Any dragon could come rumbling through these enormous hallways and step on him.
Picking up a pebble from the ground beside his foot, Yami drew a large X on the wall beside him and tried to memorize the curves of the rock. Okay. Good enough.
He chose to turn left because he saw large dragon-shaped footprints leading that way and kept his ears sharp, trying to hear anything helpful.
The end of that hallway deposited him at another hallway with few doors, and Yami picked the one with human-sized, human-height knobs, and pushed it open, relieved to see cleaning supplies.
A sponge, a pail, and several raggedly brooms.
Irritated, Yami grabbed the broom and slammed the door shut behind him, now more angry than frightened. His life here was going to suck.
He almost wanted to try and get lost, to see if the dragon could find him. Nothing in the list said anything about getting lost.
Nodding to himself, Yami took off running down the way he came and did a blind right, then another left, and then up a harrowing decline in the ground that had him almost sliding on his ass as he skidded down the slope.
FUCK! Yami clung onto the wall and finally reached a shallow, flat piece of ground and caught his breath. D-Dangerous.
Steadily rising to his feet and using the broom as a hiking stick to steady himself with, he heard water dripping that made him pause and search for the source. Water?!
He followed the melodious echo of splashes and found himself following the path until it ended at a steep drop.
Getting down on his knees for safety, Yami crawled to the edge and peeked over the narrow cliff.
His breath left his chest in a sudden whoosh when he saw a handsome man taking a bath by one of the glowing pools of water.
The man turned around to splash water onto his chest and Yami's breath caught again when he saw sharp wings attached to the man's back, followed by regular, spiky protrusions all down his spine that led to the tip of a threatening tail that poked out of the water beside him.
T-THE…DRAGON IS A MAN! Yami couldn't tear his eyes away.
Well, it wasn't a human man.
It was a man who was very obviously the white-slivery dragon, because the scales that covered his elbows, chest and thighs had the same hue, and the horns that sprouted from light brown hair were tall and threatening, only adding to his height.
Yami was fascinated.
So the dragon could change forms. Intriguing.
Everything on its body was spiky, with the only human thing about him were the five-fingered hands…from which sharp, shiny claws flashed every time a pale hand passed over the muscular chest.
Wow… Yami stared even harder when the man rose out of the water to wash himself down his toned stomach. He couldn't really see the dragon man's face–
An earth-shaking rumble shook the entire cave, and Yami let out a fearful gasp, clinging onto the ground when he heard more inhuman shrieks pierce the air, followed by bellowing shouts, sounding like…more dragons fighting?! But they were braying in a different language.
Seto hissed in annoyance when a few stones landed in the water beside him with small plonks! And he tried to shut off his ears, but it was hard. Bakura and Joey were having it out.
"I'm not trading with you, you imbecile! I like mine just fine!"
"Well I don't wanna man! I want a woman dis time! It's the third man I had dis millenia!"
"Then take it up with your pool of humans! Not my issue!"
The ground shook again when they began to exchange blasts, and Seto let out an annoyed shout, "SHUT UP!"
And his voice echoed so loudly, it shook more stones loose from the ceiling, and he sighed.
Tribute day fights sucked.
Everyone just needed to take their new humans and deal with it.
Yami decided it was too dangerous to stay and began to crawl backwards on his hands and feet, wincing in pain when his palm landed on a sharp pebble. Ow?!
A deafening crack! sounded overhead and Yami glanced upwards fearfully, his body frozen to the spot when he saw a sharp, pillar-sized needle come hurtling down towards him from the cave's ceiling.
O-Oh…shit.
Yami blinked once and let out a strained yell, rolling out of the way and then realizing…that was a mistake when his shoulder went right down into nothing but air, and he was falling…. Falling…to his death.
His stomach was clenching and swooping as the rocks passed his face in a gray blur, and he could see the stone pillar crashing into the spot he'd just rolled away from, taking away a chunk of the cliff with it. Nice. Every part of this cave was brittle.
A cool discovery upon his death.
Seto heard a human shout and then saw a spiky-haired figure falling from a great height right before his eyes, and it took him a second to move himself, diving forward with his arms outstretched, his wings spreading out with a forcefulwhoosh! while he kept cursing Joey and Bakura under his breath.
If his human died today before the sun set, he was going into their caves to steal one of theirs.
Yami shut his eyes when he saw another spiky rock waiting for him at the bottom and he closed his eyes, angry with himself at his own stupidity. He had to go exploring and get himself killed…!
That thought had barely left him when his cheek smashed into something hard and the air was knocked out of his lungs when strong arms wrapped around his body and tore him upwards through the air so fast, his head spun, he could barely open his eyes….but he knew..
The dragon had caught him.
It sure felt like it. His cheek was rubbing against a divide of soft skin and something hard, and scaly.
He was now being gently flown back down to the ground with a splash, his legs dangling in the cold water while the dragon held him just above it, breathing heavily from the sudden flight, so much that Yami could feel and hear a heartbeat right beside his ear.
His own heart leapt.
S-Saved…!
And this dragon had a heart after all.
It sounded human?
He pretended to stay fainted.
That way this dragon wouldn't put him to work on his very first day here.
"Hey." Seto shook the human in his arms and his stomach wrenched with annoyance.
He studied the human's face, remembering the way it looked, just in case someone tried to switch one out on him.
His heart pounded when he noted this human was…pretty.
It had interesting spiky hair and golden bangs that framed its face–his…face? This was a man?
Hard to tell, because it had the face of a woman, with plump, pink lips that bowed perfectly in the middle, leading up to a nice, slender nose, and sharp cheeks. The eyelashes on this human man were sweeping and dark…making him almost understand why the other dragons called their tributes 'brides'. Almost.
….Why wasn't he waking up?
"Hey!" Seto shook the human again and saw its eyelashes flutter, so he decided to give the human a cold bath. It did smell a bit and it was unconscious.
Yami wrenched his eyes open when cold water drenched him from head to toe, and let out a panicked yell. He was going to drown!
Thrashing his arms and legs, to show that he was alive, he was let up after five terrifying seconds of being held underwater, and Yami had to cling onto any part of the dragon man he could reach. His fingers closed around a sharp wrist and he managed to hook his elbow around the man's neck wincing with the sharp scales dug into his forearm, almost cutting him.
Seto angled his head away in mild anger when the human came too close to him and began to rage at him…like it was angry at him for saving its life.
"What the hell is your problem? Trying to drown me?! And does this place have any regular stairs?!" Yami was unleashing his rage while he clung even harder to the dragon man, not caring that he was ranting half out of fear and half out of actual anger. "You left me no map, no way to find anything, and how am I supposed to clean your cabinets without breaking my neck?"
Stunned speechless, Seto registered he was being shouted at by his pet.
"I would…fly you up there," Seto found himself replying through his shock, and the human glared at him with beautiful angular eyes that made his heart skip a solid beat. W-What an expression…!
And so what if a few humans died trying to climb the walls to clean?
Their fault for being stupid. At least this one was communicating, albeit a bit too loudly with too much glaring and skin-contact while wet.
"Then you might as well do it yourself, or are you just trying to be cruel?" Yami challenged, his bravery vanishing in an instant when he made intense eye contact with the dragon and fell into icy blue eyes with pupils that were dark, vertical slits. A-AH! Scary!
So, the name-calling starts already?! Seto's ears hummed as he shoved the human away from him and saw it splash around for a bit and cough, struggling to stand, but he took this chance to unleash his rage that he'd been holding onto since the very beginning of the day.
"Yes, I'm so cruel, I only demand that you keep my space clean and you keep to yourself!" Seto snapped, still hearing the dragons arguing in the levels above, and his blood boiled. "I'll already have to fucking feed you and find you clothes—did you bring any?!"
Yami blinked in shock and couldn't find his voice to retaliate. The dragon man was incredibly scary and handsome when standing there, naked, with the water barely hiding any part of his body because it was crystal clear, so clear that he could see muscular thighs, sharp knees, and…if he dared to look at the spot just below his muscular abdomen, t-there was a….length that had a ridged appearance, similar to the scales the dragon's back, a-and the tip was sharp like an arrow's head.
W-What the...! Yami flushed dark red and kept staring at it.
Seto folded his arms across his chest and realized the human wasn't listening anymore. Instead, its angular eyes were focused on… Seto followed the gaze and lowered his head to see the human gaping at his genitals, and his irritation rose even higher.
He covered himself with one hand and tried to act like it didn't bother him as he repeated himself again, "...Do I make myself clear?"
Did the human even hear him?!
Yami nodded stiffly and didn't dare breathe.
What would it look like erect?!
He had so many questions.
Was it hard? Soft?
It looked soft right now but there were silvery scales around the bottom.
Were those hard?! Soft?!
He had no balls!
Did dragons need balls?!
Yami had so many questions, and his voice kept dying every time he inhaled to speak, so he was merely gasping and having his breath hitch.
W-Would he die if he asked to…m-maybe….t-touch it a little?
Seto recognized the blank look he'd seen before on all his other humans and shook his head in defeat. This one was mentally broken too.
It was hyperventilating.
Goddammit.
"Just wash up," Seto muttered as he turned to fly up to the hallway, aiming to do a lot of housekeeping to fix his lair. Maybe he should write a request to the humans in the city about not sending mentally damaged humans too.
If this one jumped from his landing pad in a few years, he wouldn't be surprised.
After all, the past 5,000 years had all been the same, with only a few humans lasting over 10 years under his servitude, but never over 50. He always went a few decades without a servant until the next tribute period.
Why would this one be any different?
And Joey was acting like his human 'bride' jumping was somehow a unique problem.
His humans had free will. He wasn't going to brainwash them because he needed them to respond somewhat normally to his demands.
He took flight and shook the water off his body, aiming to dry off in the privacy of his room. What was this one's name again? He forgot. Something, age 25, male.
So maybe they'd have a good 10 years together?
The young ones were a little unpredictable on their jumping times.
Yami watched in breathless wonder as the dragon man turned his back, giving him a magnificent view of his wings spreading out over the edge of the water….that splashed him across the face when he took off with a jump and soared overhead, disappearing into the hole above, which was the 'hallway' he'd fallen down from.
Sagging into a sitting position into water, Yami palmed his face with shaking hands and told himself to endure.
Endure, for Yugi and Grandpa.
His family would be happy to hear from him if he wrote some letters.
Dear Yugi, this dragon has an amazing bathhouse, Yami was composing his first letter in his mind as he quickly stripped off his clothes to pat water down his body, shivering. The water is deliciously warm. It's easy to access and I have a lot of fun bathing in it. The dragon is nice and he saved my life twice already!
It would ease Yugi's worries if he wrote praise for the dragon in his first letter, so Yami was determined to learn more positive things about his new dragon master.
He'd keep the lying in the letter to a minimum.