he was able to see that his eyes had not deceived him. Lying sprawled against the landing were Seto and Alistair who had presumably fallen down the stairs, resulting in the crash that had woken him up. But they weren't just sitting there or, it seemed, making any effort to get up. They were heavily making out while Alistair unbuttoned Seto's black shirt.

Mokuba stared; rooted to the spot by morbid curiosity. Seto currently had an arm wrapped loosely around Alistair's waist, his lips pressed against the redhead's. It was only when Alistair had finished with Seto's shirt and worked a hand into the brunette's pants that Mokuba decided he didn't want to see any more.

Trying to process what he'd just borne witness to, he got back into bed. There was no question in his mind that the two were drunk, though the realization startled him. As far as he knew Seto had never had alcohol before let alone gotten drunk. He wondered what had possessed him to try it now.

Through the haze of alcohol and lust clouding his judgment, Seto thought, albeit dimly, that perhaps he and Alistair ought to move to the bedroom. But just as he was going to say something about it, Alistair started to go down on him and he opted to wait. Then he forgot. He tangled his fingers in Alistair's thick red hair before leaning back and closing his eyes, occasionally letting out small sighs of pleasure.

Something about being drunk seemed to change the sensation, and when he came he felt more tired afterwards than usual, but that didn't stop him from wanting to please Alistair too. After readjusting his boxer-briefs, he pulled the redhead up for a kiss, biting his lip before delving further, slowly pushing Alistair onto his back and causing his hair to fan out against the dark wood of the landing like a pool of blood.

Seto reached down and began feeling Alistair up through his jeans. Alistair tipped his head back so that it was hanging over the edge of the top stair, exposing the sensitive skin of his upper neck to clue Seto in as to where he wanted to feel his lips—for the moment.

Seto managed to one-handedly unbutton Alistair's pants, releasing some of the uncomfortable pressure that had started to build up and pull them down enough that he could work his hand inside, though he paused briefly to spit into his palm first. He teased Alistair with just the tip of his index finger causing the redhead to moan against his mouth.

"Can you be quiet?" Seto asked with a lazy grin.

"Yeah," Alistair promised, his voice husky, angling for a final kiss before Seto began working his mouth down the length of the redhead's tone body.

True to his word, Alistair kept quiet, though he had to bite down hard on his bottom lip in order to do so.

"Sit up," Seto said, the cramped landing more problematic than he'd thought. Alistair hastened to do so, banging his head on the banister in the process. The pain was quickly alleviated by the intimate massage that Seto offered him.

Once Alistair too had climaxed, they both lay back against the wall of the landing, completely spent.

"We should go upstairs," Seto pointed out as Alistair awkwardly pulled his pants back up.

"Let's rest a little first," Alistair countered, noting how hard it was to keep his eyes open. Seto agreed, also suddenly realizing how exhausted he was. Just a quick nap to give himself the energy to climb the remaining stairs and get into bed…

They didn't wake up until Mokuba almost tripped over them the next morning.

Author's Note: I will be the first to acknowledge that getting falling down the stairs drunk and fooling around with someone on the landing when Mokuba could (as he did) easily walk in on it is out of character for Seto who is, if not always stoic, pretty damn put together most of the time. But that's the point of the chapter. Because of Alistair he IS different, and he's slowly starting to give into the idea that fun is a thing he's allowed to have.

Also, a quick disclaimer: in real life, I wouldn't recommend drinking as a means for solving any problem. It's a drug and should be treated as such. It only works in fiction because the author can control how it effects people, and to what extent. Alcohol ain't really the answer kids, not in real life!