Disclaimer: You're only an owner of Yu-Gi-Oh! if you have the rights to it and I don't, so I guess that means I'm not someone who owns Yu-Gi-Oh!.Pity.

"Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands."

~Clint Eastwood

Chapter 20

"I don't want to see another number ever again," Alistair replied in response to Ryou's question about his calculus quiz.

"But do you think you did well? You were studying for it all weekend…"

"I don't know. Some of the questions seemed suspiciously easy. But I guess there's nothing I can do about it now so I should probably stop thinking about it." He lay back on the bed and Ryou lay beside him, resting his head against Alistair's shoulder, his fluffy hair brushing against the redhead's cheek.

"I'm sure you were brilliant."

"We'll see. Anyway, how were your classes today?" he asked, putting an arm around Ryou's shoulders.

"They were alright. Most of it's just learning basic algorithms and things like that so nothing very interesting yet."

"When do you actually get to start programming?"

"We already are, it's just not very interesting. My history of computers class is alright though; my professor is really funny and sometimes he goes off on these weird anecdotal tangents. That's what happened today: he spent ten minutes talking about the computer room they had when he was in college."

"I can think of a couple of my professors that could do that every once in a while." Though he wasn't sure that anything could improve his mind-numbing biology class. It wasn't that the subject matter was boring; it was his professor's completely monotone voice.

They lay in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Alistair said: "Hey, do you want to go for a drive?"

"Sure," Ryou replied enthusiastically. He'd only ever been on Alistair's motorcycle once, but he'd liked it a lot; it was like flying. "Where will we go?"

"Let's go to the mountains. I know a couple of cool spots I could show you."

"Alright."

Since living with Ryou, Alistair hadn't been up to the mountains. They were now out of his way for one thing and they reminded him of Seto for another, though as the weeks continued to pass he found himself missing the brunette less and less. Every time he saw the CEO's face on a poster or heard his name on the radio he still felt a momentary pang, and he still dreamed about him sometimes, but for the most part he was on his way to being over him.

After pulling on the old helmet Tristan had given him, Ryou joined Alistair on the back of his bright red motorcycle which the redhead kept in pristine condition save for a long scratch down the side. Wrapping his arms firmly around Alistair's waist, Ryou indicated that he was ready to go and they took off down the street, the wind whipping past them and the gun of the motor roaring in their ears.

Once they'd reached the summit of a small mountain a little further out than the one at the top of which Seto had buried the last photos he had of his parents, and Alistair the mementos of his family: his brother's ruined Dino Dude action figure and his father's penknife, Alistair and Ryou hopped off the bike.

"This place is gorgeous!" Ryou declared after removing his helmet, twirling to take in the view. "I never realized how close to the mountains we were."

"I used to come up here to read," Alistair explained. "Or just lie in the grass. When I worked for Dartz I always felt caged because we were stuck in the base a lot, and even when we were outside it was always to serve some kind of purpose or go on a mission. And as a kid I never got to play outside much either. Even before the fighting started it wasn't very safe, so my parents kept me inside, or at least that's what my mom told me; I don't really remember a time before the revolution." Ryou looked at him sympathetically.

"I'm sorry." Alistair shrugged. He hadn't thought about his homeland or his childhood in some time thanks in part to Seto pushing him into symbolically and physically burying his past, but at his words about his mother, memories started to push their way into the forefront of his thoughts. He remembered ditching school when he was in the third grade to go play football with some of his friends only to go home and discover that the school had called his mother to ask where he was.

As soon as he'd walked in the door she'd rushed over to him, tears streaking her face while a then four year old Mikey peeking around the corner to see what was going on. She'd hugged him tightly and demanded to know where he'd been. After seeing how frightened and upset his mother was he'd started to cry too and admitted that he'd been off playing football at an abandoned field just outside of town. He'd thought for sure that he'd be punished, but although his mother had told him never to go there again because it was dangerous, she had not punished him.

He knew now that she'd probably felt bad that he'd felt the need to sneak off in order to have fun. But that had been the world they'd lived in; a world where dropping your guard could get you killed-or worse. There had been plenty of children that had gone missing even just from his town.

Ryou snapped him back to the present by pulling him into a hug. He didn't say anything empty like 'it's alright' for which Alistair was grateful. He was aware that Ryou, like Seto, knew exactly what it felt like to have to live with memories you would do anything to forget.

To his relief, he didn't cry this time, though he did find himself gripping onto Ryou and resting his forehead on the Brit's shoulder.

They stood there for a time, just holding each other, neither saying a word before finally Alistair looked up.

"Thank you," he said. Ryou responded by leaning in to kiss him, resting a hand on the redhead's cheek.

"You don't have to thank me."

After pulling himself together, Alistair suggested that they get out the sandwiches and bottles of water they'd packed in the motorcycle's small storage compartment and eat. They spent the rest of the time on the mountain snacking and talking, and occasionally taking breaks to connect on a more physical level, though the occasional cars driving past deterred them from going all the way.

"We should probably go home; it's getting a bit chilly," Ryou commented as the sun started to go down.

"Yeah," Alistair agreed, puzzling over the statement the entire ride back to the apartment. Was that his 'home' now? By the time they got there he decided that it wasn't quite, not yet, though he wasn't sure exactly why.

He didn't have too much time to ponder this new question however, because as soon as Sewell had been fed, it became apparent that it was time to finish what had been started on the mountain.

Ryou, unlike Seto, was fairly vocal when it came to his sexual desires, at least after the first few times they'd done it, and as a result they tried more than Alistair and Seto ever had. Ryou liked getting his hair pulled and enjoyed having Alistair rake his nails across his back.

Alistair took it in stride, though he would never want those things done to him, and did his best to fulfill Ryou's wishes while being careful not to hurt him.

"Why do you like that?" he asked as they draped across each other after a particularly intense round of sex.

"I dunno, it just feels good. I mean, not objectively of course, but it adds to it somehow. Why, do you think it's weird?"

"If someone told me that you liked that before I'd met you I would have thought so, but now that we've lived together for a while, no I don't think it's weird."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Between your books on Wiccan magic and all the corresponding accessories, your trips to the cemetery, the Tarot cards, and your obsession with horror movies and video games it doesn't seem far-fetched that you'd be into heavy-handed sex. I'm not saying that those things always go together, but…"

"Well if you put it that way…" Ryou paused and then looked up at Alistair. "Is there anything you want to do? You never talk about yourself, you always just ask me."

"Oh, I don't have any fantasies or anything like that." It wasn't completely true; when he and Seto had been together there had been times when he'd thought it might be interesting to try something, but Seto would have balked at the idea, so he'd never asked.

"Well, if you do want to do something, just tell me."

"There is one thing…" Ryou looked at him expectantly. Suddenly embarrassed, Alistair found himself unable to meet the Brit's eyes. "Do you think maybe you could top every once in a while?" That hadn't at all been what Ryou had been expecting.

"I…I suppose. It's just…I don't know if I'd be any good at it."

"Never mind. Forget I brought it up."

"No, no, I'll try, I'm just not sure that I have the stamina for that, so I don't know that it would be any good…" More than that though, he didn't want Alistair to compare him to Kaiba since he was afraid he wouldn't be able to measure up.

The Next Day:

Mokuba had avoided running into his brother ever since hatching his plan to talk to Darren out of fear that Seto would notice that something was up and demand to know what was going on. But luckily his brother had been far too busy with work to notice his cagey behavior.

As soon as he heard Seto's car pull out of the driveway, he was up and getting ready for the day, first calling Trudy to ask if she could make his breakfast for him then as opposed to later.

"Certainly," she said. "You're quite the early bird today, what's the occasion?"

"There's no occasion; I guess I just got a good night's sleep."

"Well I'll have your breakfast ready for you in a jiffy."

"Ok, thanks." Immediately after getting off the phone with Trudy, he called his Chinese teacher, Mrs. Lee. This was the only tricky part of his plan, but seeing as she'd never heard him speak anything but Chinese, he was hoping she wouldn't recognize his voice if he raised it an octave and imitated Trudy's accent. He wasn't sure that his meeting with Darren would cut into his ten O'clock lesson, but wanted to be on the safe side.

"Hello?"

"Hi, I'm calling from the Kaiba residence to cancel today's lesson with Mokuba; he's not feeling well."

"Is he sick?"

"Yes, he's got the flu, but the doctor says he should be fine by next week. And sorry for the short notice."

"Oh, it's alright; I hope he feels better."

"I'll let him know. Have a good day."

"You too, goodbye." Breathing a sigh of relief, he made a third phone call.

"Yo," a young man's voice said.

"Hi, Darren? It's Mokuba. I just wanted to confirm our meeting for this morning." He'd called Darren the day before and effectively freaked the former art student out, thinking that he was about to get dragged off to court, but had quickly calmed him down by explaining that Seto didn't even know he was calling, and that he just wanted an off the record chat. Reluctantly, Darren had agreed, but explained that the only time he had before the weekend was early in the morning since the commute to his job as an album cover designer at a private record company took over an hour.

"Yeah, we can still do that. We're meeting at nine, right?"

"Uh-huh. And it really shouldn't take long; I know you have to leave to go to work…"

"Fine. I'll see you then."

"Bye."

Trudy, who wasn't as distracted as her employer, sensed immediately that Mokuba was up to something by how overly chatty he was over breakfast.

"What's going on?" she demanded and Mokuba looked sheepish.

"Why do you think something's going on?" he asked innocently.

"I've known you since before you were tall enough to sit at the table properly and you've never asked me a single thing about any of my crafting projects."

"I know, but I should have; it's really interesting."

"Mokuba…" she started, putting her hands on her hips.

"I cancelled my Chinese lesson," he admitted.

"You what?"

"I called and told her I was sick."

"Mokuba Kaiba! School is very important; you can't just take the day off because you don't feel like going!"

"I know, but I really hate Chinese, and anyway, I have something I have to do."

"What?" she asked suspiciously.

"I can't tell you," he answered apologetically.

"Can't tell me?" she repeated back to him disbelievingly. "If you don't give me a very good explanation I will call Seto and tell him that you're skipping your lesson." It was sort of an empty threat seeing as Seto probably wouldn't do anything about it except possibly tell Mokuba that he shouldn't have done that, but he was the only one she could turn to to discipline the teen.

"Please don't." The pleading note in his voice surprised her. "He can't know."

"Why ever not?" she demanded in exasperation. He bit his lip, but finally cracked under her expectant and thin-lipped glare and explained his plan to her. "You can't do that," she said after he'd finished. "That is not your business to go meddling in. Leave it. You'll only make things worse."

"How could I make things worse? He's been a total robot since getting back from the hospital. He needs Alistair or else he'll never get better." Her hard expression softened and she rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Mokuba, I know you're trying to help, but you can't always fix these things."

"I know Seto still loves him, he just needs to know that Alistair didn't betray him. And Alistair came to check on him when he was in the hospital, so I know he still loves Seto too," Mokuba insisted. "If they would just get back together, everything would go back to normal!"

"It's not that simple. Your brother has his own issues that he has to work through that have nothing to do with Alistair."

"Maybe, but if Alistair were here, he could help Seto work through them. He always did before! He's the only person who could get Seto to smile…" She could hear that Mokuba was starting to get upset and instinctively bent down slightly and pulled the teen into a hug. She truly pitied Mokuba for everything he'd been forced to put up with over the years, unaware for the most part that there was anything wrong, only to have it made perfectly clear every time Seto went off the rails.

Ignoring Trudy's wishes, Mokuba left after he'd finished eating, climbing into the back of the waiting limo, and giving Alfred the instructions to the address Darren had given him.

Darren was extremely nervous to talk to Mokuba about the day of his and Britney's meeting with Kaiba. Even if he couldn't get into legal trouble, he knew he wouldn't be able to look the kid in the eye when he told him what he'd said to his brother. Words that had more than likely caused Kaiba to slit his wrists. But how was he supposed to have known that would happen? Still, he wasn't proud of it. Britney had been right; he should have kept his mouth shut.

As he sat in the living room of the flat he shared with three other friends, drinking a coffee, he heard a car pull up outside. Through the huge bay window, he could see that it was a black limousine and set his coffee cup on the table before walking to the door to meet Mokuba.

"Hi," Mokuba said once Darren had let him in, this meeting even more awkward then the first. "Thanks for agreeing to see me."

"No problem. Sorry the place is such a mess; we had a party here on Saturday."

"That's fine. And don't worry; like I said: this shouldn't take long." Mokuba took a seat on a sagging armchair situated in front of a filthy glass coffee table covered in empty beer cans, and set the manila folder he'd been holding on the stained surface before opening it and flipping it in Darren (who'd sat back down on the couch)'s direction.

"What's that?" he asked warily, leaning over to read the heading.

"It's a confidentiality agreement," Mokuba explained. "As long as you have it, nothing you say to me today regarding your meeting with Seto can be used to get you in trouble. I thought you might want the extra insurance. And keep in mind that if you sign it, it would be in your best interest to tell me everything."

"Can I see this?" Darren asked. Mokuba nodded.

"There are two copies: one for you, and one for me. They're both notarized and signed by my brother's lawyer, see?" Darren scanned the document.

"It's awfully nice of you to go to all this trouble on my behalf," he said finally, his voice effectively conveying his suspicion.

"Seto hasn't been acting like himself since that day, and I'm not just talking about the hospital. He really loved Alistair, so the thought that he would betray him like that messed him up big time. Whatever you said to him made him think that you and Alistair planned that together."

"So they were still seeing each other…"

"Would you be willing to tell me what happened that day?"

"After I sign this I will," Darren agreed, reaching for a ballpoint pen lying on the cluttered table.

"Fine." The confidentiality agreement signed, Darren relaxed, that is, until Mokuba asked if he could record what he said. "I'll send you a copy," he promised. "I just need it as evidence to go along with the agreement otherwise either one of us could lie about what was said today." In truth, he only wanted a recording so he could play the conversation back to Seto.

"Alright…" Darren moved a few cans off the table to make room for Mokuba's cell phone, which he was intending to use to record their conversation.

"Before we get started: is there any chance one of your roommates could walk in?" Mokuba didn't want anyone else to hear about this. Darren shook his head.

"One of them went to class already, one of them is staying at his boyfriend's house, and the other one doesn't have class today so he won't be getting up until at least noon and he sleeps like a log."

"Alright." Mokuba pressed 'record' causing a red light to flash momentarily on the surface of his phone. "Can you tell me what happened when you went to talk to Seto?" Darren took a deep breath.

"I was only there because Britney wanted moral support and her boyfriend couldn't make it."

"How did you know that Seto and Alistair were seeing each other?" Mokuba pressed.

"Alistair and I were friends. We met at Twist, this local diner, and we hooked up once, but after that we just stayed friends."

"When was that?"

"That we hooked up? Um…Either the end of August or the beginning of September last year…No, it must have been September, because I broke up with my boyfriend at the end of August. But as far as how I knew about him and Kaiba, he didn't tell me, at least, not on purpose, but since we were friends, sometimes he'd complain about the guy he lived with and one time he said something that made me think it was someone famous so I pressed him about it and eventually figured out it was Kaiba."

"What did he say when you figured that out?"
"He told me not to tell anyone."

"And when was the last time the two of you talked?"

"Um…the middle of November. He was going to leave to go do some kind of community service back in his homeland. But he emailed Britney right before our meeting to ask us not to use what we knew about him and Kaiba as blackmail." Mokuba's spirits rose.

"And what exactly did you say to Seto that day?" Mokuba was certain that it had been more than just that Seto and Alistair were seeing each other since Seto had intended to publicly reveal that anyway. Looking deeply uncomfortable, Darren began with a disclaimer.

"It was completely out of line; I see that now, and I really wish I hadn't said it, but I threatened to let slip what I knew about his history of cutting himself. Before I knew who he was talking about, Alistair mentioned that to me. He was angry that the guy he lived with, Kaiba, was being really hot and cold with him after Alistair had basically talked him down from really badly hurting himself." When Mokuba said nothing, he added. "Like I said: I get that that was a really shitty thing to do, and I shouldn't have." But Mokuba wasn't listening anymore.

This was something that Seto had done before? He'd had no idea. How could his brother have kept a secret like that from him? Why had he chosen to suffer alone? Had he thought Mokuba was too young to have been a good confidant? What had brought him to that point in the past?

"Are you ok?" Darren asked. Mokuba shook himself and saved the recording.

"Yeah. I should go. Thank you for agreeing to talk to me."

"Sure. And for what it's worth: I really am sorry." Mokuba nodded distractedly as Darren let him back out the front door. Once he was back in the limo, Alfred asked if he should take him home.

"No. Take me to Kaiba Corp."

Author's Note: Kids: take my advice and don't go meddling in your sibling/parent/lover etc's affairs; it's just not ok. That being said: Mokuba always seems to be running around and trying to help his brother; not a job I envy him for.