I know this prompt is a stretch.

I'm sorry.

I am not a very traveled man.


.


"Papa once tried to convince a client that he'd managed to get hold of the Blarney Stone. Not a sliver, or a replica, but the genuine article."

Roma Bakura cleared his throat and scratched at his beard as he pretended not to listen. Noa, for his part, grinned devilishly. "Oh-ho? Are you descended from a duplicitous man, Ryo? A conman? My, my, how scandalous. How plead you, sir?"

Roma sighed, then held out his hands. "What can I say?" he asked. "I was young. I'd bought into the idea that my main job, as a salesman, was to say whatever I could to make my customer feel special. Tell them whatever they wanted to hear. Whatever happened, whatever I came across, it was my responsibility to make sure each and every one of my clients walked away from me feeling like they'd come across a fabulous deal, like they were possessed of treasures. The truth helped remarkably little when it came to that mission. It meant so little to me, and how could it not? Every piece of advice I'd ever heard about selling anything was . . . to lie."

Noa frowned thoughtfully. "Hm," said he. "All right, that's actually a fair defense. I grant you that."

"I wish I could say I learned the error of my old ways on my own," Roma said after a moment of quiet reflection, "but I don't think it will surprise you, based on what you must know about me already, to hear that that wasn't the case. At all."

"In what way, then, did you learn?" Noa pressed, gently.

"Oh, the usual for me. For this family, actually." Roma waved a dismissive hand. "I was cursed for about six years." Noa sputtered sudden laughter, but he offered no words. "I'm no folklorist," Roma continued, like he hadn't even heard, "so I can't tell you exactly what happened to me. Not in terms of anything specific to Ireland. But I can tell you that I would have almost certainly died at least sixteen times if not for Aya's timely intervention."

"Seventeen," Ryo corrected. "You always forget that old refrigerator."

"That," Roma protested, "would not have been fatal."

"You always say that," Ryo said, "but you can't possibly know."

"Mister Bakura," Noa said flatly, "did a refrigerator fall on you."

"It was empty," said Roma, quite indignant.

"It was still three hundred pounds!" Ryo snapped.

Noa watched Ryo argue, playfully, with his father. He spoke rarely throughout that evening, only interjecting when it was expected of him to keep the stories going—Noa knew how to play a captive audience—but most of his energy was focused on studying the scene in front of him. Was he happy that Roma Bakura seemed to be approaching a real breakthrough? That maybe he'd finally gotten the point? Was he finally working toward changing the way he channeled his grief, such that his son could have a father again? Was Noa happy about that?

Yes. Yes, he was.

But there was a deeper part of Noa, a darker part, that was angry.

He wasn't sure why.

Was it because he was jealous? Did it bother Noa that Ryo might have someone else on whom to focus his attention? That it was a father, of all people? Or was Noa, perhaps, disappointed that he now had no outlet for all that pent-up protective anger he'd been building up ever since Ryo first mentioned the trouble Roma often represented for him?

Noa eventually decided two things: one, that the answer to those questions was both; two, that it didn't matter in the slightest. Not really. He tried to remember something Seto had said once: your emotions are not your fault, but they are your responsibility. Noa couldn't remember for the life of him why his elder had said those particular words; anger tended to ruin his already faulty memory. But he remembered the maxim, and he knew that it was a wise one.

Noa's feelings didn't matter. Noa's jealousy didn't matter.

What mattered was Ryo having a chance to reconcile with a long-lost member of his painfully small family. Noa told himself, therefore, that he'd best stop being a child and let his boyfriend have this without complaint.

Ryo deserved this, goddamn it.