Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Yes, the world was meant for knowing,

And feet were meant to roam.

But one who's always going

Will never find a home.” 

~Song of the Wanderer, Bruce Coville      

Chapter 1: Fate 

     The winter in Domino City sucked. Winter in general was fast becoming Alistair’s least favorite season, but at least in other places he imagined the cold could be made up for by glittering snow drifts and sledding with friends and drinking hot chocolate, numb fingers thawing around warm mugs while icicles dripped prettily from quaint cafe windows. But in downtown Domino, it was as though the snow came down grey, filling the streets overnight with muddy slush. There were no hills to speak of, and the hot chocolate served at the cafes downtown was watered-down and over-priced. Though that might have just been the post-holiday cynicism kicking in. 

     As he stood at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change, Alistair could feel the telltale clamminess of moisture slowly seeping into his socks. It always found a way. That part was his fault. In a bid to manifest better weather, he’d stubbornly refused to buy winter boots, preferring the more stylish (though completely impractical) motorcycle boots he’d favored back while living in California. God, he missed California. He hadn’t cared much for what little of the culture he’d experienced, but he’d seriously underappreciated the privilege of thinking that seven degrees was cold. 

     The crosswalk sign lit up, and he gingerly picked his way across the street, attempting, along with the other pedestrians, to make it to the other side without accidentally kicking dirty ice up the backs of his jeans. Before the light had even begun blinking someone honked their horn, setting off a chain reaction in the cars behind them, and Alistair thought, not for the first time, that luxury or not, he needed a good pair of headphones. 

     In the week or so following the loss of his Orichalcos necklace it was as if a filter had lifted in its absence, making everything seem just a little bit better than it had. It was trite to say, but the color of everything had literally seemed brighter, more luminous. And for a shining moment he’d felt optimistic. He wasn’t sure if the aftereffect had since worn off or if his sense of homeostasis had just readjusted, but either way he wasn’t finding the world quite as dazzling now that he’d been out in it for a month and a half. 

     And certainly not -- he paused on the opposite curb to check the back of his coat for any muddy droplets that may have splattered upwards despite his best efforts--in this weather. 

     Finally, he was able to escape from the flood of people around the exit from the Tunnel Train and into a nearby park. It was the long way around to get back to his flat, but since it was the only place between there and the library that he didn’t feel mildly claustrophobic, it was one of his favorite parts of the day. 

     In the summer he imagined the park got uncomfortably packed with people trying to escape the crowds on the main roads, but for now it belonged just to him and the occasional jogger. 

     Though it was barely past five, the orange and pink of the sunset was already starting to fade out into black. Crunching along the path, his boots sinking down into a thin layer of snow that in better lighting might yet have been white, Alistair wondered if after a quick meal he should head back downtown. If today he’d finally be able to force himself to actually go up to the building he’d been circling since January. 

     He knew Seto would scoff at him for stalling. Thinking of Seto made Alistair smile, the thought warming him just a little despite the cold breeze that had picked up. 

     The three days before he’d left the Kaiba mansion to come here had almost made him change his mind. Seto had insisted on working from home, claiming it was to oversee the repairs in the dining room, but Alistair hadn’t seen him go down there more than once or twice. He’d dutifully kept up with his email, typing away at his laptop for short bursts of twenty minutes or so, but most of their time had been spent in bed. 

     Those memories widened Alistair’s grin and caused a not-unpleasant ache in his lower abdomen. 

     He imagined Seto would describe that seventy-two hour period as debaucherous and blush crimson if Alistair so much as alluded to it, but he would always remember it rather fondly. 

     Sex really played to the strengths of their relationship: being around each other without having to say much, that comfortable companionship made better (in Alistair’s opinion) by the warmth of their bodies curled around each other. There had been plenty of that. So much, in fact, that without too much concentration, Alistair could feel the pressure of Seto’s fingers digging into his hips, gripping onto his shoulders, skimming down his sides as they twisted around trying to find the best position. 

     And every time they stopped either because they’d both come, or just to take a break to eat the food Trudy left outside the door before reaching for each other again, Alistair would allow himself to wonder why it was that he needed to leave. Why not stay here where he could feel so deliciously full, enveloped by someone who could make him feel so good?     

     But then night would come on, and even pressed flush against Seto’s back, one arm curled around him so that his hand rested against the rise and fall of his stomach as he slept, Alistair was restless. 

     His feet crunching along the darkening snow and with the sound of cars just barely muffled by the trees, Alistair wondered if he was really less restless now. 

     The park gave way to a quiet residential road, a low iron fence the only barrier between the treeline and the street. In the spring and summer it may have marked out flower beds, but half-buried in snow it was a hazard, ragged craters marking where unwitting or distracted pedestrians had tripped over it. Alistair himself had fallen victim to it once or twice. The last time, the hem of his jeans had caught on the spiky finials and ripped almost to the knee. 

     Today, he managed to avoid the trap and make it to the street unscathed only to slip on a patch of black ice, and just catching his balance by throwing his arms out in front of him. Perhaps it was a sign that he’d be better off staying inside after all. 

     He knew Seto would say it was idiotic to believe in signs, but Seto was wrong about destiny so who was to say he wasn’t wrong about signs too? 

      He winced internally. This was one of those moments. Who knew free will could be so frustrating? Under Dartz it had been easy: go to this place at this time and take out this person in this way; rinse, repeat. But without that assurance, how were you supposed to know when it was time to do anything? 

     Were Raphael and Valon struggling with this too?

     As he approached a cluster of imposing high rises he couldn’t help but wonder if that very thought was sign enough. 

     If Seto wanted proof of destiny more concrete than anything Ishizu had shown him at the Domino Museum he would have to look no further than Club Briseis . 

     Alistair had looked into it just after he’d settled into his room at the building he was walking up to now, its fifteen stories sticking out at irregular angles so that it resembled an overstretched Jenga tower. The bottom floors were taken up by a convenience store and a tiny pharmacy; the upper floors were a higglety-pigglety mix of fixed-rent apartments and units belonging to a government run youth hostel: Hostel 1996. Some obscure reference, he could only assume, given that both the building and the hostel predated the 90s by a fair margin.  

     Alistair absently waved a plastic key fob in front of the sensor and pulled the heavy front door open, heading past the back entrances to the convenience store and the pharmacy, swiping the key fob again at the elevator, and waiting for it to make its way (loudly) to the lobby. 

     It had been easy to find the club. Unsurprisingly, there was only one in the capital that was brazen enough to advertise, even discreetly, what it was. He could find no references to it from more than five years ago and assumed it must have started around then. Its online presence was limited to a website consisting of a single page with the club’s name, an address near the business district, and a phone number for membership inquiries. The banner showed a split image. The first, a tantalizing picture of a scantily-clad woman facing away from the camera, her waist-length red hair streaming down her bare back, and the second, a pair of heavily made up grey eyes.

     Subtle. 

     More subtle had been the location itself, sandwiched between an upscale food hall frequented by the thousands of office workers in the area, and a bank. While both the food hall and the bank had enormous glass street fronts, Club Briseis with its utterly nondescript brick facade could have been a law office, a private clinic, insurance broker. There was a small bronze plaque with the club name just to the side of the door, but nothing a passerby was likely to notice unless they were looking for it. 

     It had been only once he was standing across the street from the place that Alistair had realized he didn’t know what he was doing there. What did he think would happen if he opened that door? The only people he wanted to find weren’t there, and never would be. 

     The realization had been more painful than he’d been prepared for; so acute and piercing that he felt himself crumbling under the weight of it. 

     Once before he’d found himself sitting on a Domino sidewalk in the middle of the night. The alcohol in his system and the Orichalcos necklace around his neck had amplified that feeling of loss, making it something red-hot and angry. This was a pain of absence, of emptiness, of something not there . 

     Just before waking up in San Francisco all those months ago, he’d thought he’d seen an apparition of his brother, promising that he’d always be by his side. He believed this, even now, but the dream was over. 

     If that was all he’d been hoping to find, then he never should have left the Kaiba estate. Never should have left Seto. 

     Ultimately, he decided to return downtown before he'd even made it to the elevator. What else did he have to do? 

     The entire walk back to the train, the entire ride, and the time it took to get from the station exit to the club, he told himself that having gone to the trouble of coming all the way back, this time, he would go inside. He would. 

     That resolve had lasted until the moment he needed to cross the street. He told himself that if the light at the crosswalk had stayed green just two seconds longer he would have done it. But the minute or so he had to wait for it to change again, as always, he lost his nerve and ended up sitting on the curb instead, the club just across the road, close enough that he could watch as a small group of men entered one by one, each kicking their shoes against the top step to disloge the snow. 

     That had been nearly half an hour ago. 

     He had been considering, from his uncomfortable position on the cold concrete, texting Seto and with chagrin asking if there was still space in the bed for him. He’d started to shiver, and he’d become aware of the people walking past him, some glancing down at him before moving on. Forcing himself to stand, Alistair brushed off his jeans and the back of his coat, still unsure whether to send that text, and then furious with himself for being unsure. 

     Across the street, the door to Club Briseis opened, a street lamp illuminating the slushy patch of sidewalk in front of it. With a jolt, Alistair recognized the young man making his way carefully down the steps. It wasn’t his usual ensemble, and he seemed to have traded in his maroon vest and motorcycle gloves for a black ‘security’ t-shirt briefly visible as he pulled on a heavy winter coat, but the unruly brown hair and the swagger of his walk were the same. 

      Valon ?

Chapter Text

"I slept for a lifetime without you

Until I found you 

Come, come to me again

Temptation in my heart

I'm burning; I fall apart"

Temptation~ Arash

Chapter 2: Constant Craving    

     If it hadn’t been for Valarie bringing him a protein shake, Seto likely wouldn’t have surfaced from his computer for another few hours. Even so, he acknowledged her only with a brief glance and a nod before turning back to the first of two screens on his desk. The glow exacerbated the dark shadows under his eyes, but though these and the wanness of his skin were clear markers of exhaustion, she, like everyone else, knew better than to express concern. At least he hadn’t asked for more coffee. 

     “Valarie.” 

     She turned back from the door in time to see him tap the side of his empty mug.

     “Right away, sir.”

     Once she’d gone, Seto sighed and sat back in his chair. Since arriving at the office early that morning, this was the first time he’d stopped working for even a moment, and he could feel himself reaching some kind of limit as he approached the ninety hour mark of clocked hours that week. To say nothing of the additional time he’d spent at the development lab and on keeping an eye on Alistair. 

     He took an absent swig of the protein shake Valarie had brought him. But his attention was back on the pulsing blip that represented Alistair’s cell phone. He seemed to have returned to the hostel for the night. 

     Just the thought of the hostel made Seto’s skin crawl as he imagined dingy linoleum, chipped dishes, sagging second hand furniture, and scratchy polyester-blend sheets. His own memories of such things were clearer than he’d have liked and he couldn’t fathom how Alistair, after experiencing what it all should be, could tolerate it. Then again, knowing Alistair, maybe that was the point.

     Another sip of the protein shake. 

     Well, it was no business of his. If that’s how Alistair chose to spend his cash advance, then that was his own affair. 

     His eyes strayed to the surface of his phone as though his willpower alone was enough to summon an update from the development lab. The manager had sworn up and down that the final tests of the jetpack would be finished today, but given that it was already after five, Seto wasn’t holding his breath. No one else seemed to realize that clocking out was only something you did when you were done--and you were never done. 

     The company screensaver lit up his second screen and, annoyed, he nudged the mouse to reveal the press release he was supposed to be drafting. 

      No one else had seemed willing to touch it, and the board had flat out said they thought it was premature, but that was because they were all cowards. When had he ever been unable to deliver on the technology he promised the public? And a cell phone operating system was hardly as complicated as the Solid Vision program--a program, he’d been quick to remind them, everyone had thought he’d never be able to bring to fruition. 

     What did it matter that he’d only been working on it for a month? The whole point of announcing it this early was to make the competition sweat, knowing what was coming. It was also, he’d explained, the best way to attract the top talent to work on it; what programmer wouldn’t want to be involved in developing the OS that would topple Apple and Android? 

     He placed his hands back on the keyboard and lightly tapped the keys, trying to force some kind of inspiration down into his fingertips and onto the mostly blank document on-screen. If only Valarie would hurry up with that coffee…

     His phone vibrated, and he immediately abandoned the press release, though it turned out to be a reminder from the marketing department about the commercial for Grand Championship being shot that weekend. 

     Though the notification hadn’t been the one he wanted, the rush of adrenaline it produced, stronger than any amount of caffeine, left him feeling more alive than he had all day. 

     To everyone’s surprise, Seto had put up no resistance to being in the commercial, the final in a series of duelist profiles on the Grand Championship competitors. He’d been involved in the previous ones, but hadn’t had to do much more than reel off a few snappy lines. In this, the final big-budget ad before the tournament, he’d finally get to strap his Duel Disk on again. 

     It was all fake, and he wouldn’t really get to duel, not in this commercial nor at the tournament itself, but nevertheless, feeling the weight of the Duel Disk on his arm and getting to see his Blue Eyes White Dragon render as he lay down the card would give him the shot of serotonin he desperately needed to remind himself that this really was all worth it.   

     And Yugi would be there. 

     He hated the shiver that thought always gave him, especially now that he understood better what it was. He could blame Alistair for that. 

     That really was the absolute worst thing about Alistair leaving, from a practical standpoint. Worse than the empty bed, worse than the uncertainty of whether or not he was ever coming back, worse than being abandoned again, was how fucking horny he was all the time. 

     It was as though, after discovering the finest fresh Colombian dark roast, he had been told he couldn’t even have the day-old dregs from the bottom of the coffee maker at some supermarket cafe. 

     And Seto Kaiba was not accustomed to being told no. 

     The result was that until he’d finally succeeded in working himself to the point of exhaustion, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about sex. Not even in any sort of concrete way, just the abstract, frustrating as hell feeling that his life would be drastically improved if he could just screw something. 

     It was so horrifying, so humiliating that every time he came into proximity with anyone who could remotely be deemed attractive everything about the encounter had to be filtered through the inescapable daydream of what it would be like to rip their clothes off. 

     Every time it got to be unbearable, he’d thought about getting in his car, driving to that dump of a hostel, marching up the stairs, finding Alistair, and (cheap polyester-blend sheets aside) fucking him until he couldn’t walk. 

     But he hadn’t. 

     He’d promised Alistair he wouldn’t interfere with his soul-searching. Or something like that. In truth, the conversation had gone: 

     “I will come back, but I need to figure some stuff out, and I can’t do that if you and I keep meeting up, or if you try to help me. So promise that you won’t come looking for me.” 

     “I have a company to run and a tournament to prepare for, so I’m not sure what makes you think I have time to waste on chasing you down.” 

     With that avenue maddeningly barred to him, he’d tried to ignore it, as he routinely ignored any emotion that wasn’t useful. But oftentimes the primordial itch was stronger than his will. If he was lucky he could hold out until he was home under the shower. 

     It was always the same: a moment of relief, a moment of clarity, then crippling shame. That was when he was the most angry with Alistair, and he’d spend the rest of the time he was getting ready for bed reminding himself of all the reasons he should be happy he was gone. That irritating habit he had of leaving books stacked everywhere, the way he doted on his stupid cat, how he was always so smug about the moral highground he thought he had at all times. How he’d always taken for granted that Seto wanted him there in the first place. 

     Then he’d feel, creeping up like a chill, a sort of enigmatic pain. In his stomach, in his chest, rolling waves of it that made everything within him ache. He’d roll over once, twice, but no matter if he lay on his back or on his side, the pain followed. 

     That was when he’d started sleeping with the light on. Just a lamp, at first, then the ceiling light on the lowest setting, then slightly higher, inching up until he stopped turning it down at all. 

     He couldn’t have rationalized it if anyone had noticed or asked, but with the light on he felt more like he was waiting for someone than that he was alone. And he’d never liked the darkness anyway.         

     After a soft knock, Valarie let herself back into the office with a hot pot of coffee he could smell the second she opened the door. 

     “Just leave the whole thing,” he told her, nearly flinching as the closer she got, the less he was able to ignore how the barest outline of her nipples showed through the tight fabric of her blouse.

     “Is there anything else?” 

     He knew what she meant by the question, of course, but it still felt so obscene that he flushed. 

     “No, that will be all. You can leave whenever you’re finished.” He flushed harder at his own words, but she was already too far away to be able to see. 

     He crossed his arms and looked out the floor to ceiling windows onto the city below, lit up against the oncoming darkness as the sunset faded. 

     This really was all Alistair’s fault. Never once had he ever thought about his secretary that way. Or Tanaka’s assistant whose jeans contoured his ass just so as he was bending down to unplug his wall charger. And certainly not his Duel Monsters rival. 

     That was the odd thing, though. Yugi. There had always been something inexplicable about Yugi Mutou. 

     He’d seen an interview with him several days before in which Yugi had spent much of the time shifting uncomfortably on the host’s couch--the very same couch from which Seto had given the interview that had sparked the rumors of his relationship with Mai Valentine. 

     Asked his opinion about who he thought he’d be likely to face at the end of Grand Championship, Yugi’d laughed, the sound high-pitched and nervous. He’d fiddled with the fabric of his shirtsleeve, mumbling something the host had had to make him repeat about how he didn’t feel qualified to make any predictions. 

     There was nothing attractive about this small, awkward person who couldn’t get through a single sentence while maintaining eye contact. By every metric, this person was a loser. 

     When he dueled, though… 

     It was unsettling. 

     It was a mystery. 

     It was a puzzle he’d spent several years trying unsuccessfully to solve. 

     Yugi had told him once that he was an Egyptian pharaoh, no doubt in mocking acknowledgement of Seto’s frustration at not being able to figure it out. Yugi’s stupid friends and that con-artist Ishizu Ishtar might well have drunk that Kool-Aid, but he would eventually arrive at the truth. 

     Perhaps that was all his fascination was: the thrill of not understanding; it happened so rarely. Alistair was like that too, but there was a key difference.

     Once he figured out what Yugi’s deal was, he felt confident that that would be the end of it. Sure, there would still be the excitement of having to push himself in the arena against an opponent actually worthy of his efforts, but the rivalry would no longer consume him. 

     Alistair wasn’t his opponent. Even less so than Mokuba could be. He represented something altogether different. Something that had no ultimate answer. Something unquantifiable, though Seto couldn’t help but try, the need to computate a part of his nature. Because he could never succeed, there was no end to the data he could collect, the analysis he could do. But for that, Alistair had to be here. Had to come back. 

     He had said he would, that last day. They’d been in bed (when hadn’t they been in bed those last three days?), still flushed from sex, though in the darkness they could only feel the warmth of it. Lying next to each other, Alistair’s head resting comfortably against his shoulder, Seto had made his dismissive response. And then early the next morning, Alistair had collected a backpack’s worth of things from the master bedroom, storing anything he wasn’t taking in the walk-in closet, brought his cat down to Trudy and George’s apartment, and left. Seto hadn’t bothered watching him drive off, hadn’t even been on the right side of the house to hear the loud rumble of his motorcycle engine. 

     Instead, he’d stayed in the bedroom until Trudy called him to tell him breakfast was ready. Getting up to leave, he’d cast a glance back at the hopelessly rumpled sheets and hesitated before quickly stripping the bed and cracking the window despite the low temperature outside. He’d known if he didn’t do it then, he was unlikely to do it at all, which would have revealed something of himself to him that he was content not acknowledging.          

Chapter Text

" I'm the kind to sit up in his room
Heart sick and eyes filled up with blue
I don't know what you've done to me
But I know this much is true
I wanna do bad things with you "

Bad Things, Jace Everett

Chapter 3: Reunion 

     Dinner was a tasteless pre-packaged gelatinous mass of noodles and vegetables, and afterwards, as he lay back on the narrow bed, his heels hanging off the mattress, Alistair tried to relax. A novel lay unopened beside him, though he’d picked it up several times. His phone rested on his chest, but he was reluctant to click it open. If he did, he’d feel obligated to acknowledge the email account he’d been neglecting for nearly a week. Some of them were important, he knew, and included his admittance letter to Domino University. He was supposed to respond to it, make a payment for the summer semester, enroll in classes. But though it was something he’d worked incredibly hard for, every time he opened the email some malevolent, self-destructive instinct prevented him from following the link it contained and clicking ‘accept.’ 

     Through the thin wall he could hear a group of people enter the larger apartment next door. They were talking loudly and laughing. Someone was playing a pop song. 

     He rolled over and his phone slid off his chest and onto the bed beside him. 

     When he’d first landed on Hostel 1996 as the place he’d take up residence for the duration of his time on his own, he’d assumed he’d have no choice but to share the space with at least a few other people. But to his surprise, there had been an only slightly more expensive option to have a tiny bedroom to himself, though he’d still have to share the kitchen and shower with the rest of the floor. At the time that had seemed the sensible thing to do, but a month later he wondered if forcing himself to live with strangers wouldn’t have been better for him. What was the point of this if he didn’t actually experience anything new? He knew this, but he still found himself eating his food cold and showering early in the morning and late at night to avoid running into anyone. 

     Suddenly fed up with his own inaction, Alistair sat up, phone in hand, and to avoid losing momentum he quickly wrote and sent a text before dropping the device as though it were scorching hot. 

      Alistair: hey, it’s Alistair. 

     If he was lucky he’d immediately receive an automatic response telling him the number had been disconnected, and he could forget the whole thing for another day. Maybe go back to Club Briseis tomorrow in person to see if Valon was there. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d just answer the email from Domino University, chalk this experiment up to stupidity, and go back to the Kaiba mansion. 

     But he wasn’t altogether surprised when less than five minutes later, Valon texted him back. 

     Valon: Ali! i’m at work but I’ll call when i get off at 10

     Valon: hey actualy if you’re in town maybe meet me? 

     Valon: I work at club briseis 

     Valon: but i’m guessing u know that ;p

     Valon: theres a bar a couple doors down.

     Valon: Lets meet there. 

     He could still ignore this. He could block Valon and forget about it. But no. This was why he was here. Sort of. It was where being here had led him in any case. And Valon might know more about what had happened to Dartz, to the Great Leviathan. Seto had never really explained and likely never would. 

     Besides, it couldn’t be a coincidence that with the entire world available to him, Valon had chosen to come to Domino. That he was working at the exact place Alistair needed to go.

     And Alistair wanted to know why. 

     It was snowing again when Alistair left Hostel 1996, thousands of delicate flakes floating silently downwards, their gossamer threads adhering to the landscape below. 

     The crowd at the Tunnel Train was nearly as dense as when he’d ridden it earlier in the afternoon after getting off work, and full of energy. These weren’t tired commuters on their way home from a 9-5 -- these were the teens and twenty-somethings excited for a night out, laughing and chatting as in small groups they traipsed onto the brightly lit platform of the Sparrow Hills station. Out large windows the park was still visible, lit up along its banks on either side of the Domino river. 

     Standing waiting for the train to rumble up the tracks, Alistair ignored the people jostling around him. What would he say to Valon? He wanted answers, but his old colleague would likely have questions of his own, and Alistair could by no accounts answer them. Not that he would anyway; his life was none of Valon’s business. But he’d have to give him something; Valon had never been particularly good at reading the room, and he’d seemed to take it personally that Alistair generally kept to himself-- extraverts always did.  

     The train arrived and he allowed himself to be buffeted on board.  Resigned to standing, he reached up to hold onto the bar as a pleasant female voice reminded passengers to prioritize seating for pregnant women and the elderly. And people who just can’t stand on this thing, he thought irritably, nearly toppling into the person next to him when the train lurched into motion. God, he couldn’t wait until spring when he could drive his motorcycle again. Gas wasn’t cheap, and it certainly wasn’t the most eco-friendly option, but at least he’d be able to get from point A to point B without getting crushed by half the population every time he wanted to go downtown. 

     It was such a Kaiba thing to think that he physically shook himself as though to better rid himself of it. He didn’t really believe his own slight inconvenience was more important than doing the right thing. Surely. 

     By the time the train came to a jarring halt at his stop, Alistair’s doubts about wanting to see Valon again had returned. But as he’d been thinking, his feet had carried him off the train, onto the platform, up the stairs, and out into the snowy street. 

     The bar where he was meant to meet Valon was located (rather pragmatically) next to a twenty-four hour pharmacy. Only the word ‘bar’ was lit up, the actual name of the establishment lost in the darkness, but he knew it was the right place. 

     Inside, the bar glowed with lines of neon lights that barely illuminated the spindly tables and overstuffed couches strewn about, much less the people sitting at them. Over the bar, several large flatscreens were set to two different channels streaming music videos, though neither of them matched the slinky electronic lounge oozing out of unseen speakers. It was definitely not the kind of place Alistair would ever have sought out of his own volition, and he regretted not vetting it before agreeing to meet Valon there. 

     With some trepidation, he approached the bar to order a gin and tonic while he waited. To his surprise, the bartender asked to see his ID, and Alistair had to grope around in his coat pockets to find his wallet.  

     The longer the man stood squinting at his driver’s license, the more Alistair had to resist the urge to fidget. Finally, the bartender handed it back. 

     “What’s the matter with your bar?” he asked as he prepared to make the drink. “I’ve never seen one of you in here before.” His tone was by no means accusatory, but Alistair felt himself bristling at the question.

     “I’m not coming from there,” he replied tersely.

     Shrugging, the bartender said no more, pushing the drink across the bar to him before turning to take the order of a couple that had just walked in. 

     Both for something to do and to help him get through the impending reunion, Alistair quickly knocked back two gin and tonics while he waited. It had been just long enough since the last time he’d gone out with Darren and his friends for his tolerance to reduce, and by the bottom of the second drink, he was feeling pleasantly warm and unbothered. When he’d worked for DOMA, Alistair had often looked down his nose at his colleagues as they heaved into the toilet or onto the beach or off a bridge or wherever they’d happened to be when they’d felt the urge to empty their stomachs after a night out (or in and nursing a bottle of vodka). He’d thought he was so much better than they were for just enduring. 

     Now, though, he realized that had been ridiculous. How much better those seven years would have been if he could just have been blacked out for most of it. 

     He ordered a third drink. 

     It occurred to him then, briefly, that the cost of those three drinks would be taking a massive bite out of his budget for the week, but wasn’t that what that pre-paid debit card burning a hole in his pocket was for? He’d promised himself he’d only use it for rent, but fuck it. As Seto had pointed out when he’d forced it on him, it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to do a job for that money; he’d just subtract these drinks from what he’d get to have over the summer. 

     After downing half of the third drink, a sense of annoyance began to permeate the comfortable buzz from the alcohol. Valon was late. Of course he was. He took another sip, tapping his foot impatiently against the underside of the bar. 

     “Hey! Long time no see, Ali!”

      “Don’t call me that.” Alistair was deeply annoyed his senses had been dulled enough that he hadn’t noticed his ex-colleague sneaking up on him. 

     He hadn’t changed much, Alistair observed. A year later Valon still sported the same unruly mop of spiky brown hair, the same open, friendly expression. He even still wore motorcycle gear like it was cool, though he had traded in his tacky, impractical maroon vest for a long-sleeved leather jacket that actually looked like it could absorb the impact of falling off a speeding bike. And though it was unlikely he’d driven his motorcycle in this weather, he’d seen fit to don a pair of riding gloves.  

    “What, I don’t even get a ‘hello?’” Valon asked cheerfully, sidestepping Alistair in order to perch on the empty stool beside him. “Not too friendly of you, is it?” He reached out and jostled Alistair’s shoulder. “At least offer me a drink, yeah?” 

     “No. Buy your own damn drink.” 

     Valon laughed as he signaled for the bartender. “You certainly haven’t changed, have ya?” 

     The comment stung, but since Valon couldn’t possibly know that, Alistair went to take another sip before realizing the glass was empty. Irritated, he set it down again. This had been a mistake. 

     “Y’know,” Valon began after the bartender had handed him a frosted beer glass. “I was pretty surprised to get your text. I figured I’d hear from Raph before I’d hear from you.” 

     “So you haven’t then?” 

     “Nah.” Valon took a swig of beer and pulled a face. “What is it with Domino that they always serve beer so that it’s cold enough to freeze your eyeballs?” 

     “Why are you even in Domino?” 

     To Alistair’s surprise, the carefree look faded from Valon’s expression and he looked almost serious, now staring pensively into his drink. 

     “Same reason you are.” 

     “You have no idea why I’m here,” Alistair sneered, though the statement had sent a bolt of adrenaline through him. Valon couldn’t know . There was no way…

     “You’re obviously looking for something, same as me. Or you’d’ve stayed in California. But you didn’t. And I didn’t. We dragged our asses all the way back here . And hey, I won’t ask if you don’t ask, but I reckon we know each other well enough to guess, so let’s leave it at that, yeah?” 

     “Wait a minute.” Alistair couldn’t help but let out a snide laugh. “Tell me this isn’t about Mai Valentine. I demand that this not be about her. You can’t be that pathetic.” 

     A frown twitched across Valon’s face. 

     “I don’t really think you wanna compete over which of us has a more pathetic reason for being here, right? I remember your wallpaper at our base a little too well for you to be calling anybody names.” 

     Just as quickly, the grin was back. 

     “Oh, and by the way, I was glad to see that you’ve been letting yourself have a bit of fun these days.” He glanced slyly at Alistair who had no choice but to ask for clarification. “I saw you. Last summer. At Byzantium. Only, I wasn’t for sure sure until just this second. I would have come up to say hi, ‘cept you was a little bit preoccupied if you catch my meaning. And good for you, honestly. You sure do have a type though, don’t ‘cha?” He jostled Alistair’s shoulder again. 

     The information brought with it such a hurricane of embarrassment that Alistair felt physically ill, as though the gin and tonics had decided they were no longer sure they wanted to reside in his stomach. 

     “Hey, hey,” Valon went on. “I’m not making fun of ya-- I think it’s great. I’d be the last person in the world to judge anyone for having a good time.” He knocked his glass against Alistair’s in a show of comradery. 

     “Wait,” Alistair said, something occurring to him suddenly. “What were you doing at Byzantium?” 

     “I work there. As a bouncer.” 

     “No, you said you work at Club Briseis.” 

     “Yeah, I work there too. I got the gig at Byzantium first though. I’m right popular with the gays I’ll have you know.” He made a cutesy gesture and winked. 

     “Ugh.” But Alistair could hardly disagree given the truth there probably was to the sentiment. What he lacked in height, Valon had always more than made up for in personality when it came to picking people up. Not that his personality was good, in Alistair’s opinion, just that it was such a steamroller you couldn’t help but be knocked flat by it. 

       “Anyway,” Valon went on hastily. “I’m assuming that’s not why you texted me after all this time.” 

     It was unusually shrewd of Valon to intuit that there was something beyond his company Alistair had been hoping for. Had he been more sober, Alistair might then have chosen his words more carefully, but three drinks in he simply didn’t have the ability to string together more than one thought in front of the other. 

     “Why are you working at Club Briseis? There are a million clubs in this city. No way you just stumbled your way into working at that one.” 

     “Now that’s an interesting question,” Valon replied musingly, leaning forward more comfortably on the stool so that his elbows balanced on the bar. “The short answer is: I was hoping you’d show up there one day. Once I realized you’d left your phone at the base, I figured it was the best way to meet up with you again.” 

     “What?” Alistair was nearly startled out of his drunkenness. There was so much to unpack he didn’t know where to begin. 

     “I told you: that’s the short version. If you want the long version we’ll need more drinks than you should probably have at the minute. 

     What I want to know is: what took you so long? It’s been like, a year. Where have you been? After I saw you that time at Byzantium I figured for sure you’d come back, but I never saw you there again. And I know you’ve never been down to Briseis. I’d've thought that’d be the second place you’d go once you got back here.” 

     “The second?” 

     Valon quirked an eyebrow knowingly. 

     The feeling of embarrassment returned, and Alistair’s cheeks started to burn. “I see you haven’t gotten any new material in the last year,” he growled, grateful now for the low lighting. 

     “Sorry, sorry; couldn’t resist. So where were you then?” 

     “Working at the library,” he replied evasively. 

     “Huh. Interesting choice. ‘Spose that's why I’ve never seen you; I don’t know that I’ve ever even been in a library before.” 

     “That explains so much.” 

     “Hey, hey! Be nice!” Valon waggled a finger at him good-naturedly. “Anyway, what can I do for you? Like I said: I don't reckon you hit me up just to shoot the breeze with an old friend, though I am wounded to know it.”

     Again, Alistair found himself annoyed that Valon hadn’t been on time; this would have been so much easier if Valon was drunker and he was more sober. He just had to keep it straight that he was the one who was asking the questions.  

     “You said you were looking for me. Why?” 

     Valon smiled at him with such admiration that on anyone else Alistair would have assumed it sardonic. 

      “Can’t pull one over on you, huh? Never could. I always wished I could do that: not talk about myself and just turn it back around. No one would ever call me mysterious.” He laughed and took another drink, the glass now nearly empty. “Alright, you win; I’ll just assume you reached out because you missed me. 

     I was looking for you because I need your help with something. With Dartz gone the Orichalcos just isn’t what it was, so it takes actual smarts to be able to do anything with it anymore. And that was always more your thing than mine or Raph’s. I also don’t have quite the look to--.”

     “What do you mean?” Alistair interrupted sharply, trying hard now to stay grounded in the conversation. “You still have it?” 

     “Course.” It was Valon’s turn to look taken aback. “Don’t you?” he asked, hand going automatically to the fingers of his right hand, his Orichalcos ring presumably hidden under his glove. 

     “No.” Alistair’s tone was dismissive. “But yours still works? What can you do with it?”  

     Valon at first seemed on the verge of asking his own follow-up question, but then opted to follow Alistair’s lead. 

     “That’s the thing. I’m not completely sure; I was hoping you’d know. It used to just… work , y’know? Now it works sometimes, but it feels weaker, and I can’t figure out how to control what’s left.” 

     “Why would you want to? We both know how dangerous it is. Don’t be an idiot, Valon--get rid of it!” 

     “Shhh ! Not everyone here needs to know about this,” Valon hissed. “Let’s go for a walk for this bit, yeah?” 

     Alistair hated to take orders from Valon, but he wanted too badly to know more to make a point of it. 

     As they made their way some ten minutes later up the street and through the thinning crowd along the sidewalk, Valon explained his reluctance to part with the ring he’d received from Dartz ‘ye back in the day.’ 

     “First of all: I earned it, didn’t I? Same as you earned yours. So I know it’s not dangerous to me; I’d’ve never been able to wear it if I wasn’t, y’know, worthy or whatever. You know what I mean; you’ve been there. And if it’s got power left, I should be able to use it, yeah?”

     “No.” Alistair’s pronouncement was swift and without hesitation. “I didn’t get it either, until I lost. When you always win, it’s hard to understand how dangerous it is. But Valon, listen: when I lost to Kaiba and it came for me, it was…” He struggled to find a fitting adjective, but the gin and tonics had put up a barrier to his mental dictionary. “It was bad. It was so bad.” 

     “I know.” Valon stopped walking. They’d reached a quiet street corner, the block lined with upscale boutiques that had closed hours ago. “I guess you didn’t know, but I lost to Wheeler.” 

     “Really?” 

     Valon smiled briefly, though his expression quickly turned serious again. “I appreciate you bein’ surprised. But yeah. So I know how bad it is. But that was my own fault. I was an idiot for thinkin’ that duel would make a difference anyway. The Orichalcos read me for filth, that’s all.” 

     “You know what?” Alistair said with a sigh of annoyance, his breath billowing out into the cold night air. “If you want to--” he paused, realizing he’d been about to say ‘play with fire’ and quickly modified the statement. “If you want to mess around with that, then go for it. But I’m not helping you.” 

     They stood in silence for a moment. It was probably the longest amount of time he’d ever known Valon to keep quiet, and Alistair couldn’t help but appreciate how much more he enjoyed his colleague’s company when he wasn’t babbling about something. Though he’d never liked Valon particularly, he had to admit there was something unexpectedly comfortable in knowing how many memories they had in common. 

     All the meetings in Dartz’s conference room, the brutal training schedule for practicing Duel Monsters, the long nights of surveillance, the missions all over California collecting souls. All the arguments they’d had over who got to sleep in what bed when they were on the road, often settled by Raphael stepping in between them.

     And despite the fact that all of it had been based on a lie, there had undeniably been some good times. 

     Alistair glanced sideways at Valon, whose messy hair was getting tossed by the wind. Had he really learned so little since Dartz had vanished that he wanted to…He realized that Valon had never actually gotten around to telling him what exactly it was he wanted to do. Not that it mattered. Whatever it was was a bad idea. 

     Even so… 

     His gaze flicked down to Valon’s hand. Knowing that the stone was there made Alistair miss his necklace even though he was better off without it. Why should Valon of all people have that much power available to him? Valon had never known how to be responsible! 

     “I’ll be square with ya.” 

     Alistair’s gaze flicked back to Valon’s face. He was looking pensive again. 

     “Once Dartz was gone I went home for a bit. But I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it, y’know? Over there I was just some loser nobody who never even finished school. And it was also just really boring. 

     I missed it: workin’ for Dartz. Sure, some of it was kinda borin’ too, but we got to be this badass team, yeah? Flyin’ all over the place in our own chopper, gettin’ to duel all the time; it was great.” 

     Valon’s smile of nostalgia was rather contagious, and it was with some difficulty that Alistair stopped himself from smiling too. He’d spent much of the past year telling himself how shameful it was that he’d allowed himself to be tricked into joining a cult. But it wasn’t fair to pretend that it had all been terrible. Indeed, none of his individual experiences working for DOMA had been bad per say. But Dartz had lied. Dartz had gotten his brother killed. 

      But weren’t most of the things Dartz had told them true? If it had all been a lie there would be no suffering in the world at all, and that certainly wasn’t the case. Wasn’t that the reason he’d wanted to live out on his own: to be able to see with eyes unclouded by the Orichalcos’s influence whether something really was rotten in the state of Domino?  

     “What’s your idea?” he asked finally. 

     Valon’s eyes lit up. “Hey! So you wanna team up again?” 

     Alistair glanced away to stare at the slushy patch of sidewalk at their feet. 

     “Maybe.”  

Chapter Text

I scream when I’m mad

But you don’t talk back

I know you’re not real

But I’m good with that

Just how I like him

~HIM, Tokio Hotel   

Chapter 4:  Digital Dummy 

     The problem with sleeping with the light on, Seto was beginning to realize, was that it had slowly turned into not even sleeping in bed. For several nights in a row he’d fallen asleep either at the desk in his bedroom or the couch in his home office. Not on purpose, just as the unfortunate result of the erosion of the meaning of time. At least when he wasn’t at work. It seemed to be his one luxury these days; get home and avoid looking at the clock until the 6am alarm. 

     He could almost never remember his dreams these days, which was rather the point, but to his frustration, his body just wasn’t getting with the program. He’d been fighting the tension between his shoulder blades for years, but after sleeping at his desk he found he could barely turn his head despite the amount of menthol-based cream he applied. He was having trouble concentrating too. Not so much than anyone else would notice, but enough that he could feel the weight of his exhaustion pressing against his mental reflexes. Coffee was barely enough to keep him upright these days despite the high volume he was consuming. He’d even had the passing thought that Mokuba’s friends hadn’t been completely off the mark with cocaine. Granted, their use had been frivolous whereas his would be regimented and completely under control. He’d even looked into how to produce it himself, but it would take time to set up a lab and acquire the necessary equipment and other elements, and in his own risk assessment of the situation he'd realized that while it could perhaps be a long-term consideration, he needed all his faculties to be sure it was done properly.  

     What he really wanted, certainly more than he wanted to go to the trouble of producing cocaine, was for Alistair to come back. Even just for a night. If he could just get a single night of proper sleep… 

     But he’d promised.   

     The evening before the commercial for Grand Championship was set to begin its first day of production, Seto was at his office at headquarters reading over the day's reports when Mokuba called. 

     Without bothering with any form of salutation, his brother, who sounded as though he was in the middle of a crowd of people, snapped:

     “Why didn’t you tell me my card has a $35,000 limit?” 

     “Because you’re only there for two days,” Seto answered with a shrug his brother couldn’t see. “So what does it matter?” 

     “I need more than that!” 

     “What for?” But Seto was barely paying attention, his gaze drawn to his laptop. He’d been trying unsuccessfully to figure out why Alistair had been spending so much time in the River District the past week. 

     “I’m supposed to be representing Kaiba Corp, aren’t I?” Mokuba’s tone was huffy. “How can I do that if I barely have enough money to cover a night out? This is L.A ., Seto. I can’t just take these people out to McDonald's! And I needed to buy clothes for all these events, and I had to get thank you gifts, and--” 

     “You shouldn’t even have extra expenses," Seto interrupted. "This was coordinated weeks ago. By you.” 

     “So, I obviously screwed up the budget. Look, I'm at a party; stop lecturing me. Just send me more money. ” 

     Seto sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “How much do you need?” 

     “I don’t know. Just call the credit card company and tell them to take off the limit on my card.” 

     This was one of those times Seto knew the path of least resistance and what was actually best for his brother were mutually exclusive. If he weren’t so tired he could easily push back against, if nothing else, Mokuba’s attitude. But he no longer wanted to be trapped in this conversation. Once Mokuba was back in Domino they could discuss this, but what was he going to do from here, leave his brother stranded in California without a working credit card?

     “Fine, I'll wire you some money. For tonight have Roland put whatever you need on the expense account.” 

     “Excellent! Thanks, Seto! Anyway, gotta go. See you when I get back!” 

      That was easy at least , Seto thought, reluctantly opening his eyes and returning to the reports. It was far from ideal to give into Mokuba’s whims like that, but after their falling out the year before, he was struggling to find a middle ground. And with Mokuba turning sixteen that year, he was running out of time. 

     His eyes went back to the laptop. 

     He couldn’t bounce ideas off of Alistair directly, but he did have a secondary option. If he skipped dinner he would have an entire extra hour to spend in the bunker. 

     Once, when (in a cursed turn of events that was best forgotten) he and Yugi and Yugi’s pep squad had ended up locked in Noah’s demented cyber world, he’d revealed to them that he often dueled against CGI versions of himself to practice new strategies. This was a piece of information they seemed to find laughable, but he stood by his assertion that there was no better training partner. 

     However, when it came to giving human advice, he found himself frustratingly lacking in any valuable insights. True, a computer couldn’t really replicate a person, but coding had come far enough under his expert leadership that the facade at least was possible. 

     After telling Trudy to just leave him a plate in the downstairs refrigerator in spite of her chastisement at his having missed every dinner that week, Seto left the office for the evening. 

     Putting concerns about his brother on hold for the long commute out of town, Seto focused his attention instead back on the River District. There was nothing there of interest other than crappy high rise apartments and a few low-end shopping centers. 

     The answer was likely in Alistair’s text messages, to which he’d added an extra layer of encryption. It wasn't elegant, but Seto could appreciate that despite being obviously self-taught, Alistair’s computer skills were rather good. With some formal training he could be even better.

      It was the kind of thing he’d realized in the past month (after a lifetime of thinking otherwise) that he’d actually enjoy; helping someone else build up a skill. Not just anyone, of course, but people with talent were worth investing in. And frankly, in Alistair’s case, it would just be a good excuse for them to be around each other. 

     But none of that could happen until Alistair came back. 

     It was a mantra he was getting sick of. 

     He’d surprised himself by not forcing his way past Alistair’s admittedly weak encryption. There was some level of respect there, but he told himself it would also take the challenge out of it. This was a puzzle, and there was no reason to make it too easy. 

     Everything was quiet when he got back to the estate. Kanzo was on duty that night, and they exchanged a brief salutation, Seto letting him know he’d be down in the bunker for the foreseeable future and not to bother him unless there was imminent nuclear fallout. 

     Despite George and his landscaping team’s best efforts, the Kaiba estate was just as susceptible to becoming a slushy mess as anywhere else in the city, the ground underneath marshy so that anyone stepping off the path was liable to sink several inches into the mud on a warmer day. Today, though, the ground held firm under an uneven dusting of fresh snow, and although he’d just been down there several days before, the latch to pull up the bunker’s outer door had frozen to the earth. 

     Once inside, Seto kicked off his shoes and tossed his coat over the ancient couch that had been pushed back against the wall. The room was cold, but he wouldn’t be worrying about that much longer. 

     Though the outer chamber remained much as it had been since the first time he’d brought Alistair down there back at the beginning of the winter, there was one major addition. In the center of the otherwise outdated living space, Seto had had one of his ill-fated virtual reality pods set up. As the electricity kicked in, the pod flickered to life with a loud mechanical whir and flashes of light across its surface. 

     It represented the one flop of his career; seemingly no matter how good, how realistic the experience, people weren’t prepared to lock themselves into what Momo Tojigamuri had once dubbed ‘coffins.’ People wanted something lightweight and small that could be stored in a cupboard. Something, according to Marketing and PR, that could be splashed across PictureThis by conventionally attractive influencers. Hence, the success (albeit fleeting) of, in Seto’s opinion, far inferior products from other brands with terrible graphics and primitive VR experiences. 

     Whatever. 

     In the meantime, even if no one else was smart enough to recognize the brilliance of what he’d created, he would enjoy it in solitude. 

     Clicking open the pod’s hatch, he lowered himself into it, the headset coming down over his eyes as the hatch closed again. 

     Within seconds, he found himself standing in his own backyard. In this rendering, it was perpetually late summer, the air seemingly humming with unseen life. A light breeze rustled through the trees as the full moon emerged from behind puffy cumulus clouds. It wasn’t the most meticulous job he’d ever done, and if one focused too long they would notice that nothing quite moved the way it should, and that the breeze, though heard, went unfelt. 

     He would never normally be so sloppy, but the scenery wasn’t the point. 

     Walking farther into the garden, past several fountains he hadn’t bothered to fill with water, he approached a lone willow under which a marble bench was just visible. On the bench, face upturned towards the digital constellations swimming in and out of view among the clouds, sat Alistair. 

     “I don’t know what to do about Mokuba,” Seto began without preamble, flopping down on the other end of the bench. Alistair made no reply, but turned to look at him inquisitively. 

     The first time Seto had come here he’d found the mattness of Alistair’s skin and the slightly off shade of his eyes a bit uncanny, but with time and a few tweaks he barely noticed anymore. 

     “Obviously, I screwed up with him somewhere, but he’s not a little kid anymore, so I know he knows he’s making bad decisions.” 

     Alistair nodded understandingly. 

     “I thought that this was an act he was putting on because he was jealous of me; I could understand that. But if he just is this way then there’s nothing to do.” He frowned in distaste at the thought. “He shouldn’t have been allowed to go all the way to California without me, but…”

He hesitated even though he knew he was only really talking to himself. “I’m glad he’s been Roland’s problem and not mine.” He leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes, afraid, even though it was the point of being here, to articulate what he knew to be the crux of the matter. “I told him after we picked him up downtown that time that he’s my responsibility. I meant that. Because…” He hesitated again, crossing and uncrossing his legs, his hand twisted into the fabric of his left sleeve. “Because taking care of him is something I have to do, but it’s starting to feel like a waste of my time.” 

     Seto’d thought that saying it out loud would be somehow freeing. That out in the open it wouldn’t feel true. But considering that Mokuba was an ocean away and he was going to the trouble of talking to a computer about it, how could he deny that it was? 

     For their entire lives, Mokuba had always brought out the best in him, forced him not to give in to his worst impulses, pressed him to be good even when Seto hadn’t seen the value in it. And in this way, their relationship had felt symbiotic to him. Hell, it was because of Mokuba that Alistair had ever been allowed to step foot in their home in the first place. 

     Looking back in Alistair’s direction, Seto saw he was staring up at the sky again, legs crossed underneath him and his hands resting in his lap. Following Alistair’s lead, Seto too looked up at the digital stars, which were blinking in a way he wasn’t sure if they did in real life. When was the last time he'd had the time to look?

     The realization of this uncertainty finally caused the composure he’d felt obligated even in this fake world to maintain to slide off him like water. 

     “Who the hell does he think he is?” he snapped loudly, looking once more at Alistair, who obligingly looked back at him. “Has he forgotten that without me he’s nothing ? I built this life for us! I was the one smart enough to figure out how to get us out of that orphanage! I sit at that office ninety hours a week to keep the business I earned running properly! Every sacrifice that’s ever had to be made I’ve made!” Each ‘I’ he punctuated with a hard jab into his own chest, and as his anger built up steam, he could feel it burning from the inside out. “He hasn’t done a single thing in his life and he thinks he and I are equals? What a joke…” He got up, suddenly too full of energy to sit still. Alistair’s eyes followed his movements. 

     “I know what you’d say,” Seto went on, pacing back and forth between the bench and the willow tree. “That this is my fault. But it’s not. I did everything right. I’ve given him the best of everything, I’ve protected him. I even gave him more rope because you told me to.” He stopped in front of Alistair and glared at him. “But you were wrong, and I should never have listened to you!” Alistair stared steadily at him, and if possible, Seto felt his rage intensify another degree. 

     “For all I know, you were wrong about everything !” He leaned down so they were nearly nose to nose, but Alistair didn’t flinch; he hadn’t been programmed to. “Is that just what you do: screw things up and then walk away?” He scoffed and straightened up, turning his back on the bench. “Is that why you won’t go to that club downtown? You care what happens to a bunch of strangers but not--.” He cut himself off and wheeled back around again. “What’s in the River District? Who are you meeting there?” He crossed his arms. “Do you not realize this is my city? The only reason you can have any secrets at all is because I let you. And it’s not like you have a history of respecting anyone’s privacy.” There was a pause during which Alistair looked back up at the sky. 

     The moon was once again hidden in the clouds, deepening the shadows in the garden. The breeze was back too, the tree branches shaking with it. And though Seto couldn’t feel it, it tousled Alistair’s hair, gently revealing the side of his face as he tilted his head back, and Seto could see the three freckles dotting his cheekbone. 

     Like sweating out the heat from a fever, Seto realized that yelling had broken the worst of his anger. 

     Suddenly tired, he sat back down on the bench, wanting to rest his head in Alistair’s lap but knowing better than to touch him. 

     “I feel like I’m losing it,” he admitted, shoving a hand through his hair and resting his forehead against his palms. “And not in that stupid hocus-pocus way. I don’t think I’m a pharaoh or whatever it is those lunatics are always talking about.” He paused, expecting Alistair to laugh until he remembered Alistair wasn’t really there. “I know who I am.” He said this with a sort of hollow conviction that he knew the real Alistair would never have allowed him to get away with. “But I don’t recognize Mokuba anymore.” He forced himself to look at Alistair one more time. He knew the silver of his eyes was wrong, that other minute details were wrong. But with only his memory to rely on,  Seto could no longer say exactly in what way. “Will I still recognize you, if you come back?” 

     Alistair smiled serenely but didn’t answer.              

Chapter Text

"I got a man, but I want you
And it's just nerves, it's just dick
Makin' me think 'bout someone new " 

~You Right, Doja Cat

Chapter 5: Just a Bit of Fun

     The DOMA headquarters in Dartz’s sunken castle hadn’t felt particularly grand after seven years of living there on and off. The winding staircases and enormous stone chambers seemingly untouched since Atlantis sank into the ocean and the strange shifting light coming from nowhere throwing eerie shadows along each passageway had quickly felt like home. And though he’d never quite understood how Dartz kept the kitchen stocked when they were located at least a hundred meters below the surface of the ocean, Alistair had been ready to accept just about anything if it meant he never had to go back to the ruin of the camp where Mikey had been killed. 

     The first few days (maybe weeks, maybe months), Dartz had left him in a small room with long red drapes and an intricately woven tapestry of an ancient forest scene covering the wall opposite a cramped bed. Alistair couldn’t, no matter how he tried, remember arriving at the castle. His first memories were of staring at that tapestry, the monsters hiding between lush branches and peeking out from behind dense underbrush getting mixed up with his memories of his own village in horrible nightmares that left him shaking and calling out for his parents before falling back into feverish dreams. The tanks became dragons that reduced entire forests to smoldering charcoal against bloody skies, and gunshots became the cracking of sword blades against armor and the screeches of fighting beasts, snarling as, locked in combat, they writhed in the mud. 

     The first day he’d felt truly aware of his place in reality again, alive enough to feel hungry, he’d cautiously left the room and crept along the passage beyond with his back pressed against the wall and his tired muscles tensed in anticipation of the low rumble of some stray shell, eyes scanning the stones trying to evaluate if the place seemed strong enough to stand up to sudden attack. 

     He remembered shouting in surprise when the then seventeen year-old Raphael had run nearly headlong into him coming the other way. 

     “Master Dartz wants to see you now that you’re awake,” Raphael had said before curling his lip in distaste. “But you should clean up first--you stink. Come on; I’ll show you where the bath is. And you should wash your clothes too.” 

     No questions about who he was or where he’d come from. That utter lack of curiosity was something Alistair would come to learn was a quintessential aspect of Raphael’s personality, and in that exact moment, it had been just what he’d needed to feel grounded in this new place. 

     He’d earned his Orichalcos stone the very same day in Dartz’s main hall. Raphael had warned him that he’d seen a number of people try and fail to take the stone from their master’s hand; they’d all ended up adorning the tablets that decorated the walls. Perhaps Raphael had told him this as a means of scaring him, but all Alistair remembered feeling was relief. Either he would be able to get revenge on the ones responsible for leaving him alone in the world, or he’d join his family somewhere else. What was there to be scared of? 

     The test itself lasted mere seconds. Dartz had reminded him of the evils of mankind and of his mission to lock away anyone who had ever contributed to driving their race further from paradise. He’d told Alistair he hoped he would be with him to see the completion of that mission, but that it was up to the Orichalcos to make that decision. 

     “It’s time to find out who you really are, Alistair,” he’d said before holding out his hand, a shard of aquamarine crystal glittering in his palm. With timid hesitation, he’d raised his arm to reach for it, the gap between his hand and Dartz’s suddenly huge. A wind had picked up, seemingly originating from the stone itself, and the force of it threatened to push him back. The power of it was frightening, and instinct urged him to retreat from the insidious light of the thing glowing at arm’s length in front of him. 

     But then he thought of his parents, of his brother. How could he avenge them if he was always running away? And hadn’t Dartz promised the stone was only dangerous to the unrighteous? That wouldn’t be him. 

     The stone hadn’t been cold as he’d expected, but warm and pulsing with an inner intelligence that, when later that day he’d strung it around his neck, made him feel instantly like his life had been leading to this. He might not understand it fully, but under Dartz and the power of the Orichcalcos no more good people would have to suffer, and he would be part of the reason why. And he’d start with Gozaburo Kaiba. 

     Of course, it hadn’t turned out that way. Less than a year after joining DOMA, Gozaburo Kaiba was dead and his thirteen year-old step-son had taken over his corporate empire. 

     Not long after that, as Alistair was finishing up his Duel Monsters training to Dartz’s satisfaction, he and Raphael were told that a third boy would be joining them. This time, it had been Alistair’s job to prepare someone for the Orichalcos trial. He’d expected the new boy to be as scared as he’d been, but as they locked eyes when he entered the room, the boy, who seemed to be around his age, smiled hugely and sprang up from the bed. 

     “Heya! Good to finally see someone else--I’ve just been down here twiddlin’ my thumbs for days !” 

     Startled by the boy’s upbeat tone, Alistair didn’t know what to do other than continue with his task. 

     “Master Dartz wants to see you.” 

     “Ah, fuck. Oh, not about the Master Dartz thing,” Valon had explained quickly upon seeing Alistair’s horror. “It’s just.” He sighed in disappointment. “I thought you was a girl. Is it all blokes here, or what?” 

     “What does it matter?” Alistair demanded, the misunderstanding making him flush with embarrassment. 

     “Yeah, I ‘spose it doesn’t,” Valon agreed amicably, crossing his arms behind his head. “‘Specially if they all look like you,” he added with a cheeky wink. 

     “Ugh, just come on,” Alistair growled, wheeling around, Valon’s laughter following him back into the hallway. No way the Orichalcos accepted someone like that . 

     Thus had begun six years of his intense dislike of his teammate. He couldn’t accept that Valon was a good person; he was too happy all the time. How could a good person be happy knowing what all was out there? How could they laugh and make jokes if they knew the world around them and all the people in it were poison? Alistair knew it was blasphemous to think, but he’d often wondered if the Orichalcos had made a mistake with Valon. Then Mai Valentine had come along and made it all even worse. 

     And now here he was sitting across from Valon again in a cramped studio apartment in Domino, for all the world as though the last year hadn’t happened and they were on a soul-collecting mission for Dartz. Except they weren’t. And Alistair was quickly growing frustrated by how unforthcoming Valon had been all week about what exactly his brilliant idea for how to use the remaining Orichalcos stone was. 

     “God, do you remember how scared that bloke was when he realized he couldn’t get out of the seal?” Valon said with a chuckle, lips turning up in a grin of nostalgia. “Agreed to fix our bikes right quick then, didn’t he?” He laughed again, then seemed to realize that the beer can Alistair was absently sliding back and forth between his hands was empty. “Hey, want another one?” he asked, already getting up. “It’s great that you drink now; I always felt like a bit of a loser drinking alone.” 

     “Tcha ,” Alistair replied, realizing as soon as he said it that it was the same dismissive sound Seto always made.  

     “Hey what’s the matter?” Valon asked, setting the fresh can in front of him and sitting back down. “Why’re you so grumpy all of a sudden? I thought we was over here havin’ a good time.” He took a sip of his own unfinished drink. “Y’know, if you keep frownin’ like that your face’ll freeze that way.” 

     “Valon, why am I here?” Alistair demanded, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. “You keep saying you have some big idea, but I’m starting to think you don’t. I should have known better; you’ve never had a single good idea in your life.” He shoved the can across the table and stood up.

     “Ali, wait!” 

     “Don’t call me that.” 

     “Fine, fine, just sit back down.”

     Valon sounded so earnest that against his better judgment, Alistair returned to his seat at the small table, the spindly chair creaking ominously. 

     “First of all,” Valon started, running a hand through his messy hair. “You asked me the other day what I knew about what happened with Dartz after…after we’d lost our duels, yeah? Well, I don’t know because obviously I wasn’t there, but I do kind of have an idea because…” Valon shifted uncomfortably. “Look, I’ll tell you what I know, but you can’t make any judgy little comments. I mean, I know you will anyway, but I’m just sayin’.” 

     “Then just spit it out.” 

     “Alright, alright.” 

     To Alistiar’s confusion, Valon really did look chagrined about something, and he kept fidgeting with his Orichalcos ring. 

     “I asked Mai about it, after it was all kind of over. Wheeler filled her in.” 

     “You’re kidding.” Alistair snorted and cracked open the beer. It would be his fourth of the night, but he'd need it if they were going to talk about her. “Of course you still talk to her. Jesus, Valon, how cucked can a person be?” 

     “Hey now,” Valon protested, sounding annoyed for the first time. “Pot, kettle, black. Or have you shagged Seto Kaiba recently?” 

     Alistair couldn’t stop himself from laughing at that. “The fact that that’s the only thing you can say... But go on: what little story did Mai Valentine tell you?” 

     It turned out that, according to Wheeler, the Pharaoh and Seto had duled Dartz in the sacred chamber and defeated him; something Valon hadn’t completely understood about the three legendary dragons really being knights. Then Dartz had fused his own soul with the Great Leviathan to resurrect it, and Wheeler, the Pharaoh, and Seto had battled against him in this form, and somehow the three Egyptian God monsters had been involved and had made the final blow. In the end, the Pharaoh had done something to free Dartz’s spirit and he’d gone on to the afterlife with his family. 

     It was such a barebones account that Alistair almost felt as if he understood less than before about what had happened. But given that most of it was third-hand, and it wasn’t as though he’d be inviting the Pharaoh out for a coffee to explain in more detail, he supposed he’d just have to accept that he’d never really know. 

     “And Wheeler didn’t tell her what happened to Raphael?” 

     Valon shrugged. “Nah. He was with them, apparently, and then after the Leviathan and Dartz disappeared, he took off. She dueled him, y’know? After my duel with Wheeler, apparently she went over to headquarters, wantin’ to duel Dartz, but she ran into him first.” 

     Rolling his eyes at Valon’s smile of admiration, Alistair took another sip of beer to avoid saying anything. 

     “Say what you want about Mai,” Valon said, still with that dreamy smile. “But she’s fearless.” 

     “Why shouldn’t she be?” Alistair could feel all the old resentment towards her bubbling up the more Valon reminded him of how much of her he’d had to endure. “What does she have to be afraid of? All she has to do is bat her eyelashes and she gets whatever she wants.” He nearly missed the edge of the table when he went to put the beer can down, a small stream of it sloshing over the edge and onto the scarred wood. 

     “I have never understood why you don’t like her,” Valon said with a bemused sigh, resting his arms behind his head so the not insignificant muscles in his biceps flexed under the tight shirt he was wearing. “You’re honestly pretty similar. I mean,” he went on quickly, seeing Alistair’s outrage. “You’re both really strong people. And hardworking. I think between you, you and Mai trained twice as much as Raph and I ever did. And I also…” He seemed to weigh his words. “I also thought you both seemed really lonely, but too stubborn to ever admit it.” 

     Alistair wasn’t sure if it was because he wasn’t wearing his Orichalcos necklace anymore, but despite muscle memory making it easy to dredge up his old dislike of his ex-colleague, he found there was no longer any real venom in it. This was why, he supposed, he’d been indulging Valon’s invitations all week with no real hope of their meetings resulting in anything worthwhile. It was nice to be able to casually reference Dartz or Atlantis or even the Orichalcos to someone who got it . In fact, after a week of reminiscing with Valon, he realized how much of a relief it was; Seto had only ever gotten annoyed when he brought it up, saying with such certainty that none of it had actually happened that Alistair had started to wonder if it really hadn’t all been an elaborate delusion. 

     Even their snarky back and forth felt comfortably familiar, and despite the late hour, Alistair found himself settling back into his chair. He wasn’t thrilled about being compared to Mai Valentine, but it wasn’t insulting enough for him to want to leave just yet. It astonished him that Valon of all people could have been insightful enough to recognize something in him he hadn’t understood in himself, but it did shed new light on why Valon had seemed bent on always pestering him when they’d worked together. Like a puppy, he thought hazily. 

     “Did you ever actually do anything with her?” he asked, toying with the tab on his beer can. 

     “You really curious?” 

     “I asked, didn’t I?” 

     Valon tipped his chair back before answering, and Alistair couldn’t help but be reminded of Mokuba, the thought casting a momentary shadow on his mood. 

     “Yeah, I did. A couple of times. But once we went to Domino, she was too focussed on Wheeler.”

     “Don’t I know it.” Alistair wasn’t particularly surprised to hear that Valon had gotten what he’d wanted from Mai at least once or twice. She’d struck him as the type of person to view sex as a commodity in addition to whatever else it might mean to her. And his dopy, lovesick teammate had no doubt reminded her enough of Joey Wheeler and had seemed a useful enough ally for her to use it as a means of keeping him around until she no longer needed him. 

     “Since we’re already having this little kiki,” Valon began, dropping the chair back onto the ground with a thump and resting his head on his forearms on the table. “Did you really never do anything with anybody until after all that with the Great Leviathan and whatever else?” Before Alistair could tell him it was none of his business, he went on: “specifically, what I want to know is: did you ever do anythin' with Raph?” 

     Alistair was so startled by this he nearly choked on his drink. 

     “God no,” he sputtered. “Why would you even ask that?” 

     Valon laughed. He was leaning so far forward now that his chin was practically on the table. “You should see your face!” He laughed again, his light blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “It’s just, I know you wasn’t doing anything with me, so I wondered if maybe you and Raph was gettin' it on when I wasn’t there.”    

     “Why would I have been ‘getting it on’ with either of you?” Alistair asked with a sniff, taking another swig of beer. The alcohol was starting to make him feel drowsy, and even without looking at his phone he knew it must be late enough that the Tunnel Train would be closing soon. The notion of passing out on Valon’s couch didn’t bother him as much as he’d have thought. 

     He was just about to say something about it when he noticed Valon was looking at him expectantly. 

     “What?” 

     “So you’re sayin’ you never thought about it?” Valon reached out and lightly poked Alistair in the back of the hand as he spoke. 

     Valon had always been a touchy-feely person, but Alistair wasn’t too drunk to recognize (or at least, to think he recognized) that there was a wholly unexpected and rather shocking intention behind the way the other man had slowly flung himself across the table over the course of their conversation. 

     He thought of Seto. There had been no rule between them against doing anything with other people, probably because Seto would never have admitted it if he didn’t want him to. But Alistair knew with absolute certainty that he was nevertheless not supposed to. And anyway, why should he want Mai Valentine’s sloppy seconds? Especially when he couldn’t be absolutely sure Valon was even seriously hinting that they do anything at all. He was surely only teasing. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

     Until Mai had joined their team, Valon had seemed to get a real kick out of making sexual jokes about him. A lot of:

     “Ooh, your bum sure looks good in them jeans, Ali; did you get ‘em just for your duel with Kaiba? ” and “ you might want to cover up a bit; you’re trying to collect souls, not give some old bloke a heart attack! ” And on and on. It had been absolutely infuriating, and the only good thing about Mai coming along was that Valon had lost interest in doing it. Of course it made sense that he’d start up again without her around to distract him. 

     “I thought about it,” Valon said. 

     “Yeah, I bet.” But Alistair was surprised that when he glanced down, Valon was looking at him without a trace of humor, the normally playful spark in his eyes replaced with something closer to coyness. “Seriously, Valon,” he snapped even as, unbidden, he felt that familiar heat coiling down his abdoman. “I know you’re fucking with me.” 

     “I swear I’m not.” Valon reached out again to slide his hands over Alistair’s so they were both cradling Alistair’s beer can. Without letting go of his hands, Valon got up from the small table to stand in front of his chair so that Alistair was forced to look up at him. It was then, with Valon grinning hopefully down at him, that Alistair realized maybe Darren had reminded him of someone. 

     And Valon wasn’t completely off the mark; he had wondered (in a vague ill-defined way) when he’d heard Valon with whatever girl of the night he’d brought back to their apartment, how exactly his teammate’s overbearing cheerfulness translated into the kind of sex that seemed to make every single one of his partners melt. 

     Valon’s hands were lightly calloused from the work Alistair knew he did on his bike and  at the gym as well. Considering where else they’d been (on whom more importantly), Alistair shouldn’t have wanted them on him as much as he suddenly did. And this was Valon; it was still entirely possible he would burst out laughing the second Alistair admitted he had any interest in this. 

     Some of that wariness must have shown on his face because Valon’s grin faded to a more thoughtful expression.

     “Hey look,” he began with uncharacteristic nervousness, biting down on his bottom lip and letting go of Alistair’s hands to twirl his Orichalcos ring around his finger. “If you don’t want to, obviously that’s fine. I just thought…” He laughed lightly and ran a hand through his hair, the stone in his ring glinting in the harsh overhead light. “I just thought it’d be a bit of fun, y’know?” 

     “You’re serious?”

     “A hundred percent. I swear,” he repeated, seeing Alistair’s continued skepticism. “I mean, we’re both hot, and neither of us was doin’ anything else tonight, so I thought I’d just see if you were up for it. But now ya made it all weird, so…”  He returned to his seat with a slight sigh of disappointment. 

     They sat in silence, Alistair lightly tapping the side of his beer can with his fingertips and trying to avoid looking at Valon while he thought about it, his gaze falling on the sagging beige couch across from them. He wondered how often and with how many people Valon had had sex on it. Was he really drunk, bored, and lonely enough to become one of them? 

     If he was, he could also just call Seto. It would be breaking his self-imposed separation, and Seto would certainly remark on that with characteristic snark, but then he wouldn’t have to cheat.    

     Would this really be cheating, though? Seto had flatly said they weren’t dating. It was a semantic technicality, he knew, but not one Seto could really argue against if Alistair were to admit that he’d done this. And there was no reason even to do that. Having sex with Valon would be meaningless. Like Valon had said: just something to do. And it would be safe; he knew Valon. And, he glanced sideways at him, maybe he wanted to know him biblically too. He smiled to himself. God, he really was drunk. 

     “Ok.” He said it without making eye contact, still looking at the couch, those two short syllables enough on their own to generate a pleasant tingle of anticipation. Whatever else Valon was or wasn’t, he had likely logged the hours it would take to get him off with more novelty than if he just did it himself. 

     “Yeah?” The enthusiasm in Valon’s tone made the prospect all the more alluring. ‘We’re both hot ,’ Valon had said. Yes, perhaps. And he couldn’t help but feel smug knowing that Valon could have gone out to find someone else, but had chosen not to. It made him feel, irrationally, like he’d gotten one over on Mai Valentine somehow. 

     “Get up,” he ordered, pushing the beer can aside and getting up himself. He said it with an authority he hadn’t been sure he possessed until Valon willingly obliged. The eagerness with which his former teammate scrambled to his feet and was now looking at him made him realize for the first time in such an encounter that he had more sway than just doing whatever the other person wanted; he was allowed to want things too. But what ? he wondered. 

     There’d be time for that later. Just that second, Valon seemed to be waiting for him to do something.  

     During his rather promiscuous phase the summer before, he’d lacked the experience and the wherewithal to do much beyond allowing himself to be pulled into this or that by the people he’d hooked up with. With Seto he’d learned how to imply, how to suggest, to tease, but ultimately he’d left it up to Seto to decide when and how to follow through. 

     He eyed Valon with interest. He was acutely aware of the rise and fall of the other man’s chest under his t-shirt, and he was standing close enough to smell whatever heady body spray he had on, close enough to see how he licked his lips. 

     Too intoxicated to consider the best way to approach the situation he’d found himself in, Alistair, in a move much less smooth than he’d intended, essentially tackled Valon into the wall, silencing his ‘oof’ of surprise with a kiss so sloppy it knocked their teeth together. 

     “Easy,” Valon murmured with a soft chuckle before crashing their mouths together again, his hands sliding easily down Alistair’s back and onto his ass, fingers kneading into the skin through his jeans. Alistair’s own hands had stalled against Valon’s chest, so much more muscular than anyone else he’d ever been with. Seto was toned, but there was still a soft leanness to his body, whereas everything about Valon’s body was solid so that even though he was considerably shorter than Seto was, and even slightly shorter than he himself was, now that they were flush against each other, Alistair felt somehow dwarfed by him. 

     Up until that moment he wouldn’t have said that kissing was something one could be good or bad at. He would have shrugged and figured it depended only on how you felt about who you were kissing. But to his immense surprise, he found that every careful stroke of Valon’s tongue in his mouth brought him closer to having to cling to Valon’s shoulders to remain upright. It was true that it had been a few months since he’d been kissed by anyone at all, and he could have written it off as just that were he not so embarrassingly turned on. 

     He couldn’t help bucking against him when he felt Valon’s hands travel up his lower back under the thin material of his shirt, thumbs rubbing along the sensitive skin of his flanks. 

     “So what do you say, Ali?” Valon asked with a grin, pulling lightly at the hem of Alistair’s t-shirt. 

     “Don’t call me that,” Alistair mumbled, stepping back just enough to unabashedly pull the garment over his head and drop it onto the floor of the kitchenette. Valon quickly followed suit, and for a moment they curiously took each other in.

     After moving from the spacious Atlantian base to an absurdly tiny apartment in San Francisco, it had been inevitable that the three of them, he and Raphael and Valon, would see each other in various states of undress. Speaking only for himself, Alistair could say with certainty that he’d never really looked at either of them, though. And so it was with some surprise that he realized just how beautiful Valon’s body was. He knew Valon worked out and obsessively drank protein shakes, but to see the result in each sculpted muscle, straining under taught skin, to have felt them under his fingers… What would they feel like under his mouth, he wondered, eyeing the gentle slopes of Valon’s pecs. 

     It was then that he remembered Valon was looking at him too, and he felt for the first time a flutter of self-consciousness, knowing his own body had none of that definition. 

     As though reading his mind, Valon drew a hand down Alistair’s chest and said: “You look good.” Then pulled him in for another hungry kiss before Alistair could quite mumble ‘you too.’ 

     Together, they stumbled across the room to the couch, Valon settling comfortably on top of him. It was then, with one leg trailing on the floor and his hands buried in Valon’s thick hair that Alistair was forced to admit it was possible he had wanted this at some point, deep down. 

      “So, what do you like?” Valon asked when they came up for air, his light eyes glittering with possibilities. 

     “Like?” 

     “You know,” he explained, propping himself up on one arm, his free hand absently stroking along Alistair’s coller bone. “What’re you into? You like…I dunno, gettin’ choked? You like getting spanked? Or are ya just lookin’ for a quick handy?” he added, seeing that, aghast, Alistair’s eyes had widened in horror. 

     “I… What are you into?” he replied, his tone accusatory. He’d underestimated at how much of a disadvantage their different levels of experience would leave him. And if he realized this, it would be completely in-character of Valon to tease him about it. 

     “Hmmm .” Valon moved his hand to tap a finger thoughtfully against his chin. “Kinda depends. Some people really like it rough, and I can do that. But then, sometimes people just want the sort of boyfriend experience, and I can do that too. But if you’re askin’ then I guess I’m sort of up for whatever. There’s a few things I’m not too keen on, but I’d be a bit surprised if you wanted to do them anyway. 

     “Actually,” he went on, fingers now drumming across Alistair’s upper chest. “If it’s what you’re in the mood for, we should probably decide which one of us is gonna go face down, ass up, eh?” 

     “Why do you have to say it like that?” Alistair demanded, turning away as much as he was able with Valon on top of him. 

     “Ah, so you then?” Valon guessed, and Alistair blushed crimson. “Hey, now.” He gently turned Alistair’s face back to him. “I’m not tryin’ to take the mickey; I’m really just sussing out the vibe, yeah?” He smiled widely. “You’ve no way of knowin’, but you look really cute right now.” 

     “Shut up.” But Alistair wasn’t wholly displeased. Instead of answering his partner’s questions, he pulled Valon down to kiss him again. Valon seemed to intuit that Alistair wasn’t interested in ‘sussing out the vibe’ verbally because he instead kissed along his jaw and down the length of his neck, sucking lightly on the pulse until Alistair squirmed against him when, at the same time, Valon worked the button open on his jeans and reached down to palm him through his underwear.         

     He was desperate to turn the tables, and pushed up against his partner’s shoulders until Valon willingly dropped backwards so they could switch positions, Alistair now straddling Valon’s hips. Looking down at Valon sprawled against the arm of the couch, Alistair realized it was the first time he’d ever been on top of someone else, his weight pinning them down, the ball for what would happen next in his court. 

     “What do you want me to do?” he asked, suddenly aware of Valon’s heartbeat under his hands. 

     “Interesting question,” Valon replied, fingers dancing up Alistair’s thighs before finally wrapping around his hips, and Alistair could feel the cold from his ring. He resisted the urge to shy away from it. “Why don’t you show me what’cha think you’re best at?” 

     “Fine.” Alistair sat up enough to be able to slide Valon’s jeans down to his knees. He’d never been directly complimented on his blowjob skills, but no one had ever complained either. And he figured it would be the easiest way to show Valon he wasn’t the only one who could turn a person’s spine to jelly. 

     Valon, unlike Seto, didn’t seem determined to take it with more stoicism than enjoyment. He’d nestled his head in the crook of the sofa, one hand resting on his own chest, the other gently petting Alistair’s hair. Initially, Alistair had thought Valon was going to grab a fistful of his hair and simply force his head down, and had been prepared to loudly object. But just that slight pressure of Valon’s fingers on his scalp was nice.

     Soon enough, Valon was moaning at regular intervals, mumbling “yeah, Ali; just like that.” And: “use your hand too, yeah? Yeah, that’s perfect.” 

      Perfect .           

     Alistair felt the warmth from that one word travel down the entire length of his body. It didn’t really mean anything, he knew. Not to Valon anyway. Just one of those things people say in moments like this. Except no one else ever had. So when Valon told him to stop several minutes later to ask if he wanted to move to the bed, he eagerly agreed.

     After shedding the rest of his clothes and getting down on the unmade bed squashed into the far corner, he’d rather expected Valon to reciprocate and go down on him too. He’d even looked forward to comparing his skill to Seto’s, who was particularly good at it. But instead, after a few strokes with his hand while they made out against the pillows, Valon seemed to think it was time to move on, leaving Alistair feeling rather perturbed. After all the effort he’d put into foreplay, his partner, who he knew especially prided himself on being amazing in bed, was going to skimp out. 

     “One sec!” Valon said, getting up and briefly going to rummage around in one of the bathroom cupboards. “Somethin’ wrong?” he asked, returning a minute later with a bottle of lube and a condom.

     “No,” Alistair sniffed with a small toss of his head to get his bangs out of his eyes. “But if you don’t know what you’re doing, I’m not letting you fuck me.” To his surprise, Valon chuckled. “What?” 

     “Later,” Valon replied, dismissively waving the hand holding the condom before sitting back on the mattress, that same hand skimming down Alistair’s back so that he could feel the scratchy corrugated edge of the packaging. “I got you, don’t worry.” Dropping the two items, he pulled Alistair to him with so sweet a kiss that Alistair had to assume this was the ‘boyfriend experience’ Valon had mentioned before. 

     He wasn’t sober enough to know what to make of that. 

     Nor did he know what to make of the emotion it brought on. It was a thrill, but unlike the thrill sex usually gave him--a thrill that rubbed up against pleasure--this feeling rubbed up against something else. Something that slid his hands up Valon’s arms, his shoulders, the sides of his face. Something that caused him to experience, just for a moment, a pang of sadness. 

     But it was only a moment, and then Valon was spilling the contents of the bottle of lube into his palm, and he was flat on his back with his legs propped up. 

     “I’m bettin’ you don’t have a toy with you,” Valon commented musingly. “So I guess we’ll just go the old fashioned way.” He wiggled his glistening fingers suggestively and Alistair couldn’t help making a face. 

     “Seriously, Valon, do you have to do that?” 

     Valon laughed the same way he had before and shook his head slightly. “You really are so funny Ali -- Ster,” he added quickly, seeing Alistair’s annoyed glare. “You are allowed not to take everything so seriously, y’know.” 

      Evidentially, the statement was rhetorical because before Alistair could argue that he didn’t in fact take ‘everything’ ‘so seriously’, Valon was kissing him again, his hand sliding easily down between his legs, and Alistair’s last clear thought was a disembodied concern about whether or not Valon really did know what he was doing. 

     It wasn’t the foreplay he felt he deserved, but Alistair couldn’t say it was a disappointment either. Though it wasn’t enough to make him completely let his guard down with his ex-colleague, the alcohol had served to make it more pliable, and he relaxed into the feeling of Valon working his fingers into him. They were neither as slim nor as long as Seto’s, but it was good, and familiar, and the combination of that careful steady stroking inside him and the light, almost ticklish sensation of Valon’s lips trailing down his neck made him moan and dig his fingers into the sheets at his sides.  

     “You ready?” Valon inquired several minutes later, his tone, for once, serious. 

     “Yeah.” At his own reply, Alistair’s heart started to race. He’d never quite forgotten just how much it had hurt that first time he’d tried this with Darren, and even with Seto that fear of pain had been there despite how impeccably careful Seto had been. “Wait.” He grabbed ahold of Valon’s wrist as his partner turned to retrieve the condom. “Have you done this before?” 

     “I have.” 

     Alistair searched Valon’s face for any sign of insincerity, and finding none, released his wrist and eased back against the bed. 

     “Then ok.” 

     To Alistair’s surprise, given how conventional Valon had played it to that point, he felt in the way Valon had wrapped his arms around his rib cage that he wanted him to roll over onto all fours. It was then that he realized Valon had meant ‘face down, ass up’ literally. The indignity of it would have been enough for him to insist on a different position had Valon not, in rather quick succession, drizzled more lube onto himself, smacked Alistair hard across his left buttock, and slid into him. 

     It happened so fast that Alistair barely had time to gasp in shock as he fell forward onto his forearms, crashing face first into the pillow. 

     Though it hadn’t actually hurt per say, he wasn’t thrilled that after being so diligent, Valon had chosen that moment to just get on with things. But then Valon’s warm body was pressed against his back, and he’d placed a soft kiss on the side of his neck, and Alistair felt the same tingly sensation from when he and Seto had first kissed. That same stunning, out-of-body realization that he was doing this with this person. 

     Valon. 

     The same person he’d found so very obnoxious, who’d always left the flap open on cereal boxes, who talked like a waterfall about any little thing that came into his mind, who was always showing off by pulling unnecessary stunts on his motorcycle. Valon, who he’d known since they’d both been scrawny kids, freshly drawn into a movement neither of them had really understood.

     “You good?” Valon asked, several long strands of his hair brushing against Alistair’s shoulder. “I’ll start slow,” he added with another skin-grazing kiss, following Alistair’s small nod of assent. 

     Any remaining nerves evaporated the second Valon started rocking against him, the pleasure of it so intense it bordered on euphoria. 

     It was incredibly visceral: the weight of Valon’s hands on his hips, his muscular thighs sliding against his, and of course, the wonderful friction of their bodies coming together, hitting something within him that left him panting out breathy moans into the pillow.  

     With the barest level of consciousness, he reached down to stroke himself, only dimly aware of his head now bumping the wall every time Valon slammed into him. 

     Strengthening the hold he had on the sheets with his free hand, Alistair found himself saying, in a voice he barely recognized as his own: “Valon…harder.”

     “Fuck, you feel so amazin’, Ali,” Valon breathed, obligingly picking up the pace.

     Alistair had intended to snap ‘don’t call me that,’ but it came out as an incoherent whine given that the ecstasy he felt from what Valon was doing and the added pleasure from his own ministrations outranked any irritation at what anyone called him. 

     Something searingly cold caressed his rib cage as Valon paused to add more lube before bending them both completely over. 

     “Is that good?” Valon asked, misinterpreting Alistair’s gasp and sudden tension. From their new position, he trailed the hand wearing the Orichalcos ring first down Alistair’s arm, and then back up to wrap loosely around his throat, tilting his face up.

     His back was now almost painfully arched, but all Alistair could focus on was the pale light he could just see spilling out from the ring (now pleasantly warm) when he lowered his gaze. And all the while Valon was still pounding into him, even deeper now that he’d gone up on one knee. 

      Just take it from him , the light seemed to say in an all too familiar cajoling tone. You deserve it so much more than he does . 

     Alistair’s hand had found his cock again, and as he matched his rhythm to Valon’s, his eyes slid closed, the stirrings of climax beginning low in his belly. But the light was still there, somehow even clearer than before. 

      Take it, and you can make him do whatever you want. 

     That temptation, the strain in his back, the arm holding him up, the heat from Valon’s ring, the overwhelming pleasure lighting up every nerve in his body, and one final prod from the stone: 

     Don’t you always want to feel like this? 

finally put him over the edge, and he came hard, the thick liquid slipping through his clenched fingers to spatter onto the bed. 

     Just like that, the light vanished, and he was utterly spent, collapsing the second Valon relinquished his hold on his neck, reacting only with a weak shudder when Valon pulled out of him. 

     “Can I come on you?” Valon asked, deftly tossing the condom to one side. He sounded winded, and though he was facing away, Alistair could imagine he was stroking himself in anticipation. Normally, he’d have found the suggestion deeply insulting, but he was too dazed to care. 

     “Sure.” 

     Soon thereafter, he heard Valon’s sharp intake of breath and felt his cum land on his ass and trickle down the top of his thigh. Then Valon had crashed beside him, running a hand through his disheveled hair before leaning back against his arms. 

     “Whew!” he started, looking sideways at Alistair, his classic grin lighting up his face even as he seemed to still be catching his breath. “That was great. Definitely worth waitin’, what, six years for? Eh?” 

     “Hmmm ,” Alistair replied noncommittally, looking away. Post-orgasm, and with Valon no longer on top of him, his opinion on them having sex was much more mixed. He considered telling Valon about the light from his ring, but decided against it. No reason to share that particular bit of information without knowing what Valon would do with it. 

     He moved to sit up and started when he felt Valon’s hands on his shoulders, noting that the band of his ring was now closer to room temperature.  

     “What?”    

     “I just thought maybe you’d want to…to cuddle.” 

     Alistair snorted derisively and shrugged his hands off.  

     “Why would you think that?” The silence was so long that he finally turned back around in time to see Valon looking slightly sheepish. 

     “Well…cuz I usually do. After.”  

      It was Alistair’s turn to fall silent as he processed the implication, lying back down as he did so despite himself. “So when you said you’d done it before,” he began, finally, studying Valon’s expression through hooded lids. “You meant that you...?”

     “Ehm…yep.” Valon was twirling his ring around his finger again. “Only ever with girls, though.”   

     Alistair was too sleepy by then to be properly astonished or inquire further, so he just said: “oh” before yawning and rolling onto his side, his eyes already closed.

     There would be time enough tomorrow to think about that, about the Orichalcos stone, about whether or not he should feel guilty. 

     Tomorrow…  

Chapter Text

"Woke up in your new apartment
In your twin-size bed
Coffee starting
Don't remember much
All I know is that you talk too much
Time to go"

Coffee Breath, Sofia Mills

Chapter 6: Coffee is for Closers

     There was nothing unusual about Seto awakening to a feeling of disorientation, a momentary anxiety of not knowing where he was. But it was only a moment. And then he’d realize he was at his desk in his bedroom, or the desk in his home office, or, as was the case this particular morning, on the floor next to the couch. He was immediately aware of feeling cold, and stiff as a direct result of it, his limbs shaking in protest as he struggled to turn off the alarm sounding somewhere just above his head from the coffee table. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself first into a sitting position, then onto his feet where he swayed unsteadily, staggered, then sat down hard on the couch, the leather barely yielding under his weight. 

     A headache throbbed at his temples, and he closed his eyes against it. 

     He knew he was doing this to himself. Even if it wasn’t the best night’s sleep, if he slept in his bed he at least wouldn’t wake up to this. But a better night’s sleep also meant nightmares. And sleeping in his bed would be an admission that he was alone. 

     Not worth it. 

     After dragging himself down the hall to his bedroom and looking blearily into the bathroom mirror, he felt a twinge of triumph. There was something almost vampiric in the wan paleness of his skin and the dark shadows under his eyes, but that could be covered up, and then no one would know. 

     The hot water from the shower initially caused goosebumps to rise along his arms and torso, but as the heat began to penetrate down into his skin, he had the sudden, irrational desire to hold onto it.    

     The period between getting out of the shower and sitting down to breakfast was one of Seto’s favorite times of the day because for those precious fifteen or so minutes, before that first cup of coffee, he got to exist on autopilot. Awake and warm and clean, but not yet thinking. 

     It was something everyone else fundamentally misunderstood about his relationship with the drink he had at his side at nearly all times: he hated it. As a kid, it had hurt his stomach, left him sweaty and anxious, and just the smell of it when Trudy would reluctantly place the mug in front of him at breakfast had made him so angry he’d wanted to hurl it against the wall because it meant the beginning of another un-ending, horrible day. 

     It had felt like a test, and so instead, he’d set his jaw and forced the bitter liquid down without complaint. It had seemed to him that his adopted father would watch him carefully as he did so, but though he had shaken his head in displeasure when, the first time Seto remembered joining him for breakfast, he had gagged on it, he supposed it was possible that Gozaburo hadn’t cared at all. 

     By the time he took over Kaiba Corporation two years later, he was undeniably addicted to it, and got headaches he couldn’t shake off for the rest of the day if he didn’t have a cup (or two or three) within hours of getting up. And it meant wilting by midday if his secretary was just that little bit late bringing him another one (or two or three). 

     For the first few years as Kaiba Corp’s leader, he’d tried to keep his dependence a secret. How could he expect his subordinates to take him seriously if they knew it was the only thing keeping him awake? This had resulted in him hiding the empty mugs in his desk drawer, carefully covering the disposable cups in his trash can, never letting anyone see him with it. He’d even fired his first assistant for having the audacity to ask him if he wanted more in front of his CFO. 

     That had all been incredibly neurotic, he came to realize as he got older. But it still annoyed him deeply that he couldn’t give it up. Addicts were weak people, after all. 

     Some days he kidded himself into believing he'd give it up, but then on others it just seemed like a neutral part of life. On such a day he’d invested in a plantation in Hawaii, and then later bought it outright. 

     Today was not a day he had the luxury of thinking too deeply about how the smell of it when Trudy brought the pot up to the dining room made his mouth water like one of Pavlov’s stupid dogs. 

     With the first sip of that first cup, he could feel his brain starting to boot up. Right: Grand Championship. The commercial. The Blue Eyes White Dragon. The mutt. Yugi. 

     He took a second sip, unconsciously swilling it around his mouth before swallowing. It must have been from the newest crop; he remembered an email from the plantation manager about it. 

    “What?” he asked, sensing that Trudy hadn’t left.    

     “You know I don’t like to impose,” she said, still not walking into his line of sight. “And Lord only knows how much work it is running that company, but Seto…you don’t look well.” 

     It had likely taken her several days to work up the courage to say that, he knew, and a part of him might even have appreciated that her saying so sprung from a place of genuine concern, but it still annoyed him. Did she honestly think him incapable of working through being a little tired? 

     “I’ll just go back to bed and you can bring me up chicken noodle soup and chamomile tea, then,” he replied sarcastically, and he heard her give a small sigh before finally going back down to the kitchen. 

     He clicked open his phone to check whatever messages he might have missed overnight. To his relief, there was nothing from or about Mokuba. The expense report from the trip would likely be something that would require a fair bit of chastisement, but that was manageable. 

     After working it over in the VR pod the night before, he’d decided the easiest way to reel his brother back in would be to impose a financial cap. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before, but then, Mokuba had never displayed any outrageous behavior before. 

     Their phone call last night had alerted him to the fact that his brother didn’t understand money. In the past, he’d thought that was a good thing; he hadn’t wanted Mokuba to ever want for anything. He still didn’t. But if he had to work within a strict budget, any trouble he could get into would be much more limited. 

     Over the omelet Trudy had made him for breakfast, Seto shot a curt email to his accountant, setting up a meeting for later that week. 

     It was necessary, but he didn’t feel good about it. He and Mokuba may not be as close as they’d once been, but he still didn’t like the idea of controlling him. 

     After finishing off a third cup of coffee, he glanced at the empty pot as though doing so would magically refill it. 

      Heh, he thought, amused. That’s the kind of thing Yugi probably believes in .   

     Alistair felt gross the second he woke up, even before he actually remembered what had happened the night before. The sheet stuck unpleasantly to him, and, he recalled with dismay, he’d passed out before washing off so he had literally been sleeping in dried cum. He could feel it crusted against his thigh and in the grooves of his hand. 

     “Ugh ,” he murmured, but closed his eyes again rather than getting up. He could tell that when he finally did move he’d be sore from the middle of his back down. 

     That’s what he got for hooking up with Valon . 

     “Hey, you up?” 

     Reluctantly, Alistair rolled over, wincing at the ache in his back. Valon was lying beside him, his phone dangling from his hand, and looking much less worse for wear than Alistair felt he had any right to. 

     “What time is it?” he asked, clearing his throat. He felt the slightly feverish discomfort of a hangover, but it wasn’t too bad. Nothing ibuprofen couldn’t salve. 

     “Nine-thirty-ish.” 

     That was alright; he didn’t have to be at work until four. He’d even have time to go back to his apartment to change. 

     He looked up sharply when he sensed Valon was still looking at him. 

     “What?” 

     Valon smiled before quickly dropping his gaze back to his phone. “Nothin’. It’s just…” His grin widened. “Can you believe we boned last night?” 

     “Unfortunately.” 

      Unperturbed, Valon went on. “I’d never done anythin’ with a bloke before, so it was definitely somethin’ new.” 

     “Glad I was able to break you in.” Alistair made sure to drench the sentence in petulance as he forced himself into a sitting position.  

     “I didn't mean it like that!” Valon set his phone aside, his voice thick with chagrin. “I meant…” He ran a hand through his hair and bit his lip. “Ah geez, Ali, I dunno. I’ve just been really glad to see you, and you looked so cute, and I’d always kind of wondered, so I thought ‘why not?’”

     “Relax.” Alistair rolled his eyes. “It's fine.” What really was interesting was knowing that it was something Valon had ‘always kind of wondered’ about.  

     Valon sighed in exaggerated relief. “Well that’s good because I still need your help.” 

     “Not that again,” Alistair groaned, swinging his legs off the bed. “Just admit it: you don’t have any plan.” 

     “I do, though. I just thought I’d better see if this panned out first before I told you about it, cuz I don’t know what you’ll say.” Valon too got out of bed, so quickly that he missed Alistair’s look of indignation. “But before we worry about that, how about breakfast? Unless you got somewhere to be?” 

     “Just work later this afternoon.” Alistair hated that he was letting himself get strung along again, but he didn’t care to go out into society, even just to ride the Tunnel Train, without showering first, and if Valon wanted to go to the trouble of putting breakfast together, he wouldn’t turn it down. 

     “Ok, cool. Then I guess we can just jump in the shower and then I’ll make omelets, which sounds fancy, but don’t get your hopes up.” 

     Valon’s bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, was incredibly small and cramped, and not really designed for two people. The shower stall was barely the size of a changing room, and Valon warned him that they’d have to let the water heat up for a minute or two before getting in. 

     “Makes you almost miss the shower in our flat over by Domino U, eh?” Valon asked with a slight shiver as the lukewarm spray from the water gave them both goosebumps. 

     “Not at all.” 

     The bathroom in their Domino accommodation had been the worst thing about that part of their mission. The apartment itself had been located just off the campus of Domino University and so they’d shared the building mostly with students too poor to live in the dorms.The landlord had seemed to consider heat and plumbing to be amenities rather than utilities, so it had always been cold and the water pressure in the shower nonexistent. 

     It had been deeply frustrating to have the power to force the landlord into submission and be unable to use it; Dartz had warned them not to do anything to draw attention to themselves in the days leading up to stealing the Egyptian God Cards. 

     In retrospect, Alistair had to wonder if Dartz had purposefully set them up in a crappy apartment to keep them on edge since he surely could have gotten them something ten times better with ease. 

     Valon’s shower, unlike that one, though small, at least seemed to function. He sighed contentedly in the moment he had the hot water to himself before Valon got in, pulling the cheap plastic curtain shut behind him. 

     “Not a terrible way to start the day, eh?” Valon asked, and Alistair started when he wrapped his arms around his torso from behind and propped his chin up on his shoulder. “I’ll get your back if you get mine -- whaddya say?” 

     What Alistair wanted to say was that he’d just barely washed the evidence from the night before off of himself, and so no, he did not want to get Valon’s anything. But he could feel Valon’s half-hard cock pressing against him, and that was rather flattering, and jerking each other off in the shower would be a simple enough thing, and dammit if he couldn’t feel himself getting hard just from his ex-colleague holding him like that first thing in the morning.  

     There was certainly something to be said for shower sex, Alistair decided, turning just enough to be able to reach down between their bodies. It was slightly awkward, but it was warm, the cleanup was easy, and then afterwards you either got to start or end the day on a good note. 

     He knew of himself that he wouldn’t last long so soon after waking up, and assumed Valon would be the same. Valon had also chosen the position he liked best for this, and they were so close in height that he could roll his head back against Valon’s shoulder after Valon had reached around to stroke him too. 

     “I know what you want,” Valon mumbled around a grin before nibbling along the outstretched length of Alistair’s neck so that Alistair had to bite down hard on his lower lip to repress a whimper, digging his nails into Valon’s thigh. 

     The water streamed down his body and along his arm, acting as easy lubricant to compliment his slightly jerky strokes, though he was satisfied with the heavy breathing they produced and how Valon’s grip on his hip tightened. 

     After they’d both come (and Alistair couldn’t honestly say who had come first, his perception always slightly loopy on such occasions), they stood clinging to each other a moment before Valon released him with a weary clap on the shoulder.

     “Thanks, mate.” 

     To Alistair’s surprise, Valon did then get a handful of some fruity body wash and proceed to rub it into his skin. It was nice, but he winced when Valon’s thumbs pressed into the sorest part of his mid-back.

     “You ok?” Valon asked earnestly. 

     “I’m fine,” Alistair lied. “I just slept on it funny.” Valon seemed to accept this, because he went back to soaping him up, but more gently. 

     “I’m sure I’m not the first person who’s told you this,” Valon began, his hands now much lower down. “But you’ve got a really great bum. I’m pretty sure I could literally bounce a coin off it.” 

     “Thanks, I guess.” 

     Each trying their best not to dislodge the shower curtain, they switched places, and it was Alistair’s turn to rub Valon down. He’d initially hesitated, then realized his hesitation was because Seto would never have let him do this. 

     They’d had sex in the shower too, but then afterwards had each washed off alone. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; it hadn’t been that impersonal. Seto had touched him with such care; his hand against his waist, thumb skimming along his hip bone. He’d kissed him too, he remembered, in that intense, all-consuming way he had.

     Something inside him tightened, even as he dutifully ran the bodywash down Valon’s back. It wasn’t hunger or queasiness from a hangover. It was a painful yearning he hadn’t felt in years, and it made him itch for his phone. Just one phone call, just one text, even if he had nothing to say. But how could he do that when he still hadn’t figured anything out? If he talked to Seto now, he’d just want to go home. 

     To go to the Kaiba estate. 

    Hell of a Freudian slip there, he thought ruefully as he was getting dressed a few minutes later. He’d lived there for half a year, and it had been comfortable there, and Trudy had literally adopted him, and Seto was there, but it wasn’t his home. His home, the closest thing he had left to it anyway, was at Club Briseis. Sort of. Not really. It was just as likely there was nothing for him there either. 

     Feeling mellow and a touch melancholy after the shower, Alistair scrolled through PictureThis at the kitchen table while Valon bustled around the battered stove, half-singing, half-humming some pop song Alistair didn’t recognize. 

     He’d made the sock puppet account some time ago, the feed curated to the extent that it almost exclusively showed him content related in some way to Kaiba Corporation. 

     Apparently, Mokuba was in California courting new Influencer connections, and many of the top posts that morning comprised of carefully constructed selfies of the teen with impossibly good-looking twenty-somethings and random clips of them at a party, on the beach, at luxury clothing stores, in a car driving through downtown LA. Alistair wondered what Seto thought about it. He doubted that after they’d gone to collect Mokuba from a situation even Mokuba had thought was over his head that Seto would be thrilled to see his brother had learned nothing from it. 

     He remembered that Seto would be working on another Grand Championship commercial that day and clicked over to the tournament’s tag. Behind the scenes footage was already getting uploaded, and he watched a short video in which someone had artfully stitched together a collection of clips of the commercial’s stars getting ready. There was Joey Wheeler flashing a peace sign, Rebecca Hawkins clinging to the arm of a flustered Yugi Mouto, Seto arriving on set. 

     “Well, that answers that question.” 

     Alistair hastily placed his phone face down in his lap as Valon set two plates on the table. He’d intended to say something to defend himself when he realized what Valon had made. The eggs were much less fluffy, and the beets in chunks rather than strips, but the dish instantly brought him back to mornings before school, and his mother’s good-natured chiding when he got stains on the table after wolfing down his food, eager to meet up with his friends. 

     “There’s no turnips in it cuz I honestly can’t figure out how to cook ‘em,” Valon explained apologetically, sitting down across from him and spearing a bite with his fork. “But I’m close, yeah?” 

     “How did you…?”

     “One of the girlies at Briseis told me about it. She felt bad when I told her I didn’t know how to cook. Oh! Can you actually teach me how to say what it’s called? I keep meanin’ to tell her I make it all the time now, but I can’t remember the name of it. I know it’s not ‘purple eggs.’” 

     Alistair told him, pulling the word out of a mental dictionary that had been closed off for so long the hinges of the door it had been kept behind creaked with disuse. 

     “Yeah, that’s it! Anyway, whaddya reckon; is it alright?” 

     “It’s fine,” Alistair conceded, picking at it suspiciously, as though Valon could possibly have known what it meant to him to have it suddenly appear before him after all these years. 

     “I’ll accept that,” Valon replied cheerfully, his mouth full of egg and beetroot. “Oh, whoops!” he added, jumping up again. “I forgot to ask if you wanted coffee!” 

     “Not really,” Alistair started. “But if you already made it, then yeah, ok.” 

     Alistair had never been one for coffee, but if he was going to have to keep up with Valon for the rest of the morning, he supposed it was a necessary evil. Though he very nearly changed his mind after the first sip from the mug Valon offered him; the liquid was at once thick with coffee grounds that stuck in his teeth, and yet incredibly watery. 

     But really, why would he ever expect more of Valon? 

     As his former teammate rattled off some anecdote he wasn’t really paying attention to about something that had happened at Byzantium, Alistair silently ate the ill-constructed omelet and wondered for the millionth time if he really wanted to go to Club Briseis. Valon was gearing up to invite him to go with him, he could tell, and he wasn’t sure yet what to answer. Seto would scoff at his indecision, and he’d be right to. But, Alistair thought, forcing down the rest of the coffee while Valon continued to ramble, Seto seemed so very far away.

    After an entire pot of coffee and hour-long drive into the city, Seto was starting to shake off some of the more superficial aspects of his tiredness. Wanting to spend the commute productively, he’d called on his old driver and had spent the time, not going over memos or checking his schedule or even running his lines for the commercial, but checking up on Alistair, his fingers traitorously bypassing all his more pressing tasks. 

     He’d heard tell that apps like PictureThis had brilliantly developed algorithms that kept users glued to their sites, addicted even just to the motion of scrolling so that in quiet moments they’d absent-mindedly swipe to refresh a page they’d refreshed only moments before. 

     Seto, naturally, had no such pedestrian fixation and loathed that type of, in his opinion, trash tier waste of time. Instead, he had increasingly spent such moments following the journey of the blip representing Alistair’s cell phone as it meandered around a map of the city. 

     Nothing could have better jolted him awake than looking at that map and seeing that Alistair hadn’t returned home the night before, the dot still pulsing gently in place in the River District apartment complex he’d been going to all week. 

     Angrily, he’d hacked into the tenancy records, scanning the list of names, and was made even angrier by the fact that he didn’t recognize any of them. It was possible Alistair’s university friend was subletting or that the lease was in a roommate or a parent’s name, but even without concrete proof, he was certain that’s who Alistair had been going to see. 

     But for what? Had he not given Alistair everything? Had saving his life, had getting him Domino citizenship, had those three days before he’d left meant so little that at the earliest possibility he’d run to some nobody? What could this ‘Darren’ person possibly have to offer that he --? 

     He hated the pang of betrayal he felt at this. Didn’t he know better than to ever put himself in a position to be double-crossed? Wasn’t that the one thing of value his step-father had taught him? 

      To lose is to die . 

     Losing to Yugi at Duel Monsters had been bad enough, was he really going to let himself lose to a college student who no doubt partied on weekends and would never amount to anything?

     Alistair was his. In some ways, he felt like the only thing that had ever really been his. He shouldn’t have let Alistair leave in the first place; that had come from the one weak place remaining in himself, and he wouldn’t allow it to surface again.    

     His fingertips tapping lightly along the keys of his laptop, he found himself tempted once again to go straight to the source and read Alistair’s texts.To know how serious this actually was. And once again he persuaded himself not to, turning to Alistair’s search history instead.

     When he saw how closely Alistair was following him and Kaiba Corporation on PictureThis, he felt a  kernel of satisfaction, though he couldn’t completely shake off his fury. 

     It followed him all the way to Kaibaland where outdoor construction had been halted due to the snow, and to the Kaiba Dome which was full, not with guests eagerly awaiting an anticipated match, but with crew members, makeup artists, and camera equipment. 

     Completing construction on the dome had been one of his top priorities, and walking into it now, past several scale Blue Eyes White Dragon statues, up the steps, and into the sweeping lobby, Seto hawkishly eyed each small detail. Of course, decoration was still underway, several people already hard at work mixing large buckets of paint, but the space was starting to take shape, lines in tape marking out future ticket kiosks, a front desk. 

     He marched past all of this, ignoring the many respectful greetings lobbed at him by the workers and crew. 

     A dueling ring had been set up in the center of the arena, a lighting crew milling around it and pushing large spotlights into place. 

     He was directed to a private green room where a makeup artist and stylist were waiting for him. Luckily, he didn’t recognize either of them from the debacle (in his opinion) that had been the PictureThis photo shoot he'd grudgingly agreed to that past summer. 

     It was repulsive, getting touched by strangers, but the two people working on him that morning at least had the tact to keep their chatter to a minimum and avoid all but the most necessary eye contact. 

     As he’d assumed, when they were finished it was impossible to tell how tired he was, the dark shadows under his eyes disappearing under skillfully applied foundation and powder, his skin no longer tinged gray, but vibrant. 

     After shooing them unceremoniously out of the room, he realized he ought to have thanked them; Alistair would have given a deeply disapproving shake of his head had he been there. 

     But Alistair wasn’t there -- he was likely still in bed. He always slept on his side, his hair falling into his face. There had been more than a few mornings where Seto had gently brushed that hair back, silky strands of it sliding through his fingers. And Alistair would stir, gray eyes cracking open a sliver, and then hunker deeper under the comforter. They’d never spoken of those moments, so Seto had no idea whether or not Alistair had ever remembered. 

     Was that Darren person the one doing that now, he wondered, his anger bubbling to the surface again. 

     He had no idea what this person looked like, but when he saw Wheeler across the set after emerging from the green room some time later, his obnoxious laugh at a no doubt unfunny comment made by his own makeup artist grinding its way into his ears, his imagination filled in the gaps. He already hated Wheeler, so why not? 

     “I wouldn’t be drawing that much attention to myself if I were you, Wheeler,” he drawled, crossing the arena.  

     At his words, Wheeler stopped laughing and turned so quickly in the spindly makeup chair that it wobbled dangerously. Brown eyes narrowing in dislike, the other duelist tensed and set his jaw. 

     “And if I were you, I’d keep walkin’, rich boy.” 

     “Is that so?” Seto replied with a smirk. “Or what?” 

     Beside him, Wheeler’s makeup artist looked back and forth between them, makeup brush still in hand, and clearly uncertain whether or not to get out of the way. 

     “Fuck off,” Wheeler muttered, preparing to turn back around. But Seto still had too much pent-up frustration to let go of his sparring partner that easily. Although ‘partner’ was much too generous.  

     “Oh, I see. So even without Yugi around to hold your leash you’re still all bark and no bite. It figures a mutt like you would turn tail and run from a real opponent, especially after how badly you embarrassed yourself at Battle City.” 

    To Seto’s surprise and consternation, the snarl of anger was quickly replaced with a face-splitting grin and another one of Wheeler’s loud, obnoxious laughs. 

      “You think I embarrassed myself at Battle City? Like you always love telling me: I’m just some nobody, right? But we were both in the finals of your tournament, and now I’m here gettin’ paid by your company to be in this commercial with you, so…” He laughed again. 

     Heat had begun to creep up Seto’s cheeks as Wheeler spoke, though hidden, he hoped, by the thick layer of makeup. How dare Wheeler laugh at him! 

     It was very similar to how he’d felt when the two of them had faced each other at Battle City. He’d beaten Wheeler soundly, and landed enough good verbal jabs that he’d expected never to hear from him again. But Wheeler had laughed at him then, too, and had even accused him of being ridiculous--something ridiculous in and of itself.

     “I fail to see what's so funny,” Seto said coldly, forcing down any indication that Wheeler had managed to get under his skin. “Like you said: my company is paying you --the hired help. So all you’re celebrating is being under me, just like you always are.” 

     For just a moment, he saw Wheeler’s eyes glaze in confusion, which was when he recognized the unintentional double entendre. An absolutely stupid error on his part. However, even at this relatively low point, his reflexes were faster than Wheeler’s. 

     “A celebration that, while I don’t blame you for it, I’d keep to myself.” He turned to walk away. The encounter hadn’t made him feel less tetchy; if anything he felt more rankled than before, but perhaps the day could still be salvaged if he had another cup of coffee before searching out Yugi.  

     “What the fuck’re you talkin’ about, Kaiba?” 

     Seto heard the screech of chair legs against the freshly waxed floor, and tensed his arms on the off-chance that Wheeler actually tried anything. 

      “You’re just lucky you got all your lackeys around or we’d see who’s under who, ya jerk!”   

     It was Seto’s turn to laugh. Perhaps this hadn’t been a total waste of energy after all. “Wheeler: I’m flattered, really, but I have no interest in flea-ridden strays.” Still laughing to himself, he ignored Wheeler’s indignant rebuke and strode back in the direction of the green room. 

     Mokuba had asked him once why it was that he so enjoyed riling up Joey Wheeler, to which he’d replied: “it’s the only thing losers are good for.” It was perfectly true, and he stood by it, but it was by no means unique to Wheeler; he was more than capable of knocking down higher hanging fruit than that third-rate wannabe. Wheeler was merely a special case because he continued popping up in his life, and the only way to make that in any way worthwhile was to derive some enjoyment out of verbally and oftentimes very publicly humiliating him. Simple as. 

     If people like Mai Valentine wanted to read any more into it than that... well...that was their problem. 

     Still, as he lounged on the green room couch, waiting for someone to show up and tell him he was needed on set, the interaction replayed itself in his mind’s eye, his own words conjuring, involuntarily, the absolutely cursed sense of what it would be like to actually have Wheeler under him, on this couch, perhaps. He shifted, intending to get up for a coffee after all, but a mysterious force, a subtle increase in gravity, a slight thickening of the atmosphere, held him in place. His hand clawed into the plush cushion at his side. 

     Absolutely not. 

     Wheeler would probably make that same face he’d made just now, eyes dilating in surprise before clouding over in submission, though Seto was sure he’d at least pretend to struggle. He had a mouth on him alright, but it could be put to much better use. 

     Seto could feel his blush from before returning, searing up his chest, his neck, burning against his face. 

     He reached into his jacket’s inside pocket for his phone. 

     He had time. 

     Clicking it open, he quickly punched in the number he’d been so careful to always erase. The number he wasn’t supposed to call. But if it was between breaking a pointless promise and allowing himself to actually fantasize about Joey Wheeler, he’d take Alistair’s annoyance any day. 

     In that sense, antagonizing Wheeler had been successful. 

       It didn’t take Alistair very long to regret having checked PictureThis while at Valon’s apartment. He’d expected Valon to tease him about it, but instead Valon had chosen the somehow worse, wildcard option of using it as an opportunity to try and strengthen their alliance. 

     “If you wanna hear the real dirt on Kaiba, Mai’s spilled so much tea,” Valon had informed him with such glee that Alistair wanted to shove him down the Tunnel Train escalator. “She said that he’s been this like, incredible diva every time she’s had to work with him, but that he’s really bad at all of it.” Valon sidestepped a throng of teenagers to keep up with him as they boarded the crowded late-morning train. There were no empty seats, and Alistair found himself having to rely on the several centimeters of available handrail to remain upright. 

     Valon, even with nothing to hold onto, barely seemed to shift his weight when the train shot off towards the city center. 

     “It’s just like surfin’,” he said, seeming to notice the death grip Alistair had on the bar. “It’s…I dunno, somethin’ with gravity. Anyway,” he went on, his voice slightly raised over the whirring of the wheels and the occasional bump in the track. “She told me he was so crap at dancing that she basically had to lead them both at that holiday ball. And I’m sure you saw, but his kid brother, who’s got to only be like twelve, ended up with two dates at that party while ole Kaiba had to pay just to get one. I’d’ve left early too if that’d been me. Course I wouldn’t have then gone off to have a lonely wank with a dragon dildo, but it takes all sorts, eh?” 

     “Hmmm ,” Alistair replied noncommittally. He knew he ought to just agree with Valon to get him to change the subject, but he was unwilling to slide backwards into that older version of himself just because he was hanging out with his old teammate. Which he really had no business doing except… He glanced at Valon’s hand. The Orichalcos stone was dull for the time being, pale and nondescript in its silver moorings, but Alistair knew that could change at a moment’s notice. 

     And then there was Club Briseis. Valon still hadn’t said anything about inviting him there, but given a bit more time, he no doubt would. 

     The train pulled into the next stop. In his absentmindedness, Alistair had slackened his hold on the bar and so found himself pitching forward, just managing to catch himself before he completely fell over, clamping down on the hand of the stranger standing beside him, who ripped it out from under his with an indignant huff. 

     “I’m telling you, Ali: it’s just like surfin.’” 

     “I don’t know why you keep saying that when you know I can’t surf,” Alistair snapped, reaching for a newly available place on the bar next to the door, his stomach roiling afresh as a headache pulled at his temples. “And don’t call me that.” 

     “Your name is just really long,” Valon replied with an exaggerated pout. “By the time I’d get to the end of it I’d totally forget what I was gonna say. Anyway, like I was sayin’, I just can’t believe that you hate Mai more than Kaiba. In fact, I’m sure you don’t. So go on.” He jostled Alistair’s shoulder. “Admit that you’re curious about what she knows.” 

     “Anything I want to know, I’ll find out for myself.” Alistair shrugged Valon’s hand off him. “So drop it.” 

     “Alright, alright. But only if I can still send you the memes.” 

     “Fine, whatever.” 

     They rode in blessed silence for the next two stops, until somewhere down the car a baby started crying. It was hot too, being mashed against so many people all wearing winter coats, and despite the quick shower he’d taken that morning, Alistair wanted to get back to his apartment for another one. His head throbbed again. And a painkiller. And hell, maybe even a nap.

     His gaze wandered across to Valon, who was now checking something on his phone and attempting to type one-handed. 

     With the weak coffee they’d had over breakfast starting to kick in in spite of his hangover, it struck him with much more clarity than before that they’d drunkenly hooked up the night before and then in the shower that morning. He didn’t care so much about being another notch in Valon’s bedpost so much as he cared about Valon now being a notch in his. None of his hookups from last summer bothered him because they hadn’t been anything serious. 

     Not that what he and Valon had done meant anything, but it was undeniably more personal--even Valon would have to admit that. He was content to pretend it had never happened, but that wouldn’t mean it hadn’t. Wouldn’t stop the warmth of Valon’s hand on his shoulder from sinking down lower than it would have twenty-four hours ago. 

     But no matter how much that irked him or how, under any other circumstances, he would get off at the next stop before deleting Valon from his life forever, now that he knew Valon had that stone, he had to stick it out. 

     “Oh, perfect! You gettin’ off here too?” 

     Valon’s unexpected question brought him back to the train car. 

     “Yeah. Why are you?” 

     Thrusting his chin up and superciliously puffing his chest out, Valon replied: “I got a date.” 

     The doors slid open and they both allowed themselves to be shuttled out onto the platform by the other passengers getting off. 

     “I met this girl at Byzantium last weekend and she finally has time to meet up. Don’t look so surprised,” he added with a laugh. “Some people actually hang out with me voluntarily, y'know.” 

     Caught somewhere between incredulous disbelief and admiration that Valon was already off to find his next sexual conquest, Alistair could only shake his head noncommitally. Valon looked like he wanted to say something else, but then Alistair felt his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket and pulled it out, hoping it wouldn’t be the library asking him to come in early. 

     It wasn’t. 

     When he saw the number stretched across his phone screen he nearly dropped it in his haste to answer the call and stepped several large steps away from Valon and onto the far side of the platform. He hadn't thought in a million years that Seto would be the one to break their agreement not to talk, and this was terrible timing, but he felt in that moment such an intensity of longing that it didn’t matter. 

     “Hi,” he said, and even he could hear how eager he sounded. “Sorry it’s so loud,” he added, pressing his free hand over his other ear. “I just got off the train.” 

     “Well, don’t let me interrupt you.” Seto sounded so exactly like himself that Alistair wished he could forget about Club Briseis and the Orichalcos stone for a while and just follow the trail of this phone call to wherever Seto was. 

     “I should be saying that to you,” he replied with a grin, twining his fingers into his hair. “You’re kind of well known for always being busy.” 

     “Good, then you understand I wouldn’t be calling you if it weren’t important.” Seto’s tone was suspiciously businesslike and so Alistair knew whatever he was going to say was likely out of his comfort zone. “I want to see you.” 

     Despite having already gotten off with Valon in the shower, Alistair felt pleasantly warm at the matter-of-factness with which Seto said it. The entitlement. The possessiveness. So Seto had missed him after all. 

     “What if I’m busy?” he asked teasingly. “I’m not a Duel Monster; you can’t just summon me.”

     “Of course I can,” Seto replied with a dash of arrogance, and Alistair could tell he was smirking. “Unless you’re saying you wouldn’t come if I told you to…” 

      Alistair had never known Seto to be so aggressive in this way, and while it took him rather aback, he wasn’t displeased. Though he had to remember -- his gaze flicked over to Valon, standing not a half dozen feet away-- he hadn’t done anything to deserve being this self-indulgent. Then again, the endorphins even from this short conversation were doing a lot to relieve his hangover, he was already heading home, and if he didn’t take advantage of Seto’s mood this time he might never get the chance again.

     And that would be a shame. 

     “Well, I like to think that if I were a Duel Monster I’d at least be more than four stars, so you can’t have me without a sacrifice.” 

     “Is that so?” 

     “I’m not sneaking onto the set I know you’re on, but I’m about ten minutes from my apartment; what if I call you from there?” He smiled broadly despite himself. “I bet I can still make it worth your while.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Valon shooting him a meaningful look, but he wasn’t about to rush on his account. 

     “Let’s find out.” Seto abruptly hung up, the sudden silence at the other end of the line acting as the pistol shot at the beginning of a race, and Alistair immediately began striding towards the exit. 

     “Yo, wait up!” Valon jogged to catch up. “So who was that?” he asked, his tone conspiratorial. 

     “My boss,” Alistair lied automatically, his focus already on getting to his apartment as quickly as possible. 

     They emerged from the Tunnel Train onto the road. It was snowing again, large white flakes of it settling onto the slush as hordes of people in ubiquitous blacks and grays scurried through it to get into the heated shops across the street. 

     “Your boss. Interestin' that you'd be into that.” 

     Alistair ignored him. 

     Infuriatingly, Valon jogged to get ahead of him before turning around and affecting a wide-eyed look of dopy infatuation. 

     “Oh, Mr. Boss Man,” he simpered as he walked backwards, twirling a strand of hair around his finger. “I’ll come in right away and we can practice the Dewey Decimal System together. It'd help me remember so much faster if you wrote it on your --” 

     He backed into an older woman struggling to drag a walker bag through the snow and she cursed and grabbed onto his jacket to catch herself, nearly dragging them both to the pavement. 

     “That’s what you get,” Alistair said once Valon had disentangled himself, apologized, and caught up with him. “Anyway, why are you following me? Aren’t you supposed to be meeting someone?” 

     “Yeah, in a bit. Hey, being totally serious,” he added. “When do you get off work? I’m at Briseis tonight if you wanna come with.” 

     There it was.   

     “Yeah, fine,” Alistair answered before he had time to second-guess himself. He could tell by the way his agreement seemed to wrap itself around his chest and squeeze that it was the right choice; he’d never have made it to Briseis on his own. 

      Still can’t make decisions for yourself, can you? that voice that sounded like Seto chided. But he was going to talk to the real Seto now; Club Briseis was future Alistair’s problem. 

Chapter Text

What goes on behind these doors
I'll keep mine and you'll keep yours
We all have our secrets

~No One's Here to Sleep, Naughty Boy

Chapter 6: Call Me. Maybe.

     There was nothing sexy about his small room at Hostel 1996, Alistair realized the second he’d let himself in and closed the door. The bare bulb disseminated a harsh light that threw the already obvious shadows under his eyes into sharp relief, the walls were papered in a sickly pale green plaid, and the cheap sheets he assumed had been in the apartment since the 70s were a washed-out orange covered in large stylized flowers. 

     He didn’t consider himself to be especially sexy at the best of times either, and to have to suddenly play that role for Seto of all people without even the benefit of good lighting made him rather regret having offered, though he dutifully stripped off yesterday’s clothes and did a hasty set of push-ups. It didn’t help that a hangover still clung to him despite the coffee and the shower. 

     After a brief survey of his meager wardrobe, he pulled on the white button-up he’d worn to his interview at the library. It was actually Seto’s, and therefore too big for him, but it was the only suitable prop he had. 

     Flinging himself down on the squeaky mattress, he opened the camera on his phone in an attempt to arrange himself somewhat presentably. As he tugged at the unbuttoned shirt so that it exposed what he hoped was an enticing amount of his chest, readjusting his position in the camera to be carelessly casual, he felt the stirrings of excitement. 

     There was something undeniably slutty about the fact that he’d had sex twice in less than 12 hours and was now about to have it again, even through the phone, and this time not even with the same person (thank god, he thought). 

     In any other context, the label would have made him feel as though he were brushing up too close to ‘playing with fire’, but Seto’s shyness in this area had always brought that out in him in a way he didn’t mind. That he liked.

     When he was horny anyway.  

     With a last look in the camera, he called Seto back. 

     Nothing was more important to Seto than his image of being poised and professional at all times (though some would perhaps raise an eyebrow at this assertion) and so he’d spent the last fifteen minutes ensuring that absolutely no one would walk in on his call with Alistair. 

     Feigning deep annoyance, he’d informed the director of the commercial that something had come up at the development lab that needed his immediate and uninterrupted attention and encouraged her to complete whatever she could without him. He knew that holding up a shoot at the last minute was both incredibly rude and costly, but what, really, was the point of building himself up to this level in his career if not to do as he pleased? 

     “It’s probably just as well,” he’d added with a pointed glance in Wheeler’s direction. “Not everyone is capable of delivering in a single take. Or five, or a hundred. My guess is that you’ll still be trying to get him to spit out his lines by the time I’m finished.” 

     He could see in the woman’s eyes that she was holding back her disapproval with difficulty, but what could she do; he was the boss.

    After returning to the green room and carefully locking the door, he scanned the space for somewhere to lean his phone that would make for a flattering but nonchalant video angle. 

     Similarly, when Alistair did call, though his instinct was to answer immediately, he waited until the phone had buzzed three times before reaching out to click accept. 

     It hadn’t been so long that Alistair looked much different than he had the day he’d left, but after spending so much time with the virtual version, it was jarring to suddenly be faced with the original. 

     Alistair was lying back on what appeared to be a bed. The lighting made his skin look sallow and he seemed tired, but this just made him so much more real. Seto recognized the unbuttoned white shirt he was wearing as one of his own and it would have made him smile had he not trained himself out of that impulse years ago. 

     “Hey,” Alistair said brightly even as he fidgeted with the lapel formed by his open shirt. “I like the Duel Disk--very on brand for you.”  

     “I don’t like compromises, you know,” Seto replied, ignoring the comment about the Duel Disk, its weight so natural on his arm he’d forgotten to take it off before their call. 

    “Well I’m glad you made an exception for me.” That playful tone, the quirk of an eyebrow, reminded Seto that part of what made Alistair so dangerous, so charming, was how well he understood him. How well he knew that he alone could get away with teasing him just that little bit. 

     “Only because you said you’d make it worth my while.” 

     “And how would you like me to do that, Mr. Kaiba?”  

     How had he not noticed before how stifling this room was? Seto resisted the urge to reach up and readjust the tight collar of his turtleneck when Alistair laughed and rolled over so that the unbuttoned shirt fell completely open down one side, pooling along his shoulder as he reached up to trace a finger along his own collar bone.

     “I told you I wanted to see you. Here.” Seto didn’t care how petulant that sounded. The fact that he couldn’t touch this Alistair any more than he could touch the virtual copy was maddening. Especially knowing that just the night before someone else had seen him like this and been able to caress that warm skin half-hidden by his shirt, been able to claim that exposed length of his neck, Alistair shuddering against them as they did so, nails digging into their shoulder blades. 

     “I can’t teleport,” Alistair said with a snicker, his fingers now sliding up and down the top of the shirt still clinging to his chest. “Not even when I had my necklace.” He sighed deeply and rolled over onto his back again, momentarily steadying his phone with two hands before returning to gently stroking along his own chest. “I wish I could, though. I miss you.” 

     Seto snorted derisively and rolled his eyes, steadying his gaze on the closed door, knowing even as he did so that he would do better to play along. 

     “I mean it.” 

     Reluctantly looking back at his screen, Seto could see that Alistair had sat up and was leaning his phone against something so he could face him more directly. A shadow now fell across him, but Seto could still make out that look of wide-eyed, brow-furrowed concern he so closely associated with him that he’d programmed it into his own model.

     Was it possible he was wrong? 

     Surely Alistair wouldn’t be brazen enough to put on this little show on the heels of some tryst, would he? He studied him as closely as he could given the inferior quality of Alistair’s camera. He’d sat back on his heels, the oversized shirt hanging low over his left shoulder. 

     It was also possible that Alistair knew, or at least assumed, that Seto was digitally tailing him, in which case even if he did try to ask a few leading questions, Alistair would be able to lie so close to the truth that he wouldn’t be able to uncover anything one way or the other. 

     Was he really left with no choice but to accept that he’d never know for sure? He ground his teeth in distaste. No, he wouldn’t accept that. But he also wanted Alistair to come back, so he’d just have to wait to figure out the answer some other way. 

     “Of course you miss me,” Seto said finally, forcing a smirk and sitting up straighter on the couch. “I made sure of that before you left.” 

     If this sudden change in tone took Alistair aback he didn’t let on. He grinned. 

     “I’m not disagreeing.” He coyly lay his hand on the curve of his neck. “I had to wear a scarf at work for days.” 

     Seto was torn between wanting to cut through this and get on with things so he could get back to work, and wanting to keep Alistair on the phone as long as possible talking about nothing. 

     Since Alistair had left at the end of December, he’d fallen back into his old routine of going to and from work with nothing to break up the monotony but the occasional tense conversation with Mokuba about something or other he’d done on PictureThis or elsewhere that had raised red flags. But even those had slowly trickled down after Seto had realized he simply didn’t care. 

     Indeed, the only thing he did care about these days was his newest project. But building his own OS would take time and required the effort of an entire department, so it wasn’t the type of thing that  gave him the daily sense of fulfillment that dueling had, that designing the Duel Disks had. That Alistair did. 

     Fulfilled was the wrong word for what Alistair made him feel, though. Fulfillment required effort. Having Alistair around had made him feel…happy. 

      He had just started to entertain the until then unimaginable possibility of mattering to someone who didn’t need anything from him when Alistair left. 

     He should have been angry with him for that, but how could he be when he understood so well why he’d wanted to go? At the beginning at least. But if Alistair really was just using this time to sleep around then he wouldn’t allow himself to be made a fool of.  

     A tentative knock at the door brought his attention back to reality. Glancing at the clock above the call window, he saw that he’d abandoned the shoot for nearly half an hour already. Still, it was bold of them to interrupt when he’d explicitly instructed them to leave him undisturbed.

     “It’s ok if you have to go,” Alistair said, though he sounded disappointed. “It’s my fault I took so long to get back here. But it was still nice to see you,” he added with a small smile, the phone now back in his hand. “Take care.” Before Seto could order him not to, Alistair had hung up, leaving him staring at the ‘end call’ screen. 

     It was almost more incredible to him that anyone would hang up on him than that someone from the commercial would interrupt the call. Almost. Alistair had always had that independent streak that was both very attractive and very annoying. Whoever had dared to knock on the door, however… His eyes shifted back to the door in question. That person was just stupid.

     He marched to the door with the intention of wrenching it open and gracing whoever was on the other side with a glare of deepest displeasure, making them visibly shrink back and stammar out some unworthy apology. 

     He had expected a random crew member or perhaps the director, so was wholly unprepared to suddenly be confronted with his Duel Monsters rival. Though--he took in the meek smile of greeting, the lack of eye contact, the nervous toying of fingers--this wasn’t the Yugi he needed to bother offering any level of respect. 

     “Hey, Kaiba,” Yugi said, his voice high and uncertain, gaze landing somewhere on the wall to his left. When Seto said nothing, he continued. “Everyone was just wondering if, um, you would be finished soon because, uh, it’s, well, it’s time for our big scene and uh, we can’t do it without you, so…” 

     “So, they sent you to interrupt an important call because your time is more valuable than mine?” Seto’s voice was thick with scorn. “It isn’t.” 

     “I don’t think anyone thinks your time isn’t important,” Yugi mumbled. “But so is everyone else’s…”     

     “Tcha .” He swept by Yugi and strode back onto set where the director was leaning against the side of the duel arena. He had half a mind to berate her for sending Yugi to bother him when he’d told her not to, but she was only doing her job; he could understand that. “Let’s get this done,” he said gruffly, withdrawing his deck from an inside pocket and shoving it deftly into its slot on his Duel Disk which registered it with a mechanical whir and accompanying flashes of light along the surface. 

     Once positioned at the edge of the dueling platform, Duel Disk fully extended and with his three Blue Eyes White Dragons in hand, he stared down Yugi across the arena. This wasn’t a real duel, of course, but just seeing his rival (now the much more confident version of himself) stirred up in Seto that intoxicating mixture of wrathful hatred and attraction this Yugi always made him feel. 

     Underlying that familiar feeling was something new this time: a sense of detachment. Not so strong that it changed anything of his performance, or would have had this been a real match, but it lacked the potency of before. 

     When he’d admitted, if only to himself and Mokuba, that he didn't think it possible to defeat Yugi in a duel, he’d filed ‘rivalry with Yugi’ away in his mental vault of ‘the past.’ Once something went into that vault, it no longer mattered (or so he told himself).

     Nowadays, trophies were given out for merely showing up, so what value did the title ‘king of games’ even have anymore? The only things worth having now were those that were harder to capture, and that didn’t change hands so easily once caught. 

      Let Yugi have Duel Monsters. Seto was now more interested in an altogether different game. One in which his opponent and audience were one and the same.      

     He thought of Alistair splayed out on his bed clothed only in shadows. Thought of how Alistair’s eyes shone a little brighter, fingers digging into his back, his entire body shuddering, tightening around his as he teetered on the brink of orgasm. That was the victory that now occupied the space beating Yugi had. 

     A different game, yes. One Alistair had demonstrated he knew they were playing when he hung up on him. An invitation. No, a challenge! 

     After taping for the commercial wrapped, Seto immediately left the park to return to his office at headquarters. He had numerous messages and stacks of digital paperwork that needed his attention, plus several texts and a missed call from his brother, but these could all be taken care of with just a modicum of effort. Most of his brain power he saved for the open windows strewn across his second screen. 

        Alistair had thought talking to Seto would detract from his already feeble desire to go to Club Briseis that night. Or at the very least would help him slough off the increasing disgust he felt at having hooked up with Valon. Instead, the whole thing made him wonder if Club Briseis wasn’t where he belonged. How could he tell Seto he missed him, writhe around half naked for him, after quite literally throwing himself at the first person he’d had an extended conversation with? Someone who meant nothing to him and that he didn’t even like? 

     While sorting returned materials that afternoon in the quiet behind-the-scenes of the library, he came across a slew of picture books about a calico cat who appeared to report on the crazy goings on of her human family. It made him wonder how Sewell was getting on with Trudy. That made him think about Trudy. 

     He’d left so quickly after the incident in the dining room that he hadn’t really had a chance to talk to her or offer any kind of real explanation, so he had no idea what she thought had happened. What she thought of him anymore. He knew he should call her, and that the longer he waited the more awkward it became. But calling her would be just as much a detraction from the reason he’d left as calling Seto had been. Or so he told himself. 

     But tonight he was finally going to Club Briseis. He’d go, he’d talk to a few people. He’d realize going there had been pointless and that he’d have to have his epiphany some other way. He’d accept the place he’d been offered at Domino University; maybe the answer was there instead. He’d call Trudy and try to explain what had happened. Apologize again for scaring her. Then he’d go…home. 

     His stomach flip-flopped at the thought.

     But it was true, wasn’t it? He had at least figured out that much. Despite having lived there for so many years, Dartz’s underwater palace had never felt like home, even if he and Raphael and Valon had referred to it that way. The thought of going back there after a mission hadn’t filled him with contentment or longing; it was just convenient because there he didn’t have to share a bed with anyone. 

     Now, though, it was all he wanted to do. 

     Even before they’d had sex, Alistair had grown attached to the warmth of Seto’s body against his at night, how enveloping it was to know that the steady rise and fall of Seto’s chest against his back, the firmness of his arm around him meant that he was safe. Cared for. That in that moment, in that bed, with Seto, there was nothing to fear, nothing to do but burrow more closely against him so that the contours of their bodies perfectly aligned. And sleep. 

     The frequency and vividness of the nightmares he’d had before Dartz’s downfall hadn’t returned since he’d left, but it was so much harder to shut his mind off in his room at Hostel 1996, and he’d find himself scrolling aimlessly through PictureThis, too alert to fall asleep, but too sleepy to read or do anything else productive. And when he finally did nod off, he’d wake up the next morning feeling like he’d slept half of what the clock told him he had. 

     It was the real reason he’d hooked up with Valon, he knew. A little test to see if anyone would do. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried something like that. Wasn’t that how he’d ended up in bed with Darren and then the slew of other men he’d met at Twist or Byzantium? Gathering data, crunching the numbers, hoping that his research would reveal Seto wasn’t the only one; that real life didn’t work like that. It was objectively true, obvious even, but he needed to feel it. Because outside of those moments in bed, did he really believe it would last? 

     After keeping an eye on Seto (well, Kaiba then) for so long, he knew enough to know that Seto was obsessive, sure, and dedicated to his obsessions to a neurotic degree, and he always talked about his loyalty, but Alistiar had seen those obsessions wither, seen that loyalty falter. 

     Seto paid a lot of lip-service to the fact that he was intellectually superior to everyone else, a creative genius, a master tactician, a once in a generation visionary, a super-computer in human form. Yet, impossibly, he held everyone else to that same, unachievable standard. His falling out with Mokuba had proved as much. And it had clawed itself deeper and deeper into Alistair’s thoughts ever since. 

      He admired in Seto many of the qualities he’d hated in him before and had been inspired by them to be ambitious. But if that ambition was only there because he wanted to impress someone who was incapable of finding anyone else impressive then surely he was setting himself up to be cast aside just like Mokuba. 

     “You’re nothing to me but an occasional form of entertainment .” 

     Seto had never apologized for saying that, or taken it back.

     If he had, Alistair wondered, adding several more books to the precarious stack at his side, would he have needed to do this at all? Because if everything was impermanent, why not slide into the past until life’s current tossed him back to the present?   

     Still shrouded in those feelings of resignedness, Alistair clocked out and caught the train to the financial district to meet up with Valon. 

     What late that morning had been a slushy mess had, in the dark chill of the night, compacted into solid waves that lapped at his ankles, threatening to seep through his boots and into his skin.  His hands, though buried deep in his coat pockets, were no more immune to the bitter cold than the exposed skin of his face, and within minutes of exiting the train, his eyes watered with the pain of it. 

     “Fuck this,” he muttered to himself through chattering teeth, bowing against the wind threatening to blow his hood off. For all the good it was doing him. He could just get a hat, he knew, but much like he’d stubbornly put off buying proper winter boots, he stubbornly refused to buy a hat. Refused to let the winter win. 

     Finally, he arrived at the entrance to the bar he’d met Valon at the week before. Despite his discomfort from the elements, he hesitated to enter. 

     On the day he’d accidentally blown up the Kaiba’s dining room, he’d lost his Orichalcos necklace, and gained, like some kind of cursed consolation prize, a self-consciousness he’d never felt before. 

     He’d first noticed it the day he’d gone to meet the manager of Hostel 1996: a cloying anxiety that the manager’s brusqueness stemmed from personal dislike. Had his question about whether his room had climate control made the man think he was entitled? What about asking about the lock? Had it made him seem like a skittish newcomer, frightened by the big city?

     He had also become increasingly paranoid that if he wasn’t hiding in his room flicking through a book, or tucked away at the back of the library sorting returns that he was being stared at. Not openly, but furtively, with sidelong glances from strangers passing him on the street, over the tops of phone screens, or under the edges of hats pulled down low.      

     It was the only real purpose his hood served; it didn’t keep out the cold, but it gave him somewhere to hide. 

     Because what could he say if he were ever questioned outright? The version of himself from just months ago would have bristled with self-righteous indignation and spat venom at anyone who dared. Now, though, anxiety forced him down side-streets and through silent neighborhoods so no one would have the chance to see through him.   

     It was, he had to admit as he stood shivering outside for no good reason, one of the reasons why he’d contacted Valon that day. Having Valon around was the catalyst for him to be at his most aloof, and at his most aloof he could pretend the last eight months hadn’t happened.  

     Suddenly, he felt a heavy weight fall on his shoulders and instinctively tensed, then shoved his elbow into the person behind him as hard as he could. 

     “Oi!” Valon let go of him and staggered backwards, nearly slipping. “What was that for?” 

     “Don’t sneak up on me,” Alistair snarled at him over the heavy beating of his heart.

     “I didn’t think I was,” Valon protested, holding his hands up. “I said your name and everythin’.” 

     It was quite possible.

     “Whatever. Just don’t touch me. Let’s go.” 

     “Ok.” To his credit, Valon did look chagrined, hands now shoved into his pockets. “Just…before we head over, I wanna tell ya a couple things.” They both shuffled out of the way of a group of friends trying to enter the bar. “First off: I didn’t tell anyone there anythin’ about us workin’ together before or any of that, cuz like, the whole DOMA thing is a lot to unpack, so they don’t know that about me either. Just that we're friends.” 

     “What, you thought it might be hard to slip the fact that you used to collect souls for a living into a conversation?” Alistair tightened the strings on his hood in a vain attempt to warm up the sides of his face. As much as he was still reluctant to actually go to Briseis, his desire to thaw out his extremities was proving an effective counter. 

     “Ok, that leads me to the second thing.” Valon bit his lip and kicked at a clump of snow. “I don’t mind you makin’ fun of me and all that when it’s just the two of us, but the girlies at Briseis actually like me, y’know, and I kinda like that they like me. So could you just tone it down a bit while we’re there?” 

     It was such a pathetic request that Alistair actually laughed. “Sure, Valon. Whatever. Can we go now?” 

     They trudged up the road, walking in and out of small snow drifts to make way for the stream of people walking in the other direction before Valon unexpectedly turned down a narrow alleyway leading to the back of the bank with which Briseis shared the block. Pulling out a key fob, Valon unlocked a heavy, unassuming door which swung open to reveal a cramped store room. 

     “C’mon,” Valon said encouragingly. “Weren’t you just whingin’ about bein’ cold?” 

     Warily, Alistair followed him inside, where it was indeed much warmer, the contrast with the frigid night air making his face tingle. 

     Every wall of the dimly lit room was lined with crates of wine and beer, and other, less recognizable bottles.The muffled sound of music playing somewhere else in the building trickled under a second door. 

     “Jus’ one sec.” Valon had shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over one of the crates, and was now zipping on the black security vest Alistair had seen him in before. “I told you I’m like, super legit,” he added when he noticed Alistair looking. “I reckon it’s so it’s clear to the guests that I’m not here to give lap dances; I’m here to lay down the law.” He pulled a menacing face and punched into his own palm for effect. 

     Alistair was no longer paying attention to Valon enough to make any rebuke. He felt jittery, like he’d recently downed a dozen shots of espresso, almost nauseous with the reality that he was here with no idea what would happen next, or even what he wanted to happen. 

     Just as he was seriously considering abandoning ship and leaving Valon standing slack-jawed with surprise in the middle of the room after he’d bolted back outside, the door to the stockroom was shoved open to admit two women in the midst of an argument. 

     The first, heavily pregnant, was carrying with difficulty an empty stack of plastic crates she’d pressed against her protruding belly, while the other, much younger, her pretty face scrunched in displeasure, followed behind. The older woman was chastising her companion for something Alistair didn’t catch, too startled by having to suddenly force his brain to tune into the frequency of a language he’d abandoned almost half his life ago. He should have been ready for that. Stupid. 

     “Hey, I got that for ya, Léan.” Valon skipped forward to take the empty crates and deposit them on the ground, either ignoring or oblivious to the hostility between the two women. “Oh, and hey, Nuala; I was just tellin’ my friend about your recipe for them purple egg things. Apparently, I did alright.” 

     “You have good timing,” Léan said, now leaning against the doorframe and pushing back several strands of long red hair that had escaped from a loose bun. “Nuala’s decided she’s sick today.” She eyed the girl with evident disdain. “But I’m sure she can still help you get ready. Where are your things?” 

     It took a moment for Alistair to realize she was addressing him, even as she expectantly met his gaze with fierce but tired gray eyes. There was so much in the statement he wanted to respond to, but he was still unprepared to participate, the words coming to his tongue so slowly, that he only managed a soft: ‘uh.’ 

     “Sheesh, Léan, why’re you being so scary?” The younger woman, Nuala, no longer looked sulky, the cowed expression from moments ago replaced with confident nonchalance. “It’s not that urgent. C’mon,” she added to Alistair, who tensed in surprise when she loosely took hold of his hand and tried to pull him towards the open door leading deeper into the club, her long nails pressing into the back of his wrist. But he stood firm, having finally recovered enough from his initial paralysis to glare at Valon who he could tell had understood the gist of the conversation even without understanding the words. 

     He wanted to tackle Valon and crack several bottles of the wine against his skull for trapping him like this, and humiliating him, completely unprovoked. That Valon had had the audacity to ask of him not to demean him in front of his colleagues after spinning this story was beyond enraging.    

     “Hey, Léan,” Valon said finally. “I got this, yeah? I know you got a lot of stuff to do. And you too, Nuala, alright? I was just explainin’ what’s all happenin’ when you came in, so how about I stack up whatever ya need taken out to the bar, and then we’ll come find ya.” 

     “Fine.” Léan shrugged and hefted herself up with one hand braced against her lower back. “I need another of Jack Daniels and the…the dark one, the Merlot.” She shuffled back into the hallway, adding to Nuala on the way out: “you got lucky.” 

     When she was gone, Nuala hesitated another moment, dropping Alistair’s hand. She looked like she meant to say something to Valon, her expression, ever-shifting, now one of a pathetic hopefullness that confirmed for Alistair what he’d realized when Valon had greeted her so casually. All of this, somehow, was about Valon playing the hero for a girl. With Valon it always was. And Alistair felt doubly stupid for not seeing it coming. 

     After Mai Valentine and the several girls he had chased before her, Valon finally seemed to have struck on one that wanted to be rescued. There was no other reason for anyone to look at Valon that way, and Alistair pitied her for believing that he could. 

     Because he actually knew Valon. Valon was a barely functioning meathead with no skills whatsoever outside of lifting weights and orchestrating dong-measuring contests with other dumb meatheads that had occasionally led to him lucking into collecting a couple of souls for Dartz. 

      What did that make him for falling for Valon’s assurances that he had thoughts in his head about how to use the one remaining Orichalcos fragment for any purpose other than to get sex?  

     Clearly, Seto had been right about destiny being bullshit, because Alistair refused to accept that it was anyone’s destiny, least of all his, to be Valon’s wingman. 

     And yet, despite his anger at having been tricked like this, as he watched Nuala exchange that look with Valon, he could feel the tugging of incorporeal chains, locking him to whatever track had been laid. 

Chapter Text

Our toy soldier, you'll do the dirty work

Stay loyal to us, we'll take away the hurt

We have what you need, just reach out and touch

We can save you 

Just give us your compliance

~Compliance, Muse 

Chapter 8: Club Briseis 

          The stale air in the storeroom smelled strongly of cardboard, and Alistair forced himself to focus on it, on a watermark on the box closest to him in a stack all marked 'Heineken.' Because if he didn’t, he knew he’d lose it. 

     “I know you’re mad,” Valon began, and Alistair dug his fingernails into his palm and glared at the slightly discolored red star beside the large letter ‘H’. “I swear I was gonna tell ya; I thought I’d have a little time.” 

     Alistair’s angry silence seemed to spur him on because he added: “so, cards on the table: this is my plan, alright? I hate this place, Nuala hates this place, and all the blokes who come here are loaded, so I think we should rob at least one of them and then everyone walks away.” He said this quickly, the words tumbling over each other, clearly afraid Alistair would interrupt or start yelling or leave. 

     “And you think I want to be a part of that?” Alistair demanded, his gaze shifting back to Valon at last, and wishing he had the self-control to make the other man squirm a little longer. Seto would have. 

     “Don’t ya?” 

     Alistair was taken aback by how accusatory Valon suddenly sounded, and glanced down to see the barest hint of light rising off his ring. 

     “When you wasn’t hate jerkin’ it to Kaiba you was always talkin' about your brother, and your country, and how fucked up the war and all that was.” Valon took a step towards him and Alistair resisted the urge to take one back. He had never seen Valon like this in all the time he’d known him, had never thought twice about insulting him or belittling him or scoffing at his stupid ideas because Valon had never been more than an energetic, dopey puppy. But this Valon, hopped up on whatever the Orichalcos stone he wore had left, made Alistair feel a whisper of fear. He stiffened his posture, feet planted on the floor.  

     “So what?” 

     “So did you mean any of it?” Valon’s expression was taught and serious, eyebrows drawn down over flinty eyes that stared directly into his. “Cuz here we are; this is it.” He gestured towards the door into the club. “These are your people you always said you cared so much about gettin’ revenge for. I’m offerin’ it to ya.” 

     “Revenge ?” Despite his trepidation, Alistair laughed. “Come on: you’re talking about getting me to help you rob some guy to impress that girl. You don’t give a fuck about me getting revenge. Give me a break.” His eyes darted back to the ring, the light coming from it now bright enough to illuminate a foot of floorboards at Valon’s feet. 

     “I knew it!”

     Alistair looked up sharply, caught in the headlights of Valon’s triumphant grin. 

     “I knew you could see it.” Valon held his ring hand up so that Alistair had to squint against the light. “You know how it works too, don’t ya? Of course ya do; you were always the smartest.” He dropped his hand back down. “See, this is why I need your help. This stupid thing never works for me anymore. But ever since we met up, I can feel it again.” He clenched his fist. “You know what I mean.” 

     Alistair did know. In the first days after receiving his own shard at the Orichalcos trial, its uncanny sentience had frightened him. Though it hung from a cord around his neck, though he directed its power, he’d always known the Orichalcos was its own master. Dartz had told them as much. To work for DOMA, to be a soldier in the war against evil, meant being a vessel for its soul. And in return, it promised the reward of whatever you wanted most. 

     He remembered its whispered assurances of vengeance, how, through his dreams, it showed him his victory over Kaiba in a million ways, showed him his family, each of them telling him how proud they were of him. Telling him that what he was fighting for, what the leviathan was, was justice. 

     That hadn’t stopped it coming for him, though, had it? 

     “C’mon, Ali.” The hardness was gone from Valon’s expression, and his tone had turned wheedling. “Let’s work together again, jus’ one more time. Then I swear you never have to see me again. And I haven’t even told you the best bit,” he pressed on, seeing that he had Alistair’s grudging attention. “You’ll never believe who comes here, like, all the time.” 

     Alistair raised his shoulders in a stiff shrug, eyes still glued to the Orichalcos stone. 

     “Kaiba’s fuckin’ PR manager.” 

     Kaiba’s PR manager. 

     Alistair let the information filter through his mental rolodex of everything concerning Kaiba Corporation. 

     PR manager. 

     Tanaka. 

     “Who did Tanaka bring last night?” “Yeah, that was pretty stupid. But you know Tanaka: he likes to be edgy.” 

     Tanaka had brought a girl from across the border to the holiday ball. A girl from Club Briseis. He came here all the time. 

     Maybe destiny wasn’t such bullshit after all.  

     “Told ya you’d be interested.” Valon was grinning. “So, whaddya say?” 

     The interior of Club Briseis was nothing like Alistair had expected. He’d had hazy images of a place not dissimilar to Byzantium; all cheap high top tables scattered around, not a dancefloor, but a stage with backlit mirrors and a stripper pole. This building, it quickly became apparent, wasn’t designed for that at all, and had most likely been intended to be an office space.

     The storeroom opened into a low-ceilinged hallway, painted off-white, crates of overspill stock wedged along one wall. The music he’d heard was louder here, coming from a room further down the hallway where the door had been propped open. He could hear several female voices, but before he could make out what they were talking about, Valon was leading him through another, heavier door that led to what was obviously the area for customers, the air thick with a scent that was at once sweet and cinnamony.

     It was close enough to opening that the overhead lights were on low, most of the illumination coming from unseen lighting staining the creamy walls a soft red to match the massive dark leather couch snaking along the front. Across from that loomed a bar where Léan was discussing something with a man who looked more like a weightlifter than the bartender he evidently was. 

     Léan signaled something to the bartender and slowly walked back around to join Valon and Alistair on the main floor before slowly lowering herself onto the far end of the couch and indicating that Alistiar should join her. 

     “Valon, you didn’t bring the Jack Daniels,” she huffed, dark red lips pursing in annoyance, hand pressed once more against her large belly as though to hold it in place. 

     “Whoops! Sorry.” Valon briefly pressed a hand to Alistair’s shoulder before trotting back through the swinging door to the hallway from which they’d come, leaving Alistair alone with Léan. After Valon’s hurried explanation that he’d told the club manager Alistair was thinking about working there as an excuse to bring him to Briseis at all, he understood what this woman expected of him. It had been stupid or manipulative on Valon’s part (for his own sanity he chose to believe it had just been stupid), but at least it made sense, was something specific. 

     In his own imaginings, he’d never gotten as far as to consider what he’d actually talk to anyone here about beyond an unspoken understanding that they were similar somehow upon seeing each other. 

     So maybe this was just as well.

     “Where did you come from?” she asked with an unexpected note of suspicion. But he was too distracted to notice, taking in the details of her face, trying to find something of his mother in her eyes, the slope of her nose. He mumbled the name of his village, but was much more interested in where she was from; the broadness of her accent sounded southern. 

     “Don’t be a smartass.” The bartender had joined them, a dish towel thrown over one brawny shoulder. “She’s asking how you got here .” 

     “Oh.” It was the newest in a growing list of questions he should have been prepared for. He didn’t want to lie to these people, and it was so tempting to tell the truth because wouldn’t they understand? Wouldn’t it prove that they were the same? 

     But neither Léan nor the bartender, staring down at him through one narrowed eye, the other covered by an eyepatch, much seemed like they were interested in his quest for belonging. So in the time it took Valon to come back lugging a crate of whisky, he fed them the story Seto had set up for him when he’d created his documents. 

     It was the first time that story was being tested, and he could see in their expressions that they had their doubts. The flimsiness of the lies made him flush, but, having no other choice, he tried to get through it with a conviction he didn’t feel. 

     “You’ve been in Domino that long and you’re coming here now? What for?” the bartender demanded, but to Alistair’s immense relief, though she didn’t look like she believed him either, Léan didn’t seem interested in getting to the bottom of it. 

     “Oh, who cares, Phemus?” She grimaced and pressed a hand to her stomach. “As long as you’re serious about this job and you can do it well.” She looked at Alistair pointedly. “Then tell whatever story you want.” She called out to Valon to bring a crate of Merlot, and Valon hastened to obey, avoiding looking in their direction. “Do you need to stay here?” she asked Alistair, and he quickly shook his head. The nerves he’d entered the club with had shifted form, and he wished the bartender, Phemus, would stop staring at him as though with just one eye he could pierce through him to get to the truth. He tried to pay attention as Léan explained that he would get twenty percent of the client’s bar tab. 

     “Just don’t tell the girls,” she said. “That’s more than they get since you say you don’t need to stay here. If you do well, you’ll get gifts from your clients. Those are yours.” She went on to warn him about poaching their guests, but it was like trying to focus on a badly tuned radio, the volume down low. 

     He wanted to press pause, just for a minute, just to have a moment to catch up. Wanted something to happen so everyone would focus on someone else and give him a chance to adjust. Because this wasn’t at all what he’d been prepared for. As when he’d woken up in the hospital the year before and Seto had said: “ we’re going back to Domino ”, life was suddenly just happening to him, dragging him along a conveyor belt of its own choosing.

     “We’ve never really had a boy here before,” Léan was saying, a statement which, for some reason, prompted Phemus to roll his remaining eye. “Don’t make me regret it.” 

     “Ok.” What else could he say? By the end of the night, if Valon’s plan succeeded, none of this would matter anyway. 

     “Go with Valon; he’ll bring you to Nuala; she’ll tell you how things go. Think of it like a trial.” She shifted her weight as she prepared to stand, and he offered her his hand, which she ignored, reaching instead for Phemus, who helped her to her feet. “She seems to think you’re her guest's type. If not, then we have no work here for you.” 

     “Ok.” 

     It was unfair, but her dismissive tone hurt. Wasn’t she or Phemus, or anyone, the least bit curious about him? They certainly weren’t welcoming. Then again, he admitted, trailing after Valon, what would that have looked like? He wasn’t a long-lost cousin or friend. It was unlikely anyone here would have even been able to point out his village on a map.

     “Hey.” 

     He pulled himself out of these dejected musings to glare at Valon, who should have by this point realized Alistair didn’t want to talk to him. 

     “Just wanted to say,” Valon began, clearly too stupid to know to quit while he was marginally ahead. He nervously worked a hand into his hair, his eyes flickering up to meet Alistiar’s before he returned to looking at the wall behind him. “It’s really…it’s really cool of you to do this. I obviously couldn’t do it without you. And it’ll really change her life. And he really is a bad guy, so…I hope it uh…doing this I mean…I hope it gives you what you want too.” Valon’s hand had moved from his hair to his ring, twirling it around his finger. The stone was dull, for now, the surface opaque. But Alistair knew, his stomach flipping over at the thought, that it wouldn’t stay that way for much longer. 

     “Here.” In one quick motion, Valon yanked the ring off and thrust it at him with a grimace. Alistair was surprised he could take it off at all. 

     He eyed Valon’s ring with open revulsion as though it were a large spider rather than metal and crystal being offered to him. Was this how his opponents, how Seto, had felt when he’d used the power of his own piece of the Orichalcos against them? 

     “You’re not gonna get cooties. Geez.” Valon grabbed Alistair’s hand and pressed the ring into his palm. 

     Alistair winced, expecting something to happen; for the ring to burn against his skin, to feel the power of it. Certainly he’d expected it to glow. But it remained resolutely blank. After a moment more of trepidation, he slid it onto his middle finger, where it fit better than it by all accounts should have; not as asleep as it seemed. 

     “I’ll be around, yeah?” Valon looked like he wanted to pat him on the shoulder again, but when Alistair shied back, merely directed him to the room they’d passed before where they’d heard the girls getting ready for the evening. 

     There were five, each sitting at her own station in front of a mirror that ran the length of a long countertop, the lines of which had been drawn with eyeshadow palettes and nail polish bottles. They were in various stages of readiness, some with their long hair pushed back as they completed elaborate eye makeup, others in pajama bottoms under tight dresses. Two of the girls were helping a third complete intricate braids woven into a thick ponytail. 

     They looked up when Alistair entered, eyeing him curiously, but with mistrust, the relaxed conversation of before grinding to a halt so that the only sound was the tinny synth-pop playing through someone’s phone speaker. 

     “Oh good, is that my replacement?” Nuala emerged from some other room hidden behind a curve in the wall. She’d thrown a long, embroidered shawl over the tiny cut-off t-shirt and skirt she was wearing. “C’mon!” She said it casually, but there was a hint of authority behind the accompanying beckoning gesture. Perturbed by this, Alistair nevertheless took the one remaining chair in front of the mirror and dutifully spun it around to face her.

     “Valon wouldn’t tell me exactly what you’re going to do,” she began, switching languages so suddenly it took him a moment to realize. “But whatever it is, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. Oh, they can’t understand,” she added with a slight wave of her hand when he glanced at the girls sitting nearest them. “That’s something Taki likes, by the way, so at least pretend to make mistakes; he loves correcting them. We’re about the same color, right?” Without warning, she reached for a tube of makeup and a brush and began patting it into his cheek. “It’s not poison. Sit still.” 

     “How long have you been here?” he asked, giving in to her ministrations with the brush, closing his eyes against the bristles stroking along his cheekbone. 

     “Three years.” Her reply was careless, but he could sense it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. “What about you? You sound like you’ve been here a while.” 

     “Just a year.” He found he was also unwilling to talk much about it and they fell into a momentary silence. The girls nearest to them had returned to their conversation, but in whispers. It made sense for them to be wary-- who was he to them but a stranger? 

     “You have nice eyelashes,” Nuala offered. “I have to get mine done to look like that.” Again, her tone was light, but he could nevertheless sense a jealousy he felt certain had nothing to do with his eyelashes. 

     “Valon’s not that amazing, you know.” He cracked his eyes open when she abruptly stopped applying the the makeup to his face, not surprised by her reaction, but unwilling to get stabbed with a makeup brush over it without seeing it coming. She didn’t look angry; her eyes sparkling with mirth that was obviously covering pain he knew nothing about.  

     “Of course I know he’s not.” She set the brush down and reached for a small eyeshadow palette loaded with browns and creams. “ He’ll be nice to me until he gets bored and decides he wants someone else. You know how it goes.” Before he could tell her that he didn’t, she was telling him to close his eyes. He complied, trying not to flinch when she pressed a smaller, flatter brush against his eyelid. “Taki’s spent so much money on me, but now that he’s finished his little project, he’s ready for a new one. Today it will be you. I guess depending on what you and Valon do he might not get another one.” Alistair was surprised by her wistfulness. Even more so by how matter-of-factly she had dismissed what she clearly thought was his naivety. 

     Was that really true? After everything he’d experienced in his adolescence, what he’d experienced with Dartz, this entire last year with the Kaibas, was he that callow? 

     It made him realize how much more trust he had in people now. Why else would it have shocked him that something like Club Briseis even existed? 

     When had that happened?

     Nuala was still pressing eyeshadow into his brow bone, so with his eyes closed, he ventured into what he hoped was safer territory. 

     “Valon told me this guy has a lot of money; what are you going to do with your cut of it?” That she paused made him worry this question was somehow stupid too, and he opened his eyes again. But then she resumed, tapping the brush lightly against the side of its case before reaching for a black tube of eyeliner. 

     “Valon told me he can get me a passport; he wants me to go to California with him. I’ve never been to a beach before, but I want to get one of those really big umbrellas and a fancy drink and find a seashell!” It was the first time he felt he’d seen her make any sincere expression, her pouty mouth transforming into a wide smile that forced the sculpted cheeks upwards. Just as quickly, she stifled it, looking serious again.“After that…I don’t know. Get married maybe. Not to him,” she added with a small laugh. “But I want to get my last surgery first.” She said it as though he knew what she was talking about, and he realized with a pang of sympathy that she assumed Valon had talked about her to him, and pretended to understand. “Try not to blink so much,” she said after her third attempt to run the eyeliner along his lower lid. “That’s why Taki’s getting sick of me; now that I look more like them,” she gestured at the rest of the young women around them, “and less like you, I’m not as interesting to him anymore. Which is so…” She twirled the eyeliner stick around in the air. “So dumb. Like, that’s the whole point. Anyway, you’re done.” She snapped the tube closed and returned it to the counter, switching languages back again. “I’ll just get something for you to wear and then tell you how it goes, ok?” 

     In her absence, he realized it had been rude of him not to acknowledge anyone else in the room and offered a general greeting, his smile flickering uncertainly when the five young women failed to return it. Eventually, he turned the chair and caught his own reflection in the mirror. He’d never worn makeup before, and so the image startled him somewhat. She had managed, despite him, to outline both of his eyes with the black eyeliner, the lines tapering off in thick wings. More subtle were the light browns and oranges she’d applied to his eyelids. Underneath it all, whatever foundation she’d used had left his skin unnaturally matte. It was like wearing a mask, and he decided that would make it easier to do any of this. 

     To his wry amusement, the red tank top Nuala returned with wasn’t so unlike the one he’d worn in his duels against Seto. Valon had teased him about it, of course, but Alistair had never accepted that the skimpy shirt was something he should be ashamed of. Until coming to Domino, he’d even felt a sort of pride in the eyes he’d felt on him; the stares of strangers looking back at him had meant they noticed him, that he existed. He felt the loss of that feeling keenly now that he was so eager to be ignored. He wondered if that was why Nuala was willing to follow Valon to America. Not, he thought (with sadness for her and anger towards Valon), that Valon could actually make that happen. He couldn’t imagine that in just one year Valon had somehow stumbled into the skills or contacts it would take to get a fake passport. Even he wouldn’t have been able to do that. 

     Just like that, the melancholy his life had been draped in since leaving the Kaiba estate seemed to expand. His own fake passport, something Seto had apparently gotten so easily, was locked away in his room at Hostel 1996, hidden inside one of the physics textbooks he’d brought with him but never actually opened. And yet he was here, sitting alongside Nuala and the others, listening to Nuala’s dream of a California beach while knowing how unlikely it was she’d ever go there. Certainly not with Valon. He fiddled with Valon's ring, twisting it back and forth. 

     “So,” Nuala began once he’d returned to his place in front of the mirror. The other girls had gone, the silence now that the music had been shut off not especially welcome. He was beginning to feel jumpy, and doubted her explanation of what he was supposed to do before springing the Orichalcos magic on Tanaka would make him feel better. “I guess Léan will have you stand up with the girls and then just push you on Taki when he gets here. Since you’re new he’ll probably start with drinks and just want to hang out and brag about his job. He works for Kaiba Corporation.” She stared sideways at him with a smirk and slight raising of her artfully shaped eyebrows as though to let him know she’d caught him out trying to get away with something. 

     “Oh?” he replied, trying to figure out what she was attempting to allude to. Even if Valon had told her about his hatred of the company and its CEO, that wouldn’t warrant the look she was giving him. 

     “I guess you didn’t see me, but we were working the same party. Back at Christmas. You broke a tray of glasses.” 

     Of course! It hit him suddenly. She was the girl Tanaka had brought to the ball. The one Mokuba had so dismissively remarked about. 

     Then the fallout from that fact hit him too. She’d seen him there, with Seto. Or… He tried to remember that moment clearly but couldn’t. Had it been obvious who he’d been there with? Surely not. He’d bumped into Joey Wheeler, who had been standing next to Seto, but he could have been there for any number of reasons and with any number of people. 

     “Oh that.” He forced a laugh. “Yeah. That was a…a wild party. For sure. So you were there with Tanaka? I guess I didn’t see who he was with. And everyone was so drunk.”

     Suddenly, she seemed much more friendly, as though confirming that they had this in common was grounds for comradery. “Not me,” she said, pressing a hand to her heart. “It was the only time I’ll ever get to do something like that, so I just kept getting Taki more drinks so I didn’t have to worry about him so much. Wasn’t that house amazing? It was like a palace!” She sighed. “Everyone was so jealous I got to go. One of Scythia’s guests also works for Kaiba Corporation, but he has a wife. Oh!” She glanced at a clock hanging on the wall above the mirror. “Whoops! We’re running a little late. Ok, blah blah blah, you hang out with Taki for a little while, act a little bit stupid, be a little bit flirty, but let him make all the decisions -- he’s really into being the boss. Anyway, after he’s drunk, he gets super horny, so that’s when he’ll get Phemus to take you to one of the rooms, and you do whatever you’re going to do. Valon gave you his account number, right? And then, boom.” She snapped her fingers, her long nails clicking against each other. “We’ll all be rich!” 

     “Right.” The closer Alistair got to having to execute this plan, the more childish it seemed, and it all hinged on Valon’s ring working. He also wondered just how much money they thought Tanaka had. He was rich, certainly, probably absurdly so, but knowing something of wealth from his days stalking the Kaibas, he doubted much of it was just sitting in the bank. 

     So why bother doing this at all?

     He followed Nuala back to the entrance into the club. Someone had turned on a slinky lounge track not unlike the music that had been playing at the other bar the night he’d first met up with Valon. The reddish lights were down even lower than before, carefully placed around the main room to glint off of mirrored walls so that it was impossible to gauge the actual dimensions. The five girls from the dressing room plus several more were, as Nuala had told him, hanging around the entrance to a small lobby, one girl primping in the nearest mirror, another bent down adjusting the straps on impossibly tall heels. Though before the differences between them had been obvious, in the dim lighting and made up with the same dramatic eyeliner and wearing similar clingy dresses and tops, not much distinguished them from each other. He wondered if that was the point. 

     “I assume Nuala explained everything to you?” Léan had appeared at his elbow. He tried to respond, but found his mouth far too dry, and nodded instead. “You can’t just stand there like you’re waiting for your execution,” she snapped. “People come here to have a good time. They’re paying for you to give that to them, do you understand?” 

     He nodded again, and even managed a genuine, albeit anxious, laugh. She seemed less than satisfied, but then a group of three men were shuffling into the lobby, kicking slush off their shoes, and Léan was pushing him into the group of girls who were greeting the men like best friends, the girl closest to the door subtly edging the others out to latch onto the nearest man’s arm. 

     “So cold!” she exclaimed with a giggle, brushing snow from his jacket and leading him to the bar. 

     Alistair followed them with his eyes, then let his gaze roam beyond the bar to where he could just make out Valon leaning unobtrusively against a doorframe. 

     It was ridiculous for him to be so anxious-- he’d dueled dozens of people in life or death matches, he’d fought Kaiba on top of a crashing plane. But there was something so unknown in this, something vile that hit every single pressure point of the past several months. He found himself rubbing the band of the ring again, still resolutely cold. This was so much easier than a duel; all he had to do, according to Nuala and Léan, was sit there smiling while Tanaka talked at him, then get him alone and scare him enough with the power of the Orichalcos stone for him to surrender whatever money he had. 

     He, Valon, and Raphael had done that so many times before that he knew exactly how Tanaka would react. As the ring started to glow, he’d retreat back from it, but still with bravado until, when the tendrils of light reached out for him, he broke down and promised Alistair anything he wanted just so it wouldn’t touch him. 

     Alistair had felt nothing but a faint disdain for everyone they’d used the magic on then. If the Orichalcos frightened them, they didn’t have a fighting spirit worthy of Dartz’s wall, and so were barely worth paying any heed. 

     This time, though, Alistair found he wasn’t angry enough to feel disdain, even knowing how slimy Tanaka was. This time, he was the one who was afraid, not for himself; he doubted he was in any danger here, but of himself. Valon’s plan was idiotic and sloppy, but he’d agreed to it because…

      Nuala and the other girls had done nothing to deserve ending up here, but Alistair had known the moment he'd sat down in the dressing room that he did. He deserved to be punished for failing his family, for falling for Dartz’s con, for letting himself forget that had fate twisted itself a little differently, this could have been his life from the beginning.

        "You’re nothing to me but an occasional form of entertainment.” 

     The metal band was warm now, its heat spreading up his wrist, his arm, lapping out along his chest, so comforting it was like being drugged.   

     Léan had said he looked like he was waiting for his execution, and she was right; that was exactly how he felt. But under that, he was glad.

     He twisted the ring around his finger, but wasn't so sure now that he had any intention of trying to use it. 

Chapter Text

My life was rock bottom, an edge of a cliff
I'm walking in a dark tunnel
Cruel and fearful days
I'm enduring through alone

~Hellevator, Stray Kids 

Chapter 9: Rock Bottom

     Coming out of a VR experience was always disorienting; your body suddenly remembering it existed. This feeling was one of many reasons the Kaiba Corporation development team had presented to Seto as to why the project should be scrapped; who would want a game system that left them feeling nauseated and achy? 

     Seto had made arguments about roller coasters, about bumper cars, about any other amusement park ride he could think of, adding that all of those experiences paled in comparison to what a VR pod could offer, but to his astonishment, no one had budged, the shareholders had sided with the development team, and Seto had seethed for weeks.

     “Now transferring brainwaves from virtual environment to simulation pod ,” a smooth female voice said, but Seto only caught half of the message, wincing at the customary twinge of discomfort, the grogginess, the momentary not knowing why he was staring at the bunker ceiling instead of the garden outside. But by the time the lid to the pod opened and he was able to sit up and stretch, the ache in his limbs no worse than after a long car ride, he was back to himself. 

     “Oh good, you’re back.” 

     Seto jumped, whacking his leg against the edge of the pod and nearly falling out of it in his haste to find the source of the voice. 

     His brother was lounging on the old couch Seto had pushed back against the wall, blissfully unaware of what had taken place on it more than once. His phone hung loosely from his hand, the screen still lit up to show the PictureThis ‘for you’ page, and he had the general air of impatience about him. 

     “What are you doing here?” Seto demanded, hoisting himself up and trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his knee. He meant it more in terms of ‘you shouldn’t be here,’ but despite his annoyance at Mokuba just showing up like this, it wasn’t as though he’d ever outright barred him from the bunker. 

     “Looking for you -- duh.” Mokuba stretched and stashed his phone in the pocket of his baggy jeans before getting up and wandering around the expanse of the small room in a poor attempt at nonchalance which let Seto know he wanted something. Of course he did. “Kanzo told me you’ve been spending a lot of time down here. Were you dueling against yourself? Cuz it’s kind of lame if you were.” His phone vibrated and he retrieved it, his long bangs falling into his eyes as he hastily typed a response. 

     “What do you want, Mokuba?” Seto asked, closing the lid of the pod and powering it down with the click of a few buttons. The sudden absence of its whirring motor left him with nothing but the dull tap of his brother’s fingertips against his phone screen to listen to, but with luck, whatever Mokuba wanted could be dealt with quickly and he could be left alone again. 

     “Why are you in such a bad mood? Geez.” Mokuba was still absorbed in his phone screen, switching back to PictureThis and immediately beginning to scroll down. “Trudy told me to come get you for dinner because I guess we haven’t eaten in the dining room since your boyfriend blew it up with his not-magic and she thinks we should.” 

     “He’s not my boyfriend.” He knew Mokuba was just goading him, but said it anyway. It felt good to say. A happy reminder that actually succeeded in loosening the knot in his chest somewhat. There was something between them, sure, but that didn’t make them friends, much less anything more serious. Unless he wanted it to be. And he didn’t. 

      He wasn’t usually a proponent of fun, but it was infinitely preferable to refer to what he and Alistair were doing (or not doing) that way than any other. And had he not always told himself it was a game? That’s what he had been doing down here for…however long he’d been down here, wasn’t it? Trying to bounce theories and ideas off of a virtual model; he was sick of being stuck on whatever level this was.     

     Trudy indeed seemed determined to woo her employers back to what she deemed a ‘more civilized’ routine because she’d not only fully set the table, she’d seemingly crammed every dish either of them had ever said they liked, even just in passing, onto each of their plates. 

     “What is this?” Seto asked, eyeing the smorgasbord of food with suspicion as he sat down. Nothing was much bigger than bite-sized, so that a morsel of steak was squashed against a dollop of mashed potatoes, which was seeping into a tiny bread pudding. He glanced at Mokuba before fixing his gaze on her, but his brother was already shoveling food into his mouth without looking up from his phone. 

     “I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” she said stoutly, though the color had risen in her cheeks somewhat. “You’ve both been so busy I didn’t want to bother you by asking. Mokuba, could you just…” She made a small, helpless gesture. “You’ve forgotten your napkin.” 

     “Oh, sorry,” Mokuba apologized around a mouthful of food, yanking the napkin onto his lap. “Can you go get the ketchup,” he added, spearing a piece of chicken. 

     Seto could tell by the way their housekeeper lingered in the dining room throughout the meal that she wanted to make sure to catch one or both of them afterwards. Probably him. 

     Sure enough, though she let Mokuba pass by and run up the stairs, when he finally pushed his plate aside, she was immediately at his elbow. 

     “I’ll be in my office,” he told her, attempting to slide his chair back. “Bring me a coffee, will you?” But as he’d known she would, she remained firmly in his path, twisting the fabric of her dress in her fingers.

     “If you have a moment, just a moment, I really…” She hesitated, now moving to tuck a strand of gray hair behind her ear. “Seto, I’m worried about you.” She said it as though afraid the words might burn her if she didn’t get them out quickly. He scoffed and looked away. “No, really,” she went on, more confidently now. “I said it before, but you look like you haven’t slept in days.” He said nothing. “I am your housekeeper,” she went on. “I-I notice things.”

     “What have you noticed, Trudy?” he demanded with an irritated sigh, looking at her at last, surprised to see her trepidation. It made him suddenly more alert, quickly filing through anything she could have noticed that would be a problem for him. 

     “I know you’ve hardly slept in your room since…since the end of December.” 

     “Yeah, well, I’ve been busy.” He hoped that would be the end of it as it always was, but she still didn’t move out of the way, so he prepared himself to order her to do so. 

     “And what about Mokuba?” 

     It was an unexpected pivot, but hopefully it meant she’d finally given up on him for the time being. 

     “What about him?” 

     “I think we both know.” This was more direct than she was normally willing to be with him, and were he not so tired he would have rebuked her. But he was tired, and he had to somewhat admire her for taking advantage of that. “I really think you need to do something. He’s been so badly behaved recently. I’ve never known him to be so…unkind.” 

     He did know what she was alluding to, and that ‘unkind’ was just her way of diplomatically summarizing a much broader trend of entitlement and callousness, but it made Seto laugh derisively nonetheless. 

     “Ah yes, because this family has always been famous for being kind .” This time she got out of the way when he attempted to stand up. “Anyway, it’s not my job to tell him how to live his life; I’m not his father.” He shoved the chair in before turning his back on her. 

     “No,” she replied softly. “But you are his guardian, even though we both know that’s been unfair.”

     He spun around, unsure if his anger was at the implication that he had failed to raise Mokuba properly, or at the insinuation that it had been foolish for him to even try. Or perhaps it was the false commiseration at the task having been ‘unfair’ to begin with. What did saying it was unfair matter if she still expected him to do better, to have done better? 

     Where had this level of concern been for him back when it actually would have mattered ? How dare she ask him if he was tired now ? Pretend, as she had the other day, that she cared about him now . Where had she been when he was ten? Eleven? Twelve? Even then her real concern had been for Mokuba, as though his well-being mattered only in as much as it allowed him to take care of his younger brother. 

     “Yes, I’m his guardian,” Seto agreed, the anger he felt folded away to be outwardly replaced with a sort of arrogant scorn. “So I’ll take care of him. Why don’t you worry about your own son -- if you even know where he is.” He saw her eyes drop in chagrin and was satisfied. “When the coffee’s ready, just bring up the whole pot; I have a lot to do.”    

     It was true, and once he’d settled at his desk, it was time to face the work he’d been neglecting since that morning’s commercial shoot. It had wrapped without incident, and he’d managed to avoid interacting with Wheeler and Yugi again, though he could sense Wheeler had been looking for an excuse to take another, no doubt unsuccessful, shot at him. 

     Absently twirling a stylus between his fingers, Seto forced himself to read the first of many briefs he had to get through before the next board meeting. Speed reading didn’t make it more interesting, and he finally decided to abandon it until Trudy arrived with the coffee. 

     Setting the stylus aside, he leaned forward in his chair, hands pressed to his face to block out the light, and considered what would happen if he simply didn’t read the briefs. Half of their contents would be regurgitated at the meeting anyway, and the half that wasn’t was never important.

     The rebellious thought was surprisingly uplifting. What if. What if he just didn’t go into the office tomorrow? He could sleep late, work from home. Or what if he didn’t even do that; what if he took the whole day off? Fuck it; why not a few days? Take a vacation?   

     His head slid down to rest on his forearm without his notice. 

     He could take Alistair to the cliffhouse; Alistair would like that, he thought. It was completely secluded, and even though it was more of a summer home, Seto thought there was no reason it couldn’t be made comfortable in the winter. The master bedroom wasn’t large, but it overlooked the ocean. He’d never been one to look out at it or contemplate it, but maybe together they would; maybe Alistair had read a book about it and could tell him something of the world that lurked beneath the gray winter waves. 

     The door opened and he awoke with a start, hastily wiping away a line of drool from his chin as Trudy crossed the office with the pot of coffee and a fresh mug. She hesitated, likely looking for a coaster, but finding none, sighed, and placed them both on the coffee table.   

     “Thank you,” he said before remembering he was annoyed with her. She, clearly, had not forgotten, and gave a curt nod before retreating back downstairs. 

     He stared hard at the lip of the coffee pot from which a line of steam curled, then at the empty couch. 

     He got up and poured the first of no doubt several mugs of coffee he’d be drinking that night. 

     He returned to reading the reports. 

     By the time Tanaka finally left, Alistair was so drunk he could barely keep his eyes open, and if it weren’t for Valon (he was pretty sure it was Valon) holding him upright, he would have stayed slumped against the wall of the private room forever. 

     The night had unfolded much like Nuala had explained to him. Tanaka had initially been put out that ‘his girl’ had canceled on him, but then Léan had pushed Alistair at him, and he’d seemed immediately mollified.

     Because he himself was so familiar with Seto’s head of PR, Alistair had found it somewhat disconcerting to realize that to Tanaka, he was a total stranger. 

     “Well aren’t you lovely?” Tanaka had said, looking him over, his eyes lingering first on Alistair’s bare stomach, then his face. To Alistair’s utter surprise, he’d then taken his hand and kissed it. “Drinks, I think.” Tanaka signaled to someone before leading them to what he said was his usual table. It was almost exactly in the middle of everything, and with only the option to sit next to each other on the long, plush couch. 

     “What’s your name?” Tanaka asked, absently straightening his tie, and Alistair wondered if he’d come directly from the office. Had he met with Seto that day? 

     “Michael.” He regretted using his brother’s name at once, but like everything else that evening, he felt unprepared, especially now that he and Tanaka were sitting thigh to thigh in a club surrounded by people, one of whom, he knew, was watching them from somewhere, though he couldn’t see Valon now. 

     “That’s too common,” Tanaka replied thoughtfully, swilling one of two drinks the server had placed there so surreptitiously it was as though they had appeared out of thin air. “Micah would be better, I think. That’s for you,” he added, indicating the second drink.  

     “Ok.”  The drink was flowery and sour, but the bite of tequila overpowered the other flavors and made him grimace. 

     “Oh come on,” Tanaka laughed, taking another sip of his own drink. “It’s good. Well, I can mix it better myself, but the bartender did his best. It’s called ‘The Bell of Jalisco.’ Have you ever had it before?” Alistair said he hadn’t, and Tanaka immediately launched into an explanation of exactly what was in it and how it was mixed without seeming to care whether Alistair had any idea what he was talking about. 

     After a few minutes of this, Alistair felt himself starting to shift into autopilot, nodding from time to time, laughing when it was obvious Tanaka thought he’d made some witty remark, but retreating as far into himself and away from the couch as he could. 

     He thought about Sewell, and wondered if Trudy was treating her as well as she’d promised. But even if she were doing her best, he doubted she was giving Sewell as much attention as he had; he’d been content to sit with the cat on his lap for as long as she wanted while he read a book, but Trudy surely had too much to do for that. 

     It had always amazed him that she could run such a large household on her own, but she’d never given any indication that it was too much for her. And she was always so kind to everyone, even Seto, who he’d witnessed being as short with her as he was most everyone else. He would tell Seto to treat her better once he got back. 

     Tanaka had snaked an arm around him, his fingers running lightly along Alistair’s bare shoulder. He’d been looking at something on his phone, but now placed it on the small table, the lit-up screen displaying a message Alistair couldn’t read from that angle. 

     “That kid really needs a manager and a tight fucking leash,” Tanaka was saying, sounding irritated for the first time, and Alistair blinked back into the conversation. “But the other kid won’t do it. They’re both just brats, you know. Drink,” he added, sliding a fresh glass of ‘Bell of Jalisco’ at him.

     “Who?” Alistair asked before obediently taking a sip, the tequila pooling warmly in his chest. It was the first direct engagement he’d given Tanaka since they’d sat down, and he seemed taken aback but not displeased by it. 

     “My ‘boss’,” Tanaka clarified with disdain before knocking back the rest of his own drink, and signaling for another. “The Great Seto Kaiba.” He scoffed. “There’s nothing ‘great’ about that pompous idiot.” 

     Alistair would have been more surprised that Tanaka would talk about Seto this way had he not heard him and many of the other higher ups make similar comments anytime they were out of earshot. At the time, he’d taken these snipes as proof that he as a DOMA warrior was doing the right thing. That the world would lose nothing of value without Seto Kaiba in it. 

     But he saw now, even as the second Bell of Jalisco began to dissolve his critical thinking, that Tanaka’s dislike of Seto had never lain on moral grounds. He didn’t criticize Seto because of his dubious business decisions, of which there were plenty; it was just the petty envy of a man who knew he could never reach such heights. 

     And here he was practically sitting on that man’s lap. 

     He didn’t realize he’d laughed out loud until Tanaka, also laughing, said: “see, you get it,” and ran the hand not loosely holding his shoulder down the front of Alistair’s chest. 

     It was so strange to know he could easily shove Tanaka off of him but also that he wouldn’t. 

     He glimpsed Valon’s ring on his finger, lit up only by the flickering of the fake candle on their table.  

     “You know, Micah,” Tanaka said, toying with the thin strap of Alistair’s tank top. “You’re not being very polite. You haven’t asked me anything about myself.” The put-on pout let Alistair know he was somewhat teasing, but there was a clear instruction in it too. Alistair couldn’t fathom, glancing around at the Club Briseis girls, all of whom were laughing or lighting the cigarettes of the men around them, how they could do this over and over again.  

     Valon had intended tonight to be a brief foray into whatever circle of hell this was. But Alistair knew this was actually his penance, so even though it made his skin crawl to feel Tanaka’s hands on him, and even though the thought of being his submissive doll was humiliating, he forced a contrite laugh. Instead of hiding within himself, he’d hide inside someone else. Surely this was the kind of thing Mai Valentine knew how to do. 

     In a voice that was nothing like his own, he replied: “get us more drinks, and maybe I’ll be nicer.” That saucy half smile of hers was plastered on his face, and as he said it, he leaned forward and lightly bopped the tip of Tanaka’s nose with his finger. 

     “That’s more like it.” Tanaka’s grip around his shoulders tightened as he signaled for another round of Bell of Jaliscos. 

     On the street, a biting wind cut against his face, but Alistair barely felt it as he and Valon struggled through the snow.

     “You weren’t supposed to get sloshed and suck his dick, you were supposed to freak him out and rob him,” Valon said in exasperation, staggering as he adjusted to the increased weight of Alistair lolling against his shoulder. 

     “Oh well,” Alistair replied with a small smirk, letting his eyes drift closed. 

     “Mate!” Valon prodded him hard in his ribs. “You gotta fuckin’ walk.” But Alistair groaned in protest, let go of Valon, and dropped heavily to the sidewalk. He’d just rest for a little while, then they could go home. 

     He laughed, imagining what Seto would say if he showed up at the estate like this in the middle of the night. He’d be annoyed, but he’d be happy to see him, wouldn’t he? Didn’t he miss him? 

     His laugh turned into a sniffle, and then suddenly he was sobbing into the snowdrift at his side, and his teeth were chattering as tears, snot, and snow mixed together on the pavement. 

     “I just w-want to go h-home,” he mewled around shuddering breaths. 

     “Jesus, Ali…”  Valon knelt beside him, putting an uncertain hand on his back. “Is it the ring?” he asked after a pause. “It’s not like, glowing or anythin’, but…” 

     “Fuck the r-ring.” Alistair went to pull it off, but between the tequila and the cold it was too difficult, and he threw himself back down in the snow, hugging the pile of it to himself.  “I just want…I just want…” Seto would be so disgusted by him if he saw him like this. A mess. Out of control. Pathetic. A loser. No longer even fit to be an occasional source of entertainment. 

     “Ali, we’ve got to move; we’re like right in the middle of the sidewalk.” Valon attempted to heft him back to his feet. 

     “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” He clutched onto the snow and curled up. He heard Valon swear, but who cared? What did anything matter if Seto would never love him?

Chapter Text

Got myself a one-way ticket
 Goin' the wrong way

~Drive On, AC/DC 

Chapter 10: Fallout

     It had been a very long time since Alistair had woken up not knowing where he was, but the cracked and peeling paint of the ceiling and overly plush and sagging couch he was lying on were not from his apartment, nor certainly from the Kaiba estate.  

      In a moment of groggy panic, thinking he was still at Club Briseis, he shot up only to immediately lay back down again, clutching his forehead as though the air itself had struck him with something heavy. 

     Still, that one glance told him he was at Valon’s apartment, though he had no memory of getting there. He couldn’t even recall leaving the club. 

     Scattered images returned to him as he lay with his eyes closed, and as they stitched together, he felt sickened by more than just a bad headache. 

     The memories were fogged over, but the feelings of discomfort and shame that accompanied them were crisp, and much more painful than even the worst hangover. 

     Tanaka pulling him into his lap so his hands could claim even more of him. Tanaka requesting a private room and dragging him, already stumbling from the Bell of…Bell of somethings. Tanaka guiding his hand, then abruptly pushing his head down so violently the back of his throat still ached. How smug Tanaka would be, how delighted, if he knew he had gotten off with his boss’s ____. 

     Even in his own thoughts, Alistair couldn’t fill in the blank. He filed through everything Seto had ever said about it:

                                                                                                                                     “I don’t owe you anything.”

                                                                                  “ This isn’t some love story .”

                         “I’m not your boyfriend, you know .”

                                                                                       “You’re nothing to me but an occasional form of entertainment.” 

      Alistair curled up as, incredibly, his stomach twisted into an even tighter knot than before. 

     “Hey, are you up?” 

     “Go away,” he croaked into the arm of the couch. 

     Valon had probably understood, but chosen to pretend not to because Alistair heard him move closer. He refused to look up, assuming Valon was going to chide him for not following through on the plan. He didn’t need to look at his old teammate for that. 

     “Do you want a glass of water or somethin’?” 

     “...Yes,” Alistair answered after a pause, reluctantly surfacing when Valon returned from the kitchen with a coffee mug full of water. 

     “And then I reckon you’ll wanna take a shower, yeah? You look…” Valon scratched the back of his head. “Well, I’m not gonna lie to ya, mate: you look rough.” 

     Alistair flipped him off from behind the coffee mug even as he gratefully gulped down the water. He was loath to admit he’d blacked out half of last night’s events, and he knew Valon well enough that if anything important had happened Valon would offer a recap regardless; he just had to wait him out. 

     It took less than a minute.

     He observed with grim satisfaction the way Valon watched him expectantly, then with impatience, gnawing at his bottom lip and jiggling his knee with increasing speed the longer the silence wore on. 

     “So like, what was that last night?” Valon demanded, crashing beside him on the couch. 

     “What exactly?” He tried his best to sound obstinate rather than forgetful, yanking his feet out from underneath Valon and sitting up.

     Valon shot him a frown of disbelief and exasperation. “Take your pick. I swear, I looked away for two seconds, and the next thing I know you’re like, full on flirty vibes, snoggin’ that bloke in the middle of the club. And I actually felt bad for ya, y’know? I thought like ‘oh shit, I didn’t think he’d have to do all that.’ But then it was just goin’ on and on and on, and I realized you wasn’t even gonna try to use the ring.” 

     “You don’t know that,” Alistair interrupted, going to take another sip of water only to realize the mug was empty and lowering it to rest in his lap. “The whole reason you needed me in the first place was because you don’t know how the ring works, so…” His stomach lurched just then despite only containing water, and he had the sudden fear that he might throw up. His fingers clenched around the mug as he tried to suppress the feeling. 

     “Right, ok.” 

     “What gives you the right to give me a hard time?” Alistair snapped, glaring at him as pain shot through his temples, so piercing he failed to notice the spark of warmth from the ring on his finger. “I didn’t have to help you at all. We’re not working for Dartz anymore, remember? We’re not a team. That girl not wanting to fuck you because you’ve got no money is not my problem.”  

     He regretted saying it at once, but not before Valon had grabbed him by the front of the tank top he was still wearing, yanking so hard the thin straps dug deep into his shoulders with a faint rasping sound indicating if he pulled much harder they’d snap. The mug dropped from Alistair's hands and skidded halfway to the kitchen as he raised his arms in surprise.

     “Shut up,” Valon snarled, blue eyes narrowed and glaring. “You don’t fuckin' talk about her like that, got it? Or I swear I’ll break your fuckin' nose.” 

     Alistair absolutely believed it.

     He flinched back as far as he was able, mumbling ‘yeah, fine’ even though acquiescing to Valon’s demand physically pained him. Valon let go of his shirt at the same moment he pushed him back towards the far end of the couch and Alistair allowed himself to believe the meager display of force was enough to save face. 

     Neither spoke for a time, each scowling off in a different direction until Valon once again broke the silence. 

     “What is with you?” Valon was obviously still angry, the color high in his face, but Alistair could sense confusion too, and even more strangely, betrayal. “You’ve never been like this.” 

     “What are you talking about?” Alistair made a show of straightening his shirt to avoid looking at him. His head hurt, he felt queasy, and he was pissed off and very much not in the mood to be psycho-analyzed, least of all by Valon. He wanted to know what had happened after they’d left Briseis, but not enough to continue this conversation. 

     “Like I said before: you was always the smart one, the one with all the great ideas. I know Raph was technically in charge most of the time, but you were the one that really cared about what we was doin’. Or, I thought so. Like, you had your thing with Kaiba, but underneath all that, I really thought helping people mattered to you.”  

     It was obvious, since they’d lived essentially on top of each other for so many years, but it was still somewhat of a surprise to Alistair to realize how well that meant Valon knew not only everything about his past, but about him. Knew the old him anyway. Back when he’d thought he understood the world and his place in it. 

     Still, the picture Valon painted of that version of him was flattering. 

     He felt the stirrings of that same sadness he’d felt when he and Valon had hooked up the week before. The melancholy of having lost something. Of regret. 

     The source of that feeling wasn’t so enigmatic this time. Looking at Valon, at the unruly hair spiked every which way, at the light eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled, at the openness of his face, Alistair finally let himself admit that if only Valon had looked at him the way he’d looked at Mai and now Nuala… 

     But it wasn’t just that.

     I really thought helping people mattered to you . 

     “Neither of us has ever helped anyone.” Alistair found himself looking at the floor again. “You know I’m right,” he pressed when Valon made a noise of dissention. “All we ever did was hurt people. Kill people. Do you seriously never think about that?” Valon said nothing, so he continued. “We do all that, and then we just get to walk away? Start over? Forget it ever happened? Use this to do the right thing this time?” He held up the hand wearing the Orichalcos ring. Though it had briefly warmed during their argument, the stone was cool and opaque now. 

     “I…” Valon frowned. He’d resumed jiggling his knee and just as Alistair was going to tell him to cut it out, Valon seemed to find the words he’d been searching for. “I do think about it. All the time.” He cracked his knuckles before seeming to realize how much he was fidgeting and clasping his hands together to keep them still. “Honestly, that’s why…well, it’s a big part of why I came back here looking for you. I figured Raph wouldn’t care, and anyway, even though you and I were always gettin’ on each other’s nerves, I liked you better.  And yeah, I swear, I really did think we could get it right this time and help someone who deserves it.” 

     “What about what we deserve?” 

     “What we deserve? What do you mean?” He smiled ruefully. “You know I’m not that smart, Ali; you’re gonna have to spell it out for me.” 

     “It’s not that hard, Valon!” Alistair felt himself growing angry again. He didn’t want to ‘spell it out’. He wanted Valon to get it. He wanted Valon to agree. He wanted Valon to feel as miserable as he did. “We ruined people’s lives for no reason, and nothing happened to us! You said it yourself that you feel guilty, but if you really feel so guilty don’t you think you deserve to lose something? To suffer? To be punished?” 

     “I mean, we did both lose our souls, right?” Valon’s tone was light, and he even cracked a smile. 

     “Ugh ! This is exactly why I don’t want to work with you; you can’t take anything seriously.” Alistair forced himself off the couch, already looking around for his jacket and hoping his wallet hadn’t fallen out of the inside pocket somehow. 

     “Hey, wait!” Valon jumped up and hesitated before deciding against putting a restraining hand on Alistair’s arm. “Look, I’m tryin’, it’s just that you’re making this so heavy.” 

     “It is heavy! You accused me of not actually caring about helping people! Where did you put my coat?” he added, still looking around for it. 

     “You threw up on it, remember? Anyway, I didn’t mean you don’t care in general -- it was just cuz of that comment you made about Nuala. I wasn’t tryin’ to say you deserve to be pu-- Oh geez, Ali, is that why you didn’t use the ring last night?” 

     “Shut up, Valon; I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I just want my coat.” 

     “I told you: you threw up on it. I left it in the hallway.” 

     “Right. Fuck.” The reality of that finally got Alistair to stop. He rubbed his eyes before resting his forehead in his hands. He flinched when he felt Valon’s hand on his back, but didn’t stop him. 

     “Is that what you’ve been doin’ since Dartz? Punishing yourself?” Valon tightened the hold on Alistair’s shoulder. “You do realize we were just kids, yeah? Like, ok, after a while we was old enough to probably at least wonder about some of the stuff we was doin’, but we know now, right? And that’s the point, isn’t it? Like, if we’d got, I dunno, arrested or something and gone to jail wouldn’t the point have been to understand that Dartz was wrong? But we didn’t go to jail and we still figured it out, so shouldn’t we just…get on with it? You don’t owe it to anyone to go through life feelin’ guilty about stuff. 

     Anyway, we’re here now, we’ve got the ring, and we really could help her. She’s a good person, Ali,” he added. 

     “I don’t think Tanaka has as much money just lying around as you think he does.” Alistair’s voice was muffled by his hands. He wasn’t convinced by Valon’s speech, but it was clear Valon had convinced himself, so there was no point arguing about it. And he’d already come this far, hadn’t he? “Definitely not millions. Not just sitting at the bank. Rich people don’t do that.” 

     “Maybe not. But I know he’s got a right big yacht; I could settle for that and some first class tickets to L.A. for a start.” Valon sounded relieved. He had both hands on Alistair’s shoulders now, thumbs resting against the tense muscles of his upper back. 

     Even though he still believed his ending up at Club Briseis was a punishment he deserved, Alistair felt more than a flicker of resentment towards Valon for taking advantage of that. Valon certainly seemed to think of himself as a reformed villain, but Alistair had his doubts. 

      Then why am I helping him?   

     Seto didn’t believe in intuition for the most part; it rubbed up too closely with other things he knew to be bullshit like astrology or fortune-telling. But he couldn’t deny that when he woke up that morning he had a bad feeling. He’d fallen asleep at his home office desk on top of his keyboard, the lip of his laptop carving a deep groove in his forearm even through his shirt sleeve. He was groggy, and there was no obvious reason for his stomach to already be in knots, but he nevertheless had the strong feeling that he was in for a particularly crappy day.

      That feeling was immediately justified when he reached for his phone and saw that he had a barrage of emails and missed calls from Roland even though it was barely seven. 

     Seven? 

     He leapt up from his desk. How could Trudy have let him sleep so late? Of course something had gone wrong the one day he fell off-schedule!

     Already halfway to the door, he called down to Trudy to tell her he was skipping breakfast, but to prepare a travel mug of coffee, hanging up before she could respond. He was hungry, but if Roland was calling him that early, there clearly wasn’t time to eat. 

     He called Roland back as he was pulling off his clothes from the day before. He’d glanced over the email Roland had CC’d Tanaka on, and he wanted to get this part of the show out of the way as quickly as possible. 

     It was Mokuba again. Of course it was. The moment Seto saw the screenshots Roland had included in his email two things had been made obvious: one, this was, yet again, something incredibly stupid, and two, Mokuba was determined to cause trouble every step of his adolescence.  

     “Get Tanaka to draft a statement, get someone from HR in case there’s fallout we need to get ahead of, and tell both of them to meet me at my office the second they feel confident they can fix this. I’ll bring Mokuba. Push back whatever meeting conflicts, but I’m not planning to stick around for the circus this turns into.” 

     Even though he was now running against the clock in a way he detested, Seto allowed himself a few extra minutes in the shower both to help himself wake up and to prepare to let Mokuba have it. 

     Because as much as his brother’s carelessness and how that carelessness reflected poorly on him as the leader of the company they were both the face of raised his hackles, it was the sting of knowing that Alistair would blame him for it underlying much of his anger. 

     Alistair would ask him in that obnoxious rhetorical way where Mokuba had picked up the beliefs that were now being smeared across the internet. 

     He frowned, clenching and unclenching his fists as the water continued to drench him. 

     Of course he knew he had a reputation for being cutthroat and arrogant, but he’d earned the right to tear down weaklings like Wheeler, and he’d never said anything that wasn’t true. That was, according to Tanaka, the thing about him that was so polarizing; because for all the people who wanted to levy at him the accusation of being a bully, there were just as many who applauded him for it. 

      His brother, on the other hand, should have known not only that he hadn’t earned that right, but that by grasping at any and every opportunity to test out something he thought might be received as cool, he had made himself look, not like the alpha male he was failing to project, but like a spoiled brat without an ounce of decorum.  

     And that, Seto thought angrily, was not his fault. 

     Mokuba wasn’t even awake yet when Seto marched into his bedroom some time later, the only part of him visible his shock of dark hair flayed out above blankets he’d pulled over his head. 

     “Mokuba, get up.” 

     Getting no immediate response, Seto rolled his eyes and yanked the blankets halfway down the bed. 

     “Get up,” he repeated. 

     “Seto, what the fuck?” Mokuba grumbled, eyes scrunched against the sudden light. He was still too sleepy to be properly upset yet, so Seto cut to the chase. 

     “You’re coming with me to headquarters. That girl you were palling around with leaked a screenshot of an idiotic text you sent. So get up, get dressed, and meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes. I mean it, Mokuba,” he added when his brother didn’t immediately get moving. 

     In the end, it was more like a half an hour, and he’d had to practically drag his sibling through brushing his teeth, pulling on a pair of sweatpants, and getting in the waiting limo. 

     Now that he had his own car, Seto disliked riding into work with a driver -- Edwin drove too slowly for one thing, and for another, it took away one of the very few excuses he had not to be working. But in this case it was unavoidable: he needed every minute of the commute to ensure Mokuba would be docile by the time they arrived at headquarters. 

     “Look,” Mokuba began after downing the thermos of coffee Seto forced on him. “Everyone is being so dramatic, but it’s really not a big deal; Yuna just doesn’t like me because I ditched her at that party, and now she’s making me sound like I’m this really terrible person when I’m not.” His brother had said all this practically in one breath, and Seto could tell by how hard he was trying to sound blasé that the situation genuinely upset him. Good. 

     “Literally all I said,” Mokuba went on, flipping his phone back and forth in his hands, “was that we only hire hot girls, which is true ,” he stressed. “And it’s not like I even said my opinion about that or anything, and I think we should sue her for defamation or something and make her take it back. Because she’s just being a bitch.” 

     “You realize using language like that isn’t helping you here, right? And it’s not defamation if you actually said it.”

     “Oh, like you care,” Mokuba huffed, continuing to fiddle with his phone, clicking the screen on and off.

     “I care when what you say results in more work for me. And now I’ve got Roland and Tanaka breathing down my neck because you somehow managed to forget that you are a representative of our company, and everything you say should be weighed accordingly.” 

     “This was a private conversation.” 

     “You know there’s no such thing.” 

     “What about the stuff you talk about with Alistair? Did you make him sign an NDA?”

     “Watch it.” 

     Seto took another sip of his own coffee, a ribbon of steam snaking up from the thermos. He was tired, but not so spent that he couldn’t handle something like this. Mokuba could act as self-righteous as he pleased; in the end Seto knew his brother understood that compared to him he was --

      powerless. 

     The word, spoken only in his own mind, made him wince. This was exactly why he kept wavering. Mokuba needed to be reeled in, clearly, but how could he do that without taking his autonomy? He’d sworn he would never do that. 

     That promise had been made about someone else, though. Someone he’d really cared about. Not the brat Mokuba had grown into.

     “It makes no difference to me,” he said cooly, adjusting a lock of hair with his free hand. “But if you want to be a public figure, you have to be smarter. Like it or not, you’re a part of this company, and you’re an extension of me, which means I have to waste my time helping you fix this. But it’s the last time I want to hear about something like this, Mokuba. I mean it.” 

     “Or what?” Mokuba demanded, tossing his phone on the empty seat beside him with such force it bounced against the leather. “Are you gonna call me a loser again?” 

     “No, I’ll just send you to boarding school. One of the military ones where they make you get up at dawn and clean the bathroom floors with a toothbrush.” 

     “Shut up.” Mokuba rolled his eyes, but he was smirking. 

     “I’m not joking.” 

     “Yes, you are.” But his brother sounded uncertain, the smile sliding off his face. He leaned back against the seat and scooped his phone into his lap. 

     The threat of boarding school had indeed been empty, but Seto hoped Mokuba stayed rattled enough to behave. 

Chapter Text

Is that the wind
On your face?
Are you sure you're alone?

Feel the chill
Of an empty space
Are you sure you're alone?

Hands of ice
Down your spine
Are you sure you're alone?

Feel the grip
Of a clinging vine
Are you sure you're alone?

Have you reached your breaking point?

~Breaking Point, The Moody Blues

Chapter 11: Breaking Point 

     When he saw the incoming call from Trudy, Alistair was glad for a legitimate excuse not to answer. Not because he didn’t want to talk to her, to find out if she was willing to pretend the incident in the dining room had never happened, to ask how Sewell was doing, …how Seto was, but because he didn’t want to answer any questions about himself. When she asked him how he was, he didn’t want to have to lie. 

     He pulled another stack of books towards him and flipped the top one over to scan it back into the system before reaching for the next. Glancing down at his phone, he saw the screen had gone black again. Once he went on break, he’d be faced with the decision of whether or not to return her call, but for now, he could put it to the back of his mind. 

     More pressing for the moment was what he was going to do about Valon and Club Briseis. Now with two days between him and Valon blindsiding him at the club, Alistair’s feelings towards the whole thing had shifted again. He’d been a mess the day after; hungover, throat aching, his face covered in grime and streaks of makeup. 

     And he hadn’t felt any better. 

     He scanned another book. 

     His phone screen lit up again, this time with a notification from PictureThis. Mokuba (or more likely whatever cleanup crew Tanaka had put together for the occasion) had uploaded a video entitled ‘Taking Accountability.’ The entire situation had evolved so quickly and he found himself so uninterested in it, that it was only out of want for a distraction that Alistair opened the trim five minute video, the volume down low. 

     Considering the sheer amount of money Kaiba Corporation had to throw at any conceivable bump in the road, it was unsurprising that the production (because it was clearly a production) on the statement was so slick. 

     The clip opened with Mokuba appearing to balance his phone on something, though Alistair suspected the video had been filmed on a proper camera mounted on a tripod. He was wearing a striped long-sleeved t-shirt, his dark hair hanging messily into his face, making him appear much younger than he’d been fashioning himself of late. He was also visibly tired. Clearly, the team that had put this together had gone to some lengths to ensure Mokuba looked as forlorn as possible. 

     After heaving a deep sigh, Mokuba began speaking, his tone subdued, for all the world as though he were announcing a death in the family.

     “Hey, so, a few days ago a private text of mine got leaked and it…well, it got a lot of attention, so I wanted to address what I said, and take responsibility for what I said.” He paused to sigh again. “First of all, the person that posted this text never came to me privately to talk about it, which I really wish she would have because I considered us friends.” Here, Mokuba pushed his bottom lip out and glanced down. “But I did say what I said, and private or public, obviously there’s no excuse for casual sexism, and this experience was a really big wake up call to me, um, because I would never describe myself as a sexist person, you know. I have a lot of friends that are girls, and we do have a lot of women who I work with regularly and have a ton of respect for, and so I really shouldn’t have been making jokes like that. 

    I got a lot of messages and comments about the fact that I didn’t address this situation immediately, but I really needed a couple of days to unpack the whole thing because honestly, when I first saw the reaction people had to that joke I thought they were just being really sensitive and not understanding that it was just a joke even if it was kinda edgy.” He sat back, his chair creaking as he shifted around before leaning forward again with the briefest of glances over the camera, presumably at whoever was standing there.

     “Obviously, Kaiba Corporation doesn’t hire anyone based on how they look; that would be disgusting. And I should have known better because I’ve literally heard from so many of the women who work for us about how badly women in STEM get treated at other companies, but I guess because I do know that, I thought it was ok to make what I thought was an obvious joke about it.” He fidgeted with his fingers before sighing yet again. 

     “Are you watching that Mokuba Kaiba apology video?” 

     Alistair jumped and slammed the pause button on his phone before wheeling around to face his colleague, Zoe, who had just walked into the back holding a stack of picture books. 

     “It’s so bad, isn’t it?” she added with a laugh, setting the books down and leaning against the counter. “He looked like he was gonna cry the entire video. I honestly felt sorry for him.”

     “Hmmm .”

     “You don’t think so?” 

     He shrugged noncommittally. 

     Truthfully, Alistair just wanted her to go away, but the entire time he’d been working at the library she’d never seemed to understand he wasn’t interested in engaging in small talk, especially not about the Kaibas, though she couldn’t know that. 

     Not taking the hint, Zoe settled more comfortably against the counter as though prepared to continue the conversation indefinitely, and he internally groaned. 

     He was long over his physical hangover from Club Briseis, but he still felt like he was recovering from the experience and had no extra energy to exert being anyone’s amicable sounding board.    

     “I didn’t know you were interested in pop culture stuff at all,” Zoe went on, the prompt evident in her voice.

     “Zoe,” he replied, clenching his fists under the desk so that the band of the Orichalcos ring dug into his knuckle. “I don’t feel that great, and I’m really not in the mood to talk to anybody right now. Sorry.” 

     She made a sound of miffed surprise, muttering ‘well, fine then,’ before, to his relief, returning to the main floor dragging a heavy cart of what appeared to be every one of the library’s dinosaur books.

     He sighed, not unlike Mokuba had in the video, and released the tension in his hands. 

     Now that he was alone again, he considered what to make of the newest trouble Mokuba had landed himself in. It wasn’t surprising given Mokuba’s behavior of late, but to Alistair’s knowledge it was the first time the corporate machine had stepped in, which almost certainly meant Seto had gotten involved too. 

     Seto must have hated that; considered it beneath him to have to wade through social media muck just because his little brother had gotten stuck in it. 

     He doubted very much that Seto knew or cared how attractive anyone working for him was, but Alistair could well imagine some such unspoken policy nonetheless existed and that Mokuba had been too naive to realize he wasn’t supposed to say so out loud. 

     What to make of that? 

    It wasn’t the first time Alistair had been forced to face the cognitive dissonance of doing whatever he’d been doing with Seto while Seto ran such a terrible company. Alistair knew he’d put too much of the blame for that on Seto when working for Dartz, but now he saw that at some point he’d stopped putting enough. 

     He could imagine all too well Seto being told what Tanaka got up to at Club Briseis and dismissing it as something he by no means endorsed, but would tolerate as long as Tanaka did his job well enough to remain more of an asset than a liability. 

     And Tanaka was far from the only one, he had no doubt, though he was the one at the moment Alistair had the most reason to dislike.       

     It all came down to the character flaw of Seto’s no amount of twitterpation had been able to overcome: he was maddeningly unwilling to take a stand on anything that didn’t affect him personally, and even sometimes on things that did.  In fact, Alistair couldn’t think of anything of consequence he knew Seto’s opinion on other than his ironclad definition of ‘success’ and his thoughts on the past staying dead, neither of which Alistair even agreed with. 

     Perhaps part of the reason why he was having such a hard time pinning down what he and Seto were to each other stemmed from the fact that he didn’t actually know Seto very well. 

     Sure, he knew facts about him, he knew his routine, he knew a few personal anecdotes, they’d slept together a number of times. But much of what he ‘knew’ hinged, not on anything Seto had told him, but on his own obsessive piecing together of things he assumed to be true that Seto had never said outright. 

    But that couldn’t be right. They’d talked so much, hadn’t they? Down by the pool, in the garden, the car. In bed. 

     Seto had told him about ‘The Dragon Machine’;that was personal. But was it enough to say they knew each other? Alistair felt he’d been quite forthcoming when it came to revealing things about himself. Indeed, he’d told Seto more about himself, his life, his fears and ambitions, in under a year than he’d told either Valon or Raphael in seven. 

     Perhaps too forthcoming. 

     He’d always thought of himself as being put-together and even somewhat secretive, but from the moment he’d met Seto in person for the first time at Duelist Kingdom, he’d been unable to stop himself from loudly expressing whatever emotion he felt in that moment with embarrassing sincerity.   

     He gritted his teeth and went back to scanning in library materials. 

     None of this was important. 

     He’d crossed a huge line at Club Briseis, getting involved with Tanaka like that, not to mention what he’d done with Valon, and no reasonable person, much less someone as proud as Seto Kaiba, would tolerate even hearing about it, so worrying about how well he and Seto did or didn’t know each other or how bad of a company Seto ran was rather moot. 

     Setting the books he was holding aside, Alistair tapped his phone screen to check the time. He should have started his break several minutes ago. Ah well. He clocked out and retreated, not to the kitchen where he couldn’t guarantee his solitude, but to a backroom where donated materials for the library's periodic book sales were housed. The room itself was cramped, just a little bit too warm, and the only place to sit was on a precarious stack of picture books, but no one had ever bothered him here. 

     He’d made up his mind to call Trudy back on his walk to the backroom, but after perching himself on the stack of books he hesitated just that one more second before pressing the call button. 

     She answered nearly straightaway, which was typical of her. He’d seen her receive phone calls at the Kaiba estate before, and the second the ringer she had set to maximum volume let out its first shrill note, she was already pressing ‘accept’ with the same swiftness she removed a steaming kettle from the stove. But, consequently, she never knew who was calling.   

     “Hello?” she answered, her tone just breathless and alarmed enough for him to know her phone habits hadn’t changed in the past 3 months. Even in just hearing those two syllables, he felt that calling her had been a good idea. 

     “It’s Alistair. I saw that you called me, but I’m at work.” 

     “Oh! If you’re at work, I don’t want to interrupt.” 

     “Don’t worry,” he replied, suppressing a laugh at her sincerity. “I’m not like S-…Kaiba; I’m never doing anything important. Is everything ok?” he added, realizing then that he didn’t know why she’d called in the first place. 

     “Well, you know, there’s always something.” He indulged her telling him about several (to him) minor inconveniences that had occurred since he’d been gone including something about having to replace someone on the cleaning staff and her having to train the new girl how to use the washing machine. It was so inconsequential it made him feel homesick, even more strongly than when he’d talked to Seto. He knew exactly what rooms she was describing, could picture every mundane detail. But more than that, the fact that she was rambling about such things meant she’d either gotten past the dining room incident, or was at least trying to. 

     “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’m sure none of this is interesting to you. Oh! Sewell has been absolutely lovely. She did cry a bit after you left, poor thing, but then she seems to have adjusted. Of course, she’ll be happier when she's back with you I daresay. Neither George nor I sit still long enough for her I think.” 

     The unspoken question made him realize he didn’t have an answer. When would he be back? Would he be back? It reminded him that he’d promised he’d fly the Blue Eyes White Dragon jet for Seto at the kickoff of the Grand Championship tournament. The agreement felt so long ago, and he wondered if that was still going to happen. 

     “I’m sure she’s fine,” he replied, getting quickly to his feet when he felt the books he was sitting on start to sway. 

     “Do you think you’ll be taking her to Uni with you?” There was a smile in her voice he didn’t understand until she revealed that the true reason behind her call was that his Domino U acceptance letter had been sent to their PO box. “I wouldn’t have opened it of course,” she went on. “But they’d put our names on the envelope, not yours. In any case, I’m just so happy for you! I know how hard you studied for the entrance exam. You know, I should make you a cake! Of course, just if you have time, maybe next weekend…” 

     The offer dislodged something within him, as though for the past three months he’d been unconsciously holding his breath. By the time he got off the phone after promising he’d be there, he’d figured out why. 

     It was similar to how he’d felt right after losing his necklace, but without the wild swing from black ombre to technicolor that had left him at first somewhat euphoric and punch drunk only to nosedive the first time he’d tried and failed to go to Club Briseis. 

     Now, though, he felt a novel sense of calm. 

     He had seen too much to not believe that fate was a real force from which, like gravity, there was no escape. That being said, it wasn’t as though waiting for signs or following what seemed like the path of least resistance had ever been fulfilling, let alone made him happy. 

     And he was allowed to want that, wasn’t he? 

     On his finger, the stone in Valon’s ring pulsed. “What about your family?” he could feel it chiding. “They deserved justice, didn’t they? Vengeance?” The voice was cajoling, reasonable. Familiar. “You can still do that for them.”  

     And there they were: Mikey in the striped red sweater he’d been wearing the day he died, his mother hugging Mikey to her, his father standing behind them both.

     It was a vision the Orichalcos had shown him many times before because it knew how much he longed for it. His memories of his family, especially of his father, were eroded by time, but with seemingly no effort at all, the Orichalcos allowed him to be with them again. Alone at the sunken base between missions, it was all he’d wanted, never questioning why this vision alone was one he could never touch even when they were right there. Now he knew better than to let himself be haunted by phantoms. Maybe somewhere, in some unknowable, unreachable afterlife his family did still exist, but even the Orichalcos magic wasn’t powerful enough to cross into that world. He couldn’t get justice for his family. And Valon had been right: that never should have been made his responsibility.  

     “No,” he whispered, closing his eyes against the image, groping for the desk, the chair, anything he could follow back to the real world.

     “You said you wanted to help people, didn’t ‘cha?” He could hear Valon, somewhere, nowhere. 

     He was in Valon’s kitchen, and Valon was kneeling in front of him, looking up with wide, earnest eyes. “It would be like old times, ‘cept we could do it as a real team. You know, together.” His brows knit and he frowned with regret. “Like it always should have been.” He lay his head in Alistair’s lap, and Alistair could feel the warmth from his cheek, the softness of his hair against his bare arm. “I meant it when I told ya I’d always wondered about us.”

     Alistair supposed the confession should make him feel something, but to his surprise, he found himself unmoved by it.

     He had wanted this, once. Fine, he'd admit it. If Valon had come to him with this even a year ago, maybe he would have entertained the idea. Or maybe he would have just slept with him as unfeelingly as he had now. His track record with men certainly revealed a pattern of tangling up hatred and attraction, though whether Seto or Valon had come first was impossible to say.

     Although… He looked down at Valon, still lying in his lap, his face largely obscured by unruly brown hair. Valon had always been somewhat pathetic and superficial, but perhaps it wasn’t fair to have classified his feelings towards Valon as hatred. Envy, perhaps, of how little baggage Valon had brought with him from whatever life he’d had before DOMA, resentment that Valon hadn’t been as lonely and unhappy as he was, that he was able to drift along the current of time Alistair had always struggled to swim against.

     Maybe he’d believed that if Valon had chased him the way he chased Mai or Nuala, if he’d have let himself be caught, Valon could have absorbed his pain. Maybe he still believed that.   

     But that would be unfair.

     “Valon,” he began, lightly pushing back against Valon’s shoulder so he’d sit up. Valon was grinning at him in anticipation. “Listen: I don’t think --.”       

     He snapped upright in alarm; he wasn't in Valon's kitchen because this wasn't happening.

     He was in the library.

     "This isn't real," he said. But the contours of Valon's kitchen didn't flicker, didn't fall away, and Alistair was still trapped in the chair. 

     “Maybe not,” the apparition that wasn’t really Valon admitted, though it was still grinning broadly. “But it could be.” Unexpectedly, it grasped onto Alistair’s hands, slotting their fingers together. “Go back to the club. Jus’ one more time. Use the ring. Then you and I can rebuild a better DOMA. It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

     He was supposed to say 'yes.' He'd as good as said 'yes' when Valon had blown back into his life a month ago. But then Valon -- the real Valon -- had pointed out how feeling guilty had only created a circle out of his bad choices. How feeling guilty could never result in a 'better DOMA.' DOMA had been built on the lie that guilt could build a better world; it couldn't be fixed. He had to build something better on his own.  

     Seeming to sense the unexpected resistance to well-worn persuasian, Not-Valon dropped Alistair’s hands and went to stand behind him instead, palms resting against Alistair’s shoulders, bent down so that Alistair could feel the blunt pressure of his chin on the top of his head.

     “Well, you're not gonna build anythin' better while you're still hung up on Kaiba, y'know. Someone like that could never understand you. People like that can’t begin to imagine what it means to give yourself up to something bigger than you are; they’re too busy pretendin’ they’re worth their weight in gold.”

     Alistair could feel the vibration of Not-Valon’s chuckle through his back as it drew him closer to it. The voice certainly was Valon’s, but its words belonged to whatever consciousness he’d been hearing in his head for the past eight years. It had always been reassuring then, but now if it hadn’t been holding him in place, he would have recoiled from the very inhumanness of it. He closed his eyes as he tried to feel his way back to the real world, hands reaching for the desk he knew to be right in front of him. 

     “But gold is soft. Weak. You and I are different. That’s why we were chosen, wasn’t it? We’re not susceptible to that kind of weakness. We can see through it. You can see through it. You can see the decay, the corruption. You're right: DOMA is dead. But we're still here, you and I. People like Kaiba, like Tanaka, they’re just the material – you and I are the creators.”

     It had stopped trying to sound like Valon, speaking now directly within him, bound so tightly to his own thoughts he wasn’t sure who was ‘you’ and who was ‘I’.

     “Let’s build a new world together.”

     Just then, his fingertips brushed against the smooth lip of the desk and he clamped onto it.

     “No.”

     His eyes flew open as he jerked backwards only for the sudden shift in weight to tip over the chair, its wheels spinning uselessly in the air. And he came down with it, cracking the back of his head so hard on the floor it took a moment for the pain to catch up to his surprise. 

     “Are you ok?” Zoe had come running into the backroom, followed by a curious front desk worker. 

     “Uh huh,” Alistair managed, clutching the back of his head with one hand and hoisting himself to a sitting position with the other, gritting his teeth against the accompanying stab of vertigo. “I just…the chair…” He gestured at it. “It’s fine.” 

     Finally, they left, though Zoe glanced back as though hoping he’d tell her to stay. 

     Alistair could feel himself trembling as he righted the chair and sat back down. It had been a very long time since the Orichalcos had shown him a vision like that. Before, he’d come out of them feeling energized, ready to fight. But this time, he was just shaken by it. 

      Because I don't trust it anymore, he guessed. But with that type of magic, who knew?

     His eyes strayed to the ring, expecting it to have gone dull again. At first, he couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at: a grin? A small rift opening on its surface? 

     A crack ran the length of the stone, cutting it jaggedly in two.      

     With a feeling of creeping revulsion, Alistair yanked the broken ring from his finger and tossed it to the back of the desk.     

     It was hard to tell these days whether the mundane aspects of his job had always been unbearable or had only become progressively so the closer Seto came to a new peak of exhaustion he hadn’t known existed. 

     The fiasco he was filing under ‘The Mokuba thing, part one too many’ hadn’t been neatly swept away by the apology video that had taken an entire team hours to put together and film, and it was now clear that as a result, his press release about the OS project would need to be pushed back. 

     Because of this snag he found himself, not in front of a sea of cameras as he’d anticipated, but at the head of a conference table listening to yet more reservations from Kobayashi about budgetary concerns and the R&D manager’s claims that his timeline was unrealistic. 

     “Unrealistic for some ,” Seto was quick to correct, staring the manager down until he looked away and shuffled his notes. “Not for me.” 

     “No one is suggesting…” the manager began, shifting nervously in his seat. “That is, some of our engineers are just concerned...” 

     “Then they aren’t ambitious enough. Tell them that: it can be done, and it will. If they have doubts about their own abilities maybe they should go work for Google or Apple and leave the KOS project to people with talent.” 

     “What does the board say?” Kobayashi asked. “A proposal this risky, surely they have thoughts.” 

     “I am the board,” Seto reminded him with disdain, clearing his throat and reaching up to loosen his tie. “And this is happening whether you like it or not, just like the tournament, just like the Duel Disks, just like,” he paused, suddenly out of breath. “Just like…Solid Vision.” He reached up to adjust his tie again, though he knew now it wouldn’t ease the tightness in his chest, the heightened awareness of the beating of his own heart. 

     “Are you alright, sir?” Roland asked, making to get up from his seat near the door, but Seto gestured to stop him. 

     “Of course,” Seto snapped, though he by now felt as though something heavy was pressing into him. “It’s just ridiculous…ridiculous that we have to have…this conversation over and over again... even though I’m…right…every time.” He felt a bead of sweat slide down his back. “So come back when you have something new to say.” This was said through gritted teeth, and had he not been focusing so on remaining upright, he was certain the R&D manager and Kobayashi wouldn’t have dared exchange brazen looks of contempt. “Until then, we’re done here. Now get out. Roland, you…you too,” he added.

     It was maddening to have to allow them to get away with that level of disrespect, but he could no more rebuke them in that moment than stop his heart from racing. 

     The second they’d gone, he collapsed forwards in the chair, clutching his chest and forcing short bursts of breath through his unwilling lungs as he all but rested his forehead on the table. 

     It was the coffee. He’d just had too much coffee. It had happened before, though never at such an inopportune moment, and not for years.

     For what felt like a very long time, he struggled to catch his breath even as his frustration mounted. He had no time for this! 

      Another point for the cyber world , he thought wryly as his fingers dug into the fabric of his suit jacket. However wrong Noah had been in his notions of AI surpassing humanity, at least he’d been free of such annoying physical limitations.   

     Finally, something gave, and Seto took a deep, shaky breath as his heart slowed to its normal rhythm. His eyes landed on the empty coffee mug beside his tablet and he thrust it towards the middle of the table. 

     As always after such attacks, he could feel a leaden tiredness creeping down his limbs, and his thoughts strayed to home. There was nothing else in his schedule that required he physically be at the office until tomorrow, but he knew if he left he wouldn’t be working anymore that day: the lure of the bunker was too great. VR was no substitute for actual rest, but he wouldn’t be getting any of that anyway, so… 

     There was so much he wanted to say to Alistair. 

     To the avatar of Alistair anyway. 

     It only occurred to him after he was halfway home that he hadn’t spoken to Mokuba since their meeting with Tanaka the day before even though for the first time in weeks his brother wasn’t off in Los Angeles or wherever else he met up with whoever it was he was spending his time with these days. 

     Whatever. As long as Mokuba didn’t follow him to the bunker he didn’t much care where he was. 

     When he’d first designed the simulation, Seto had chosen the back garden for the sake of simplicity; he had maps of the layout, aerial footage, easy access to the real thing if he needed to check some minute detail. But he couldn’t pretend the decision to have Alistair perpetually sitting on the stone bench and looking up at the sky had been for any reason other than that the time they had been there together in the real world held a place of significance for him. It had been the first time in many years he’d felt hopeful about anything. And even though he knew that hope was a completely irrational feeling to ascribe any meaning to, and memories even more so, it was nevertheless special to him. 

     At the time he’d felt differently.

     He didn’t know why Alistair had wanted to talk about the constellations or even why he knew anything about them. Maybe he should have asked, but he’d been unable to focus on much else that night other than how nervous he’d been. How nervous Alistair made him. 

     Even now, even after all the time he’d put into the game of trying to figure out what Alistair had been up to the past three months he wasn’t sure how he’d feel if Alistair really did come back. Because hadn’t it been due to his compounding failure to give Alistair what he wanted that Alistair had left in the first place? 

     Sure, they could pretend it was because of what had happened in the dining room or because of a vague search for identity or because of Tanaka bringing some girl from across the border to the holiday ball. But if he had been able to say the right things, do the right things, he wouldn’t have had to create this simulation because he’d have the real Alistair at his side. 

     “Or maybe not; who knows with you,” he snapped, knowing without having to look up from the grass, dark in the shadows from the bench, that Alistair was looking at him with one of the five distinct expressions he'd been programmed to make. 

     “I shouldn’t even care,” he went on. “I’ve got more important things to do than waste my time on this. It’s just like Yugi all over again.” He looked up in time to see Alistair nodding in agreement. “Do you have any idea how much time and money I spent trying to figure out why I couldn’t beat him? Well, maybe you do.” He allowed himself a sardonic grin. “I guess knowing more about someone than we should is something we have in common.” 

     He gazed out into the garden at the flowers rendered there that he’d forgotten to program to sway in the breeze, though he could hear it blowing through them. It was the kind of mistake he’d never have made if he weren’t so tired. 

     The programmers he’d been working with to design the Solid Vision overlays for the Grand Championship Tournament had dared venture to say so just the week before when the code he’d given them had resulted in mesh errors he couldn’t pretend had been anyone’s fault but his own. 

     “Everyone keeps telling me I need to sleep,” he said, still staring at the unmoving flowers. “Like it’s something I don’t know. That was why I called you; that was the point! That’s why I told you to come here; I know you understood that.” He turned abruptly to glower at him, and Alistair tilted his head, brow furrowing in concern. But Seto wasn’t in the mood for concern; he wanted contrition, and more than that, he wanted Alistair to yield. 

     It had been a fun game they’d been playing, and Seto couldn’t say he hadn’t enjoyed the idea of continuing it…for a while. Up until that day, the frustration he felt had just been a reasonable byproduct of that game. He was chasing, of course that had to come with setbacks or it wouldn’t be much of a challenge. 

     When the chase had been: ‘defeat Yugi in a duel,’ it had energized him, each successive lap around his goal serving to make him work that much harder to finally get there . There had been sleepless nights, sure, and Mokuba and Trudy had expressed concern about that, but those concerns had been easy to dismiss because they’d been wrong: he’d never felt more alert in his life than when he’d been chasing after a victory over Yugi. Until Battle City anyway.

     This time, he couldn’t argue that nothing was wrong because of course something was. And the thing that was wrong was that he’d let Alistair leave. If he had fought, that wouldn’t have happened. 

     Why hadn’t he fought? 

     He could have given Alistair anything he’d wanted with a modicum of effort. Had he not told Mokuba many times that the purpose of money was to buy the power to force the world to bow to you? When had he ever hesitated to use that power before? But he knew all of that was wrong, yet kept circling around the correct answer anyway. 

     When he looked back at Alistair again, he was still giving that same expression of concern, the breeze blowing several strands of hair across his face. Seto fought the urge to reach out and push them back into place.      

      I want you here. 

     I need you here.

     I want you. 

     I need you. 

     You. 

     It was impossible. There had to be something else. Another way. That was the game, wasn’t it? If he gave in, gave up, told Alistair those things, he’d lose. 

     But really, why did that still matter so much? Especially since what he’d been doing for the past few months: the digital surveillance, following the dot of Alistair’s cell phone all over Domino– it was pathetic. 

     “Besides,” he mused, eyeing Alistair sidelong. “You don’t think I will, do you?” Maybe showing his hand wasn’t the losing move at all. He sat up a bit straighter. 

     Was that it? Had it been that simple all along? 

     Well, he was certainly in the right place to try. 

     “Alistair,” he began confidently, catching the avatar’s attention when he turned to face it head on. “I…” But even though the eyes on him weren’t real, he hesitated, suddenly flustered. “I think you should… I want you to… You have to… Dammit!” He punched himself in his leg out of frustration. Exhaling sharply, he steeled himself to try again, not looking at Alistair this time, but at the ground at his feet. 

     “I get it: I didn’t tell you what you wanted to hear so now you’re paying me back; I’d probably do the same. But you can’t run off with some college kid and expect me to just accept that.” He looked up. Alistair was nodding in agreement in an infuriatingly condescending sort of way and he found himself grinding his teeth.

     No way could he crawl to Alistair and force himself to grovel like that, not even if it was the only way he could win. 

     Unless... What if he could get Alistair to come to him first?

     Closing his eyes, he allowed everything he knew to shuffle around in his mind's eye, not unlike arranging windows on a computer screen. The fact that Alistair had been running around with that student was irritating and did nothing to help him figure out what to do, so he pushed it aside.

     Alistair had gotten into Domino U but not accepted the offer despite all the lip service he'd given to wanting to go. Why? What had changed? 

     The necklace.

     No. He refused to buy into that delusion, and pushed that variable aside as well. 

     Not the necklace. The girl. The girl Tanaka had brought to the ball. Playing with fire. Yes, that was it: Alistair was too proud to accept a place at Domino U because he believed either that Seto had intervened to ensure he was given that spot (he hadn't) or that once there no one would believe he'd gotten in on his own (not unlikely). That would explain the college student; perhaps Alistair was using him as a soft test of that theory. And feeling uncertain about his future would have led Alistair back to where he was more comfortable: the past. That would explain the interest in Club Briseis. Seto toggled between several more pieces of relevant information to test them against this new theory. 

     It had been clear from even the barest glance at the company what Club Briseis was a front for, so in all likelihood, that's where Tanaka had gotten that girl. 

     He wasn't at an actual computer, but out of habit, Seto tapped his fingertips against the lip of the bench much as he would have a keyboard. 

     And Alistair had been following the Kaiba Corporation PictureThis account, and Mokuba's, and his, so he was clearly still thinking about it and possibly searching for something in those posts that would tip the scales one way or the other. Certainly the asinine apology video Mokuba had been forced to film wouldn't have impressed him. But maybe there was something that would.  

     The speed at which he tapped his fingers against the bench increased, though the motion made no sound.  

     It would have to be subtle, yet still something Alistair was guaranteed to notice, but that ensured reasonable doubt if Alistair were to accuse Seto of doing it to manipulate him into reaching out. At the same time, it had to be something that would ensure Alistair had to reach out in order to ask that question. 

     The girl. Tanaka. Playing with fire. Club Briseis. Club Briseis. Playing with fire. Tanaka. The girl. 

     The girl. The girl Tanaka had brought to the ball.

     Tanaka. His employee.

     Club Briseis. The club where Tanaka had gotten the girl. The club Alistair had gone to two days before. Had he met the girl there?

     Playing with fire. The reason Alistair had left. (And me. He left because of me. He left because I didn't tell him I didn't want him to go.).

     Alistair had left because he was afraid to be looked at the same way as the girl from Club Briseis that Tanaka had brought to the ball. Therefore, Alistair was only going to come back if he could be convinced that Seto (loved) held him in higher esteem than Tanaka assuredly held that girl. The girl Alistair may have met at Club Briseis. (Did he tell her about me? ) But he didn't have access to that girl. But Tanaka did, and Tanaka was his employee. Tanaka had to do what he said. But Tanaka was a snake. Tanaka would pry, perhaps even figure out his boss's sudden interest in the club, or, more likely, incorrectly assume Seto was interested in that girl after seeing her at the ball. 

     Seto frowned in distaste, his fingers stilling and gripping the rounded edge of the bench. No, there had to be a way to use Tanaka without giving the PR manager even the illusion of insight into his personal life. Especially knowing the pleasure the man had derived from the indirect smear on Seto's name resulting from Mokuba's most recent social blunder.

     The social blunder that had put everyone in upper management on edge. The type of scandal no one wanted to snowball into a bigger PR problem. A PR problem like the head of the Public Relations department parading around with a girl from across the border at a company event. A girl from across the border who worked at Club Briseis, where Alistair had gone two days before.  

      Seto grinned, his eyes snapping open, and got up from the bench. 

     “I win,” he told Alistair, his grin wider still, and detecting his good mood, the avatar smiled back at him.

Chapter Text

     "I have a different plan today

One without you anyway

I hold it tightly in my hand

With my back against the wall."

~Ich Brech Aus, Tokio Hotel

Chapter 12: Turning Point

     It had reached that point in the winter where even those who claimed they preferred the cold were getting sick of the constant and inevitably unsuccessful battle against the slushy streets of Domino and had given up on chasing the dragon that had been the one beautiful, glittery snowy morning back in December. Instead, everyone unfortunate enough to have to walk for any length of time found themselves arriving at their destinations out of breath from forcing their way through half-melted snow drifts pushed up onto the sidewalks by uncaring snow removal teams. If they were lucky, the damp salt and grime they were coated with extended no further than their mid-shins, though many unfortunate office workers would turn up with residue all the way up the backs of their coats, courtesy of some inattentive commuter plowing their way up the road.   

     Seto, however, knew nothing of the man versus nature struggle going on outside. His days were bookended by getting in and out of cars; the winter coat he threw on over his suit for the two minute walk through the headquarters parking garage more aesthetic than necessary. He was more concerned with the man versus man conflict that had been playing out for the past three days between himself and every person standing in the way of the victory he’d chosen for himself while in the VR pod. 

     Nothing in life was ever simple, but even he had failed to foresee these particular layers of difficulty involved in reeling Alistair back in his direction. At least he’d been able to deal with it more well-rested than he’d been in weeks. 

     After leaving the VR pod, his satisfaction with his own cleverness and the certainty that he’d be collecting his prize in short order chased away the stubborn melancholy that had been keeping him out of his bed, and without even getting under the blankets, he’d passed out on top of it and not stirred until fourteen hours later when his pre-set alarm went off at six in the morning. 

     Considering the incident during his meeting with Kobayashi, it had been with a degree of caution that he’d accepted the mug of coffee Trudy brought him to accompany his breakfast, but far from leaving him jittery, he felt alert in a way very reminiscent of the pent up energy that preceded a high stakes duel. 

     Trudy had tried to dampen his mood by suggesting he speak to Mokuba, who she seemed to think had been upset by what had happened around PictureThis, but Seto brushed her off: the situation with his brother was pedestrian and insipid, and was Mokuba’s own problem. 

     Possibly the part of his plan that he’d most anticipated was how it gave him license to cut Tanaka off at the knees right at the moment the PR manager thought he’d gained the upper hand in their battle of wills. 

     “As you’re well aware, the situation with Mokuba has caused my announcement of the KOS project to get pushed back, and we both know how much I hate getting thrown off schedule,” he’d begun once Tanaka was standing in front of his desk. “And frankly, I haven’t been impressed with your attempts to get the public to move past it; that apology video was a joke.” 

     At this rebuke, Tanaka had been unable to hold back a grimace. 

     “Because you screwed that up, I’ve had to do the job of damage control for you. And guess what turned up?” Here, Seto had flipped over a print-out of a still from footage of the holiday ball and slid it across the surface. In it, Tanaka was pictured with his arm around the waist of a young woman, vivid red hair falling down across her face . “Who is she?” he pressed when Tanaka tried to mumble a statement of self-defense. After much hemming and hawing, Tanaka had admitted to meeting the girl at Club Briseis and given him a name. 

     Tanaka had been visibly displeased when Seto informed him of his penance, but grudgingly agreed. Seto assumed Tanaka’s displeasure had more to do with losing this latest skirmish between them than it did with him lamenting the loss of a valued companion, so he dismissed him in order to carry out the next step of his plan. 

     This was the second favor he was calling in at the Domino Citizenship and Immigration Services office, and he could tell when he got him on the phone that the director’s interest was piqued. 

     “There must be easier ways to get cheap labor,” the director joked. “Not that I don’t appreciate your gifts; I’ve been meaning to get my office redecorated.” 

     “This should be an easier case,” Seto explained, ignoring the implied question. “All I need from you is an approved asylum application.” 

     “Wait, wait. Asylum? So this person is already in the country? This isn’t one of Fujita’s girls you’re talking about, is it?” 

     It was the first Seto was hearing about something going on in the city that he wasn’t privy to, and the thought that some scheme was being played out under his nose – one Tanaka likely knew more about than he did –  quickly raised his hackles. 

     “Would it matter?” he snapped, his tone hard and uncompromising, daring the director to argue with him. 

     “I… Well… I’m sure it doesn’t, of course, but I think he’d appreciate being made aware that you’re…making inquiries…” 

     “And I’m sure you have no problem informing him,” Seto replied cooly. “Put that application through: I expect it by the end of the week. If Fujita has a problem, he knows how to contact me.” He’d wondered if the director would have the nerve to push back against being the go-between, but perhaps mindful of that office renovation he said he wanted, he’d relented, promising to process the paperwork in the coming days. 

     That task complete, Seto had mulled over the unexpected twist in the background of his thoughts. ‘Fujita’s girls,’ the director had said. The only Fujita he knew of that the director could possibly consider important enough to have to hesitate like that was the General. As the head of Kaiba Corporation, Seto had had no direct dealings with General Fujita, but he’d been one of Gozaburo’s close associates, so Seto had met him before, several times. The General had been very like his step-father: a domineering, middle-aged man keen to congratulate himself on being a master of the universe. Seto hadn’t liked him much. 

     He could connect the dots all too well even with his as yet limited information. Did Alistair know? Probably not, or Seto was certain he would have contacted him to say something about it. It was the kind of thing he himself wished he didn’t know, because it meant he had to do something about it when there were already several dozen other matters that needed his attention. 

     “Dammit,” he muttered, wishing, not for the first time, that he had as little conscience as most people seemed to think. 

     Alistair hadn’t checked his email that morning, so he didn’t know until he’d already arrived for work that his shift had been switched with someone else’s, leaving him suddenly with a free afternoon. This was unfortunate, because he’d been using work as an excuse not to meet Valon again.

     After the Orichalcos ring had cracked, he’d been unsure how or whether to tell Valon about it since he hadn’t known what it meant. Did the crack mean it was weaker, its power slowly leaking out, or was the crack a doorway for whatever entity powered the crystal? The thought made him shudder. 

     He’d finally made up his mind to get rid of it and Valon at the same time. It would be ugly and Valon would blame him for ruining his chance at riding off into the Los Angeles sunset with Nuala, but then it would be done. Valon would lose interest and disappear, and he’d be free to choose a new path, starting with finally accepting the admissions offer from Domino University. And then maybe he’d be able to see Seto again, though the prospect of such a reunion was darkly overshadowed by the reality of having to admit at the very least to what he’d done with Tanaka. He had no doubt Seto’s wrath would be arctic. And he hated that he only had himself to blame for ruining what they had only just begun to build. 

     Maybe. 

     Now he’d never get to know. 

     It was then, when he’d been feeling the full weight of regret, that he’d decided to get by comparison the easier of the two unpleasant tasks out of the way and started typing out a message to Valon about meeting somewhere downtown. To his surprise, before he’d even finished writing, Valon called him. 

     He sounded irritated, which in retrospect Alistair realized should have been reason enough not to allow Valon to invite himself over, but he’d been so distracted and desperate to get rid of the ring that he’d given Valon his address at Hostel 1996. 

     With nothing to do while he waited for Valon to show up, he’d continued to daydream, trying out different ways of explaining what he’d done to the Seto of his imagination. He hadn’t noticed how long he’d been sitting on his bed thinking about it, but then suddenly Valon was knocking on his door, likely let into the building by a student on their way back from the grocery store across the street. 

     It was only as he was getting up to let him in that he realized he didn’t know how to explain what had happened to the ring. 

     “This building is really confusin’,'' Valon said, striding into the room the second Alistair opened the door. “You’re not busy, right?” he added. 

     “No,” Alistair began, on the verge of adding ‘but.’ But before he had the chance, Valon had grabbed onto his shoulders and pulled Alistair against him in an attempt to kiss him. “What the fuck, Valon?” Alistair snapped, backing out of Valon’s grasp. 

     “Come on,” Valon said, pulling him back towards him, and Alistair could smell the sour odor of stale beer on his breath. He wrinkled his nose. 

     “Are you drunk? It’s like, four in the afternoon.” He tried to prise Valon’s fingers off his shoulders, but to his surprise, Valon tightened his grip so that Alistair could feel his nails digging into his skin through his t-shirt. 

     “ Shhh . Shhh .” Valon lightly pressed a hand over Alistair’s mouth. It was such an out of pocket affront, Alistair found himself too startled to react. “Don’t talk. Let’s just do this, yeah? I made it good for ya last time, didn’t I?” He slid his hand from Alistair’s mouth to the side of his face and leaned in to kiss him again, but by this time Alistair had unfrozen, and pushed Valon away. 

     “Look, Valon: I’m not interested in whatever this is, ok? We have to talk.” Alistair made to retrieve his bag from the floor next to the bed, but something – the beer or whatever had driven him to day drink in the first place – had made Valon stubborn. 

     “Now hang on; tha’s not true.” Valon unsteadily waved a chiding finger in his direction. “I know you’re interested; you’ve made that plenty clear.” 

     “What, you mean because we hooked up once,” Alistair snorted, dragging his backpack towards him with his foot. “That didn’t mean anything.” 

     “Really?” Valon’s voice was soft, and Alistair could hear the dismay in it. This made so little sense that he left the bag on the floor and glanced back. To his astonishment,  Valon had slumped heavily onto his bed and was staring glumly at the floor. 

     “Why are you here?” Alistair demanded. It was somehow more annoying to see his old teammate moping about something than drunk and belligerent. 

     “I thought you’d understand,” Valon explained, still in that same sad tone. “I know you don’t believe it, but we’re good people. So why don’t we get to be happy?” 

     Now that he had an inkling of what Valon was talking about, Alistair sighed and sat down beside him. The ring could wait. 

     Not feeling confident in his ability to comfort him, Alistair awkwardly rested a hand on Valon’s arm. Valon’s jacket still smelled of the cold, though it wasn’t strong enough to cut through whatever cheap body spray he had on.  

     “No one ever chooses me, not even you,” Valon went on, kicking out at the bed frame without any real force. 

     “‘Not even’ me? Gee, thanks.” Alistair didn’t like how infectious Valon’s dejection was, and hoped that little bit of humor might snap him out of it, but instead, Valon’s frown deepened. 

     “I mean it; I don’t understand. Mai was so depressed when we met, and I helped her, but the second she felt better, she went runnin’ back to Wheeler. And alright, fine; he’s a nice enough bloke, and I could kind of understand that they had something going on already. Alright. I’m happy for her. But Nuala?” Valon made a noise of derision, his mouth twisting in contempt. “Do you have anything to drink?” he asked suddenly. “I feel like I’m not drunk enough yet.” 

     “You definitely are,” Alistair replied with a small smile. “I’ll get you some water though.” He started to get up, but Valon clutched onto his arm, so he sat back down. 

     “Can you be real with me for a sec?” Valon sounded surprisingly serious and Alistair wondered where this could possibly be going. “I know how you get when I bring this up, but just be honest. I know it’s not the same, but didn’t you hope, even just a little, that your duel with Kaiba could’ve ended differently?”

     “What ?” But this time the confusion wasn’t strictly genuine. Valon had questioned him after his first duel with Seto had ended in a draw, peppering the interrogation with little quips about how unlikely a draw was unless one of them had been purposefully angling for it. “All I’m sayin’ ,” Valon had said, lips curled upwards in a teasing grin, “ is maybe he liked your snazzy little outfit, since you’re still here to wear it .” The commentary had been so mocking that Alistair hadn’t thought much of it. And he wasn’t sure why Valon was bringing it up now. 

     “Just, I figure you kind of understand what it’s like to not get what you want. But hey,” he went on before Alistair could protest, “at least we got each other, yeah?” He gave a wry laugh and squeezed Alistair’s knee affectionately as though being each other’s consolation prize was humorous, but inevitable.  

     “You’re nothing to me but an occasional form of entertainment .”    

     How funny that he’d been trying to decide if Seto had meant that or not, never wondering if in fact it was Valon who had always secretly felt that way. And he’d known he could get away with it because he’d understood better than Alistair had himself that Alistair actually liked it. Liked him.   

     And he’d been right. The admission itself was mortifying, but it was intolerable to think Valon assumed he still held that power now.   

    Assumed from the moment Alistair had reached out to him a month ago that the reunion had been proof that Alistair would always be there, prepared to entertain him while he solved whatever shallow problem he’d invented for himself.   

     The more Alistair thought about it, the more it really pissed him off, not least because in spite of everything he still felt the horrible heat of angry embarrassment running from the middle of his chest to fan out across his face. 

     He’d already shoved Valon hard towards the other end of the bed before consciously deciding to do so, a release for every unpleasant emotion that had been slowly sucking him down into the grimy, slushy filth of his own worst tendencies even without any prodding from the Orichalcos.   

     At Club Briseis maybe he could have mended what had become the broken continuum of his heritage. Then DOMA wouldn’t have to have been just shameful years brainwashed in a cult; it could have been leading to something – he and Valon could have actually been the good guys this time.   

     But Valon had ruined that for him by pretending he was better than he was. He wasn’t. He never had been. He’d never been a roguish, swashbuckling freedom fighter; he had only ever played that part because pretending to be a hero got him laid. 

     Mai had seen through it, though. And so, apparently, had Nuala. And now, finally, so had Alistair. 

     “Hey,” Valon retorted, laughing in surprise at Alistair’s sudden, aggressive treatment. “What was that for?” But when he moved to slide back, Alistair shoved him again, throwing so much of his weight behind it that Valon had to catch himself on the edge of the bed. “Cut it out,” Valon said, not laughing this time, sitting up straighter. “You don’t get to be pissy about me bringing up the Kaiba thing after all the shit you’ve given me about Mai.” 

     “Just fuck off.” Alistair spat the words in his direction, glaring at the closed door because if he looked at Valon he knew he’d hit him. 

     “Hey, you don’t get to push me around, right?” 

     Alistair felt Valon shift his weight on the mattress and tensed, ready to brace against a physical onslaught once his old teammate ran out of words. He shouldn’t have shoved him, but then, knowing Valon as well as he did, it was the only language he felt sure he’d understand. The only real way to get through to him that their rekindled alliance was over. 

     He was angry, so angry, that despite everything he thought he’d learned after Dartz’s betrayal, he was still letting his life, his decisions, revolve around someone else. The entire reason he’d left the Kaiba estate had been to find out what the world was actually like. What he actually felt about it. How he wanted to be a part of it. 

     And he’d failed.    

    “I said: you don’t push me around.” 

     “Shut up, Valon.” Just for good measure, Alistair went to shove him again, but this time Valon grabbed onto his wrists, and then they were grappling, Valon trying to pin Alistair to the mattress, and Alistair attempting to jam his knee into Valon’s chest as they swore incoherently at each other. 

     The small bed creaked underneath them before with a loud crunch of splitting wood, the cheap frame snapped, sagging sideways and sending them crashing onto the floor, Valon’s elbow catching Alistair hard in the side of his mouth. 

     But despite the broken bed and throbbing pain from splitting his lip, Alistair continued to thrash against his old colleague even though Valon had used the fall to his advantage and pulled Alistair into a headlock against his chest. 

     “Let. Go. Of. Me,” Alistair growled, scrabbling at the arm holding him in place. 

     “Ow ! Fuck!” Valon released him to nurse the scratches Alistair had left on the back of his hand, and Alistair rolled off the mattress and scrambled to his feet. “You’re like a bloody cat,” Valon went on, inspecting the shallow cuts. He sounded more exasperated than angry, but Alistair was still in the mood to fight, mouth locked in a scowl and every muscle tensed to lunge at Valon again. 

     “Get a grip, Ali: I was only teasin.’ Sheesh.” 

     “Get a grip ? That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Alistair had clenched his fists so tightly they were starting to ache. “You never even asked me if I was ok after what happened at Briseis. All you cared about was that you didn’t get your fucking money! Which, by the way, I told you I don’t think he even fucking has! And now, what, Nuala doesn’t want you anymore so you thought you’d just come here and kill time with me until you found some other girl to chase around, feeling sorry for yourself because she doesn’t want you?” 

     Valon protested, but Alistair wasn’t in the mood to give him the chance to defend himself. 

     “Well guess what: I don’t want you either. I don’t want to fuck you, I don’t want to work with you, and I don’t want your ring!” He kicked the bag in Valon’s direction so that it crumpled against his foot. “It’s broken, by the way,” he added after an angry exhale. “So take it back, get out of my apartment, and then do whatever you want. On your own.”

     “I - it - what d’ya mean, broken?” 

     “God, you really don’t listen, do you?” Alistair shoved a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Broken. The stone cracked in half.” He took a deep breath. 

     He was still angry, but he knew Valon wouldn’t leave until he could be forced to understand that Alistair could no longer help him even if he wanted to since, clearly, it was the only reason his old teammate would accept.

     “You said it stopped working for you. Probably because there’s nothing it could leech off of you because you don’t really care about anything. I don’t know why it even accepted you in the first place.” He’d expected Valon to retort or pick up the bag to see the ring for himself or blame Alistair for breaking it. Something. But instead, Valon just stared dumbly at him as though someone had flipped an off switch.  

     “Why are you still here?” Alistair snapped. “I told you to take that thing and get out.” 

     “I don’t get it,” Valon said finally, his face screwed up in a sort of disbelieving puzzlement as though he’d been struck with something heavy and not yet processed that it had happened. Very slowly, he kneeled and turned the backpack upside down so that the ring fell out with a dull thud as it hit the dingy floor. He picked it up and examined it with the same baffled expression. “I don’t get it,” he repeated, looking from the ring to Alistair, who shrugged aggressively. 

     “What’s there to get? It broke. No more Orichalcos power. Game over.” 

     “But…” Valon stared hard at the cracked stone, then at Alistair. “What did you say happened to yours?” 

     “I told you: it broke too.” But by now Alistair was beginning to understand Valon’s confusion. Why had Valon’s Orichaclos stone broken? Why had his ? Seto had never actually told him how that had happened, and somehow it hadn’t occurred to him to ask. The last thing he remembered was the power pouring out of it that had shattered the dining room windows. Then he supposed he’d passed out. But why would that have broken the necklace? 

     “I don’t know why it broke, Valon. It blew a fuse, it ran out of power. Who cares?” 

     “Yeah… I guess.” Valon hesitated, then stuffed the ring in his pants pocket. “Well…fuck. I guess that’s that then, eh?” 

     “Just like that?” Alistair asked suspiciously, crossing his arms. 

     Valon shrugged, palms raised in the air. “Yeah, I mean, ‘s like you said: can’t really do much without it, and Nuala and you seem pretty keen to abandon me, so nothin’ else for it.” He shuffled towards the door. 

     “'Abandon'. Ok,” Alistair muttered, but Valon was talking over him. 

     “Just so you know, cuz you didn’t bother askin’: the reason Nuala ditched me is that that bloke you sucked off, the one from Kaiba Corp, apparently he got told to get her a job there. By Kaiba. Bit ironic, eh?” 

     “No, that’s not ironic.” But Alistair felt a sudden unpleasant heaviness in his chest as the information sank in.

     Valon sighed in a long-suffering sort of way.“Fine, it’s funny , whatever. You always liked pointing out how stupid I am.” He yanked the door of Alistair’s room open. “But you keep actin’ bitchy and superior like that, you're gonna end up all by yourself.” He stepped into the hallway.

     “Yeah, well,” Alistair started, taking his place in the doorway as he walked away. “If you were actually as good in bed as you thought you were you’d have at least one thing going for you and then maybe you wouldn't end up all by yourself.” To his surprise, Valon was cracking a smile when he glanced back at him. 

     “Nah, I’m not givin’ you that .” His grin widened. “Your face while I dicked you down is my little reward for lettin’ you get away with pretendin’ you hadn’t been wantin’ that since the day we met.” 

     And then he was gone.

     Later, after he’d disassembled the rest of the broken bed frame and stacked the pieces against the wall and was lying on the mattress and staring at the ceiling, now that much farther away, his bottom lip swollen, the split through the side raw and painful, Alistair couldn’t ignore the leaden weight he felt at having broken free of Valon, and by extension, from his remaining ties to DOMA. 

     He’d done the right thing for himself, he was certain of that. Seto wasn't right that the past was meaningless, but Alistair understood now the dangerous seduction of trying to relive it, to change it, to make it better. In that sense it was a string of footsteps. And he was sick of looking back at them.  

     But still, he couldn’t sleep.

Chapter Text

"Please, take my hand
And lead me out of shadowland"

~ Shadowland, K.D. Lang

Chapter 13: Everything's Under Control    

    Not even a whisper of wind disturbed the loose soil as he trudged across the blighted landscape, and yet Seto was afraid. The uncanny nothingness, the dull, rusty brown of the ground mirrored in a hazy sky weren’t the source of his terror, however. It was knowing that despite all appearances, he wasn’t alone. There was something out there. Behind him, to the side, beneath the ground. And it was going to kill him. He would die, weak, unable to defend himself. Pain and then nothing. And it wouldn’t be quick. He would suffer. To struggle would be futile, and yet he would struggle; he had to: life would accept nothing less even as claws and teeth and tenticled fingers ripped him apart.

     He walked in circles as though it made any difference, twitching, shivering, his heart beating so hard against his ribs that every breath was a gasp.

     His eyes, painfully wide open and staring nevertheless missed the moment they arrived from everywhere and nowhere, and he was surrounded by every snarling, drooling, hungry monster ever dreamed up by every dark, insane nightmare ever had. He wanted to curl up and close his eyes so that at least one sense would be spared the horror of his final fate, but his eyes wouldn’t cooperate, and then they were on him and he was on the ground and screaming even as something slimy wrapped itself around his throat …

     The screech of his alarm brought him gasping out of the nightmare, though for a moment the sound of it didn’t mean anything to him. Then he was reaching out with trembling fingers to turn it off. 

     He’d fallen asleep sprawled across his bed again, so the sheets had been largely spared the sweat that soaked his pajama shirt. He hadn’t had that dream since right before his first rematch against Yugi, so long ago now he’d thought it was gone forever. But his subconscious was cruel, forcing him to go through it again just as he’d lowered his guard. Just when he’d thought his bed was safe again.

     “I’m fine,” he snapped, the words spoken aloud as though Alistair were actually there and looking at him in concern. Just like the avatar in the digital garden. 

     He angrily yanked his shirt over his head and lobbed it towards the laundry hamper in the bathroom. 

     He was too close to victory to feel this low. 

     Tanaka would do what he’d been told, Alistair would see, would call, Seto would say the right things, and by this time next week Alistair would be back and he’d be able to sleep. Everything was under control.   

      Power is everything . 

     He was feeling much better by the time he sat down to breakfast, his dream and the anxiety it brought with it receding as his eyes roved over a tightly packed schedule for the day, including a deadline to get the broad strokes of the Grand Championship Solid Vision overlays out to the overseeing committee. 

     “Good morning,” Trudy said tentatively as she entered the dining room with a tray of food and mug of coffee. “Will Mokuba be joining you this morning, do you know?” 

     “Is he here?” He regretted the heavy sarcasm when Trudy pursed her lips. 

     “I thought you two had made up. He's quite upset about all this, you know. Yes, what he said was foolish, but he’s still young. Expecting him to be perfect at his age is putting pressure on him he doesn’t deserve.”  

     Seto felt himself smirking even as he rested his forehead on his hands. “Thank you for that; I’ll keep that in my back pocket.” 

     Hearing her sigh of exasperation, he’d expected her to return downstairs, but to his surprise, she sat down beside him at the table. 

     “What do you want, Trudy?” he demanded before she had a chance to speak. “You were complaining to me about him being a brat and now you’re telling me he needs a hug. Pick a lane or stop bothering me with this; I’m busy.” He took a swig of coffee and aggressively cut a bite of the eggs she’d put in front of him. 

     “Actually, I wasn’t going to ask about Mokuba,” she replied with dignity. “I wanted to know whether you’ll be home in time for supper Saturday evening.” 

     “Why? Are you planning a dinner party?” 

     “Of sorts. Alistair’s coming to visit. He got into Domino University, so I’m making him a cake.”

     “What, and you thought you’d invite me to your little get together? No thanks.” He made a mental note to return home early on Saturday. 

     “The reason I’m bringing this up,” she continued, ignoring his lack of outward enthusiasm, “is that – and please just listen– I think you might want to consider…” She paused, fidgeting with the pocket on her housedress. 

     “To consider…?” he prompted her, gesturing with his fork. 

     “Really, Seto, I know you’re going to make a comment either way, which is fine because it’s none of my business except that…” She sighed. “I want you to be happy.” 

     “That’s heartwarming. I’m touched.” 

   She quickly motioned for him to remain silent. “All I’m telling you is this: you’ve been miserable since the end of December, Alistair will be here on Saturday evening, and you may well want to be here too. That’s it, that’s all I’m saying.” She stood, smoothed down the hem of her dress, and prepared to return downstairs. “So go on and eat; I know you’re very busy. But do let me know if you like it because I used a new recipe for the toast.”

     After she’d gone, Seto absently ate the rest of his breakfast as he mulled over this new information.

     Alistair being there to visit Trudy was certainly a perfect excuse for them to casually run into each other, but it rather took the wind out of the sails of his well-laid plan. 

     Ah well. A victory was a victory, however inelegant. 

     He’d clearly been careless these last months if Trudy knew why any of this would be interesting to him, but she’d known him for so long working in a position where it was part of her job to pay close attention to his moods and routine, that she was bound to pick up on something so significant. And what, really, could she even do with that knowledge? Tell her husband? 

     He sliced the remaining egg into strips, the pierced yolk oozing out across the porcelain surface of his plate. 

     It’s not like they’d ever seemed to care terribly what Gozaburo had ever done to him, so why should they care what he did with Alistair? 

     Why, then, when he was on the brink of getting what he wanted, of winning, did he still feel so full of dread? Why had he had that nightmare? 

     There was nothing true about dreams. Sure, there were certain nightmares replaying things that had actually happened, and maybe in analyzing dreams it was possible to arrive at some form of insight, but it was all a tad pseudoscience-y for Seto’s taste. 

     Nevertheless, he found himself thinking about it on his drive into the city as his mind, against his will, undertook a sort of pattern recognition, trying to make sense of a recurring nightmare about being eaten by monsters. 

     Somehow, Yugi was the reason it had started.

     It seemed so long ago that he’d faced off against the unassuming kid who would become the center of his life for years afterward. It had been unhealthy, his obsession with Yugi, but it had at least given all of the energy he’d been storing up a channel to stream along. A goal. Something he could use to hoist himself out of the malestrom of his inner world. 

     Because in the time between Gozaburo’s death and those initial few duels with Yugi, he had been (he could at least admit to himself) completely off the rails; his intellect, hitherto tied down, spinning out into the infinity of his mind. And on top of that, all of his anger and anxiety had made him erratic. 

     He’d stay awake for days at a time, show up to meetings strung out on caffeine, and make nonsensical management decisions out of paranoia, spite, or whatever other ugly emotion he was feeling that day, that moment; justifying them as simply being beyond the comprehension of lesser beings than he. Then he’d crash and sleep for sixteen hours before abruptly holing up in the bunker, tapping away at his supercomputer to improve the AI in the company’s mainframe so he could avoid talking to anyone. He’d emerge some time later only to chastise anyone who, in his absence, had dared suggest he was unfit to lead Kaiba Corporation. 

     And those were just the parts he could remember; there were large swathes of the three years before meeting Yugi that simply were not there.  

     During that period, he’d gotten his multi-engine pilot’s license, but he had only murky recollection of the process and none of the feeling of any of it. None of the concentration necessary to learn the controls, the anticipation of graduating from a simulation to a real machine. He couldn’t even remember the first time he’d gotten to fly. 

     Solid Vision was much the same. 

     He must have worked feverishly to further develop the software, and he had the results of that labor to prove it, but the process existed only in his notes, when he’d bothered to take them. Because although he could see, could understand how he’d arrived at the Duel Arena design from those initial, primitive ‘Battle Boxes’, it was as though he was building on the work of someone else. As though the Duel Arenas had appeared one day for him to finesse, not invent. 

     And that was to say nothing of the three years of missing time when it came to his relationship with Mokuba, who, in Seto’s warped perception of the ongoing progress of events at that point in his life, had seemed to jump suddenly from a shy kid of nine in need of his older brother’s protection to a slightly taller, slightly pluckier adolescent begging not to be left alone to fend off the Big Five while Seto fiddled with the Duel Disk prototype in their seaside vacation home.    

     He tried not to think about it. 

     The Kaiba Corporation parking structure loomed into view and he veered off the main road to the service entrance, pausing to scan his badge while the Corvette hummed impatiently beneath him until he pulled into his parking spot and shut it off.  

     Then, when he’d been teetering on the edge of what even he couldn’t deny had been a nervous breakdown, on a whim he’d entered a small game shop in the outskirts of downtown and everything had come slamming into focus. Being so unexpectedly confronted with a Blue Eyes White Dragon card had twisted his insides with a bittersweet euphoria as though he were seeing someone he’d once known and loved after years of not understanding why they’d so suddenly gone missing. He couldn’t explain the feeling upon seeing what really was just plastic and paper and foil, but he’d known he had to rescue it . 

     That initial need to protect had then battled fiercely with the desire to destroy what could only ever be used to give someone else power. And it had won in the moment he’d felt the card rip between his fingers. 

     And then he lost his duel against Yugi, did have a nervous breakdown as a result (no matter what Yugi claimed otherwise about magical Egyptian curses), and somewhere in the midst of all that he’d had that nightmare for the first time. 

     There had been no question then what it had meant: he had been the monsters, destroying himself in a hundred ways.

     But now… 

     He slid out of the car and made his way to the nearby elevator, the sharp tapping of his shoes echoing off the concrete pillars of the car park. 

     He was better now. He was sleeping again. There were no blackouts, no hallucinations, and he was going to get Alistair back. 

     What business did that nightmare have returning? 

     The doors of the elevator slid shut and he was out of time to figure it out. Perhaps later, in the VR pod, he could talk to Alistair about it, but now he needed to focus; he was hosting a tournament, opening a theme park, and announcing an ambitious new project. He had no time for monsters. 

     And yet, his subconscious wouldn’t let it go. 

     Throughout all his morning meetings it had swilled around in the back of his mind even as he should have been focussing on shoring up tournament-related vendor contracts and going over Pegasus’s request to debut his new set of cards just ahead of its release at the Grand Championship after-party in an unofficial match between the tournament’s top two competitors. 

     ‘ You and Yugi-Boy can’t have the spotlight all of the time ,’ Pegasus had written, punctuating the message with a winking emoji in the shape of the heinous Blue Eyes Toon Dragon.  

     Had Seto not been so distracted, his own lack of investment in this news of a new set of cards might have surprised him; indeed, it had been quite a long time since he had last thought seriously about Duel Monsters. It was like chess, in a way. He’d been feral in his determination to master chess for years, though he’d enjoyed winning more than playing the game. He had been well on his way to achieving Grandmaster status when his interest in it had simply evaporated seemingly overnight with the release of the first Duel Monsters cards. Maybe this whole business with Alistair was no different. 

     Did that mean he was still the monsters in his nightmare, his obsession destroying not himself this time, but Alistair?

     That would be a bit too dramatic, surely.

     It was the closest he’d come to clarity since the whole thing had started, but before he could argue with himself about the factual grounding of this most recent hypothesis, Mokuba slunk into his office with the air of a chastised dog, dropping onto the stiff leather couch as though too weary to remain upright any longer.

     “Hey,” Mokuba intoned, downcast eyes trained on the edge of his desk. 

     “What?” Seto prompted when his brother didn’t elaborate. This was a conversation he’d been happy to have so far avoided; he’d never been the best at providing comfort, and least of all when the would-be recipient didn’t deserve it. 

     Mokuba’s frown deepened to a pout out of place on a fifteen-year-old. “Nothing. Just wanted to let you know I signed that dumb contract nullification, so you don’t have to worry about me ruining your precious tournament anymore.” 

     “ What ?” But the question wasn’t a prompt this time: it was an expression of incredulous wrath. Had Tanaka really been stupid enough to think Seto would allow him to play at having the authority to dictate the terms of his tournament? 

     Apparently so.

 “Stay there,” Seto commanded his brother after Mokuba explained what he’d already surmised about Tanaka going behind his back to void Mokuba’s contract as tournament MC. 

     Mokuba was startled out of feeling sorry for himself by how angry Seto was on his behalf, and he watched on in hopeful disbelief as his brother told the PR manager in no uncertain terms that he was never to disrespect the Kaibas by presuming to tell either of them what to do. 

     It was a shock to see the firm set of Seto’s face, eyes flashing as he layered a sharp insult atop the harsh rebuke before ending the call and setting his phone smartly back down. 

     “Thanks,” Mokuba said, wishing his voice didn’t sound so child-like and small. 

     “He knew better,” Seto replied with a small, dismissive gesture. “Don’t talk to him without me again.” 

     “...Kay.”

     Seto had thought the matter resolved and had been prepared to return to sorting through the briefs open on his computer when he saw his brother wince at his words, not realizing they weren’t meant as a criticism. Could Mokuba no longer recognize when he was on his side?

     “I’m not blaming you,” Seto explained, carefully scanning his brother’s face. Despite the warm afternoon sunshine flooding in through the windows, the normally healthy glow of Mokuba’s complexion was waxy and there were dark shadows under his eyes. There was a twitchiness to the fingers not clutching his phone, and he was visibly biting the inside of his cheek. 

     Trudy’s plea that he check up on his brother drifted back to him, and he felt the rare stirrings of shame from not having listened to her. It was obvious looking at Mokuba now how unfair it had been to dismiss him as unworthy of his consideration just because he’d been acting out. He was a kid; such behavior was to be expected. In the abstract, perhaps, utilitarianism placed Mokuba’s concerns well below his own, but that had never mattered back when the only other concerns he’d had had been work and Duel Monsters.

     Now, faced not with adolescent churlishness, but a sort of hollow sadness, Seto was reminded that Mokuba wasn’t just a responsibility. 

     “Are you alright?” he asked softly. He realized only after he’d spoken that he probably ought to have joined Mokuba on the couch first rather than remaining barricaded behind his desk. But it would be awkward to rectify now, so he stayed seated. 

     “Do you actually care?” Mokuba wouldn’t meet his eyes. The words were harsh, but he just sounded tired. “Or are you only asking because you think you’re supposed to?” 

     Seto wasn’t sure, and so, said nothing, though the cynicism of the question stung. 

     Nevertheless, despite any doubts he may have harbored about Seto’s sincerity, Mokuba’s yearning for the comfort he had only distant memories of his brother giving him was stronger, and he broke down and revealed just how much the backlash to his leaked text had hurt him. 

     “I don’t even know why I said it,” Mokuba concluded, nervously flipping his phone between his hands. He fell silent then, still with the feeble hope that maybe this time Seto would respond with compassion rather than scorn. 

     Seto could tell Mokuba wanted some specific response from him just by the way his brother seemed to hold his breath. And it annoyed him in the same way it annoyed him when Alistair did that: setting up a psychological test they knew he’d fail.

     Maddeningly, there was no database from which to select his answer, nor enough data on this exact situation to draw upon even if there were. 

     “You have to be careful not to say anything unless you believe it, especially on the record,” he said, a quick analysis telling him it would be safer to side-step the probable emotional pitfall and instead tackle the problem. 

     Clearly that had been wrong because Mokuba’s exhale was one of disappointment. 

     “Yeah, probably.” He stood up from the couch and shoved his phone in his pocket. “Anyway, thanks for talking to Tanaka.” He turned to go. “I’ll see you at home I guess.” 

     “Stop.” Though he’d been angry with Tanaka for this latest in a string of small power plays, it wasn’t the kind Seto ever felt deeply; at the end of the day, he expected people like Tanaka to challenge his authority, and was always ready to smack them back into place far below him. Even if it meant he had to remain always on guard, it never surprised him.

     But these little tests from Mokuba and Trudy and Alistair and Yugi fueled the kind of exhausting anger that made him feel like he was engaging in trench warfare; forced to remain in a state of constant vigilance and yet completely vulnerable to sudden clouds of poison engineered to burn from the inside out. 

     Except in real life it wasn’t poison – it was the look on his brother’s face of having been let down. 

     “What is it you want from me?” Seto came out from behind his desk at last and glowered at Mokuba, who quickly sat back down. “You wanted to go out with that girl from the mall, I let you. You wanted a Halloween party, I paid for it. You wanted to get drunk with a bunch of low-life ‘influencers’, I picked you up in the middle of the night. You wanted me to apologize for calling you a loser, I did, and I meant it. So explain to me what happened between then and now that’s making you act like that conversation never happened.” 

     Mokuba had hunkered against the back of the couch as he spoke as though through sheer force of will he could disappear into it. A grimace of shame hung heavy on his lips and he continued to avoid looking at him. He took so long to answer that Seto prepared to tell him the demand hadn’t been rhetorical. 

     “It’s nothing.” Mokuba pulled his phone out again and began clicking the screen on and off in rapid succession. “It’s not about you.” Head lowered, he slid to the end of the couch. “I’m gonna go home; I know you’re busy.”

     Seto was tempted to kick the edge of his desk in frustration. “Just spit it out, Mokuba! Whatever it is –.”

     “You wouldn’t understand,” Mokuba interrupted, slamming his phone onto the cushion beside him before shoving both hands through his hair so that it stuck out at even wilder angles. “You don’t care if anyone likes you, but I do , ok? I thought…” He finally looked into Seto’s face with an expression so pitiful that Seto was tempted not to push the matter further. “I thought I should try to be more like you, but I guess I don’t want to. And if you think that makes me a loser… maybe I don’t care.” 

     “I never said you had to be like me.” The rebuke was defensive, evasive: two things he hated to be, but the painful truthfulness of Mokuba’s explanation and how it made sense of his uncharacteristic behavior since last Halloween pierced the part within himself that always feared he hadn’t raised his brother as well as their parents would have. 

     “No, I know.” 

     Seto hated that Mokuba wanted to placate him; he never would have thought to do the same were their roles reversed. 

     “What are you going to do about it?” Seto asked, his own genuine curiosity surprising him. 

     Mokuba shrugged, but some of the tension had eased from his face. “I dunno. Take a break from PictureThis probably. Trudy told me I should get flowers for the women at headquarters. I don’t think she realizes that’s like, hundreds of people.” 

     When Seto smirked in amusement, Mokuba cracked a smile, then laughed, and just like that everything felt normal again. It was more of a relief than Seto would have thought, though it brought with it the ache of guilt at having virtually ignored Mokuba for months, oftentimes on purpose. The thought made the scars on his wrist itch. 

     “By the way,” Mokuba said, slouching more comfortably in his seat. “Trudy’s worried about you. She was telling me how much time you’ve been spending in the bunker. You’re just working on a new game or something, right?”  

     Seto didn’t care for the hawkish suspicion with which Mokuba was looking at him, even if it was somewhat deserved. 

     “I wouldn’t abandon this company right before such a major event,” he replied, pretending to check the time. “Or you,” he added after a pause. 

     “O-kay,” Mokuba replied, drawing out the second syllable. “But since I’m taking a social media break I’ll have nothing but time to make sure you don’t do anything crazy again.” 

     “Yeah, that sounds like you.” 

     It was decidedly nice, having Mokuba so suddenly back at his side, though there was something bittersweet about Mokuba's capacity for forgiveness, for second (third and fourth) chances.   

     Mokuba elected to stick around with him at the office all afternoon, working on his homework while sprawled out on the couch. It was the first time in weeks Seto had eaten a proper lunch, since Mokuba was there to call down for it. 

     Of course Seto knew it wouldn’t really be like this all the time anymore. As soon as Mokuba had gotten over his hurt feelings, he’d no doubt return to the social life he claimed he wanted to give up. 

     He glanced at him over the top of his laptop. Mokuba had propped his e-reader against the arm of the couch and was in the middle of highlighting something on the screen. He was almost tall enough now for his feet to hang off the other end of the couch, and his sneakers seemed comically large; an indication no doubt that before long Mokuba literally wouldn’t have to look up to him anymore.   

     It was an issue he’d identified (and subsequently put off dealing with) when he and Alistair had gone to pick Mokuba up in the middle of the night. What was Mokuba to him if not the little brother that needed his protection? And until he figured it out, was he doomed to repeating this cycle of drifting away from each other until the point at which Mokuba tugged on the frayed rope of their brotherhood to pull them back together again? 

     'I don't want to be like you,' Mokuba had said. He could guess at what his brother meant by that. Not so long ago, that sentiment hadn't phased him and he'd prided himself on the traits that had allowed him to claw his way to the top of Gozaburo's company. It had been easy to scoff at anyone's predictions that he'd end up alone because deep down he hadn't believed them. He'd known he'd always have Mokuba. 

     Now, though, he wasn't so certain that one day his second chances wouldn't run out.

     Seto thought again of the monsters in his dream. 

     He'd changed since they'd first appeared.

     He had.  

     He caught his reflection in the monitor and stared himself down through the screen. 

     I won't let him down again. He realized he was gripping onto his wrist and quickly forced both hands facedown on the desk. Alistair would come back and make sure he kept that promise this time. 

     Everything was under control. 

Chapter Text

"I just wanna party, party
Party, party, party
Party 'til I die"

~ Party 'til I Die, Kim Petras 

Chapter 14: Nothing's Under Control

     Melting snow still sat in dirty heaps at the sides of the road, but for the first time in months, it was warm enough that the streets, while still slick with water, weren’t grimy with slush. Nevertheless, Alistair regretted, as he did every time he’d left his apartment, that he hadn’t worn a scarf, his eyes watering from a cold breeze as he stood at the crosswalk. 

     He was running late. 

     After going out of his way since moving in to avoid the people with whom he shared a floor, in a moment of defiant nonchalance, he’d gone out into the hallway when he heard them chatting that morning.  

     It was only the second time they’d ever encountered each other, so his sudden appearance was made all the more awkward by the fact that Alistair could tell from the sidelong glances between them that they’d heard him fighting with Valon the day before. 

      They’d murmured a polite greeting, eyeing him curiously. Even that natural level of scrutiny had left him feeling jumpy, but when there appeared to be no judgment behind it, he’d quietly returned the greeting, hovered in the hallway another few moments, trying to decide whether to say anything else, then walked past them to the elevator. This had led to several uncomfortable minutes of him standing there waiting for it to return to their floor while his three neighbors stalled their conversation until he’d left. 

     It was just as the elevator doors were closing that he realized he’d forgotten a scarf, but with no time to go back for one, he’d braved the outdoors hunkered within his jacket. Not exactly the triumphant emergence he’d envisioned, but that certainly tracked. 

     Valon had texted him that morning, because of course he was incapable of just walking off into the sunset. He gave no reference to their conversation, just delivering a message from Léan that if he wanted it, he had to come to Club Briseis to pick up the money he’d earned. 

     He’d considered ignoring it since the idea of actually taking money for what he’d done with Tanaka was humiliating, but there was still something magnetic about Briseis; a connection that, now established, he was unwilling to let go of. If nothing else, maybe he could at least build a friendship with Nuala. Especially now that Seto was inexplicably involved. 

     A car honked, and Alistair hastened to cross the road. The breeze had thrown back his hood, and out of petty defiance, he left it down, daring any passerby to give him a backward glance. Soon, though, his ears ached from the cold, and he pulled it back on, gazing with envy at those for whom it was warm enough to go about in light jackets, as though dressing for spring would manifest its early arrival. 

     Now that he’d entered the business district, he could see the distinctive silhouette of Kaiba Corporation headquarters looming over the not unimpressive skyscrapers of downtown, the gold coloring of the cantilevered top floor visible even from this distance. 

     If Valon had his facts straight, Seto had ordered Tanaka to employ Nuala at Kaiba Corporation. But why? He’d assumed (or hoped) that Seto had been keeping an eye on him, and this felt too orchestrated to be a coincidence, but going out of his way to provide a safe haven for someone he didn't even know felt symbolic in a way Alistair hadn’t yet worked out.  

     Tanaka hadn’t known who he was. Didn’t know his real name. And even if, due to some inconceivable circumstance, it had gotten back to Seto that Tanaka had swapped out his regular whore date for a different one, for a man, Seto couldn’t possibly know for sure it had been him unless he had inquired directly somehow. 

     He couldn’t deny that Seto was neurotic and obsessive enough. 

     But that still wouldn’t explain what the point of having Nuala at Kaiba Corporation was. 

     It was then that he’d grown frustrated with this hypothetical version of Seto with whom he was shadow-boxing. If Seto were a normal person, Alistair could just call him and ask. If Seto were a normal person, he wouldn’t even have to ask him anything because a normal person didn’t fashion themselves the chess grandmaster of life. 

     He allowed himself to shoulder some of the blame for enabling this type of (alleged) deranged behavior by not establishing a more direct line of communication before he’d left, especially since, in his typical roundabout way, Seto had asked for one:  

     “ If you want to get in contact at some point, you don’t have to hijack my plane. You don’t even have to duel me. I think we know each other well enough for you to just call me .”  

     Despite insisting that he needed to press pause on whatever it was developing between them, Alistair had intended to call, at first, his mood still swathed in the afterglow from the broken Orichalcos necklace. When he’d left, he’d been hopeful, vibrating with nervous excitement that finally, finally he was free to establish true homeostasis rather than be swung by Dartz and the Orichalcos wildly back and forth between emotional peaks and chasms.    

    He’d presumed the balance of the two to be a boring, hum-drum peace. And within that peace, he’d expected to start making rational, well-reasoned decisions. As soon as he was settled, he’d call Seto, full of fresh insights, new ideas, and a certain path. He’d never have to wonder again if he was just an ‘occasional form of entertainment’ because he’d be able to prove himself a worthy partner who could stand on his own.  

     But then everything had turned out to be so incredibly hard. 

     The midpoint between despair and ecstasy had turned out to be, not peace, but a heavy gray nothingness that had made even getting out of bed a herculean task that could take hours to accomplish, and all he’d been able to force himself to do other than going to and from work had been circling Club Briseis. 

     So, he hadn’t called Seto. At first, because he had nothing to tell him, and then because the thought of admitting failure, knowing that that failure would eventually lead to Seto losing interest, left him so paralyzed with anxiety he’d end up scrolling through PictureThis in the dark, until his eyes burned with tiredness.  

     And why had his necklace broken? It wasn’t the most pressing issue, but the not knowing niggled in the back of his thoughts. And it was infuriating that the only person who might have an answer would never tell him.

     Seto had only ever said that it had broken. 

     After Valon’s ring had cracked, Alistair had assumed it was because he had defeated it. That his will had been stronger than its. But how could that have also been the case with his own necklace when, if anything, he’d been happy in that moment to let it overpower him? 

     It didn’t matter as much as anything else going on – but it bothered him.

     In his distraction, Alistair suddenly realized he’d overshot Briseis by half a block and had to double back, ignoring his buzzing cell phone; it was no doubt Valon wondering where he was.

     “ I’m not getting sucked back into this ,” he told himself firmly once he was standing in front of the back door. “ Not .” He texted Valon that he was there, and while he waited for him to open the door, he stomped his feet against the icy pavement as much to release nervous energy as to warm up. 

     The door tipped open, and it was with some surprise that Alistair saw it wasn’t Valon standing there to let him in, but the bartender, Phemus. 

     “Thanks,” Alistair mumbled, slipping past him and into the club’s backroom. The acrid smell of stale beer hung in the air, as though several bottles had recently spilled, and there was a large, sticky-looking stain on the floor. “Am I just supposed to talk to you?” he asked when Phemus didn’t offer any further instructions. “Or am I meeting with Léan?” 

     “ You will be picking your money up from Léan, yes.” The heavy, condescending emphasis he placed on the pronoun made Alistair realize with intense embarrassment how informal his own language had been. Had he gotten that wrong the first time too? 

     “Ok.” He made to continue into the club, but Phemus stepped between him and the door. 

     “Where did you come from?” the bartender demanded, glaring with inexplicable suspicion at him with his remaining eye. 

     “Why do you care?” Alistair replied hotly, returning the man’s glare with one of his own. 

     “Because you lied. I want to know why.”

     “What does it matter?” Alistair was quickly coming to the conclusion that returning to Briseis had been a mistake, but this man’s evident misgivings about him had piqued his curiosity even as he rankled him to be singled out. 

     “Because you don’t make sense, and I don’t like that.” Phemus crossed his arms tightly so the muscles in his biceps bulged out. “The way you talk, you must have crossed the border when you were a kid. How did you do that? Who helped you? It obviously wasn’t General Fujita.” 

     “Look: I already told you how I ended up here; if you don’t believe me, I don’t care. And you’re right: I don’t know any Generals.” Even as he spoke, he filtered this new information into the limited mental file he had created upon learning about Club Briseis in the first place. He’d intended to drop the entire thing after today, except maybe talking to Nuala about it, but there was something about the fact that Phemus had name-dropped one person in particular that struck him as interesting. Especially since it was a name he’d heard before, though not for years. Fujita had been a close associate of Gozaburo Kaiba. 

     All roads truly did seem to lead back to the Kaibas. 

     Since it seemed as though Phemus was unsure how to combat his stonewalling, Alistair again made to walk to the inner part of the club.    

     “Don’t come back here again,” Phemus said as Alistair’s fingers curled around the doorknob. “One freak is already too many.” 

     “Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” Alistair answered without looking at him. “I’m just here to get my money, then I’m leaving.” He shoved the door open. 

     “Wait. Do you still have family there, in your village?” Phemus’s tone had become suddenly much less antagonistic, as though some perceived opportunity was slipping away. 

     Alistair hesitated, then turned back to him. “No. They’re all dead.” 

     Phemus had uncrossed his arms and appeared to be chewing on the inside of his cheek as he thought something through. “I left my cousin back in the capital,” he said finally. “He’s fourteen now. I want to know how you got here because maybe he can come the same way.” He reached up to fiddle with the hair that had come loose from his ponytail, pushing back the long red strands that had become trapped under the strap of his eyepatch. 

     Alistair’s eyebrows furrowed in immediate sympathy because, of course, his story was of no help, yet he could see how much hope Phemus had placed in asking. 

     “My brother and I made it to a government camp when I was eleven,” he explained honestly, avoiding looking at Phemus and instead staring down at the sleeve of his coat, twisting the fabric into his fingers. “My dad…” He paused, realizing suddenly it would be a bad idea to mention that his father had been in the military. “Our parents were gone, and I’d heard that it would be safe there, but my brother, he… he got…” He twisted the fabric more tightly so that it was pulled taut against his arm. “He died.” 

     “That’s everyone’s story.” 

     Alistair bristled at being hurried along when he hadn’t even wanted to talk about it, but he supposed in a tragic sort of way, Phemus wasn’t wrong. He’d never really stopped to consider that his own experience was hardly unique even though that sameness had been part of Briseis’s appeal. Of course everyone here had lost someone. Everyone. Everything. Or they wouldn’t be here at all. 

     He released the sleeve of his coat and instead shoved both hands in his pockets. “I’m only here in Domino because…” How could he explain what had happened in a way that didn’t make him sound insane? “There was a man. He came to the camp one day –I’m not sure why– and he… he offered to take me back with him to California and I went. We lived there for a few years, then we came here. But it doesn’t matter,” he added quietly when he saw how Phemus’s eye had lit up at this story and the potential he heard in it. “The man that helped me…he’s dead. So, I can’t…This doesn’t help you. I’m sorry.” But as uncomfortable and depressing as the conversation was, Alistair made the split-second decision to press Phemus into it at least cutting both ways. Because something in what Phemus had said before had re-awoken the gnawing, bad feeling Alistair had been trying to ignore since even before his Orichalcos necklace had destroyed the Kaibas’ dining room. 

     “Why can’t your cousin just come here the same way you all did?” He hadn’t really expected Phemus to give him an answer, but the bartender’s response still shocked him. 

     Almost before Alistair had finished asking the question, Phemus’s stony expression cracked as his lips stretched into a wide smirk of seemingly genuine amusement. “Only an Immo or an idiot would ask that question. Which are you?” 

     “A what?” Alistair felt foolish having to ask, the question an unnecessary reveal of his own embarrassing language attrition, and asked of someone unlikely to even explain it, but the unknown word was the scrap of something new. Something that wasn’t buried in rubble or locked within a fading memory.

     “Immo – immigration officer,” a different, wry voice explained from the doorway. “But of course you don’t know that.” Nuala stepped gingerly into the storeroom, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the spilled beer and carefully avoiding the sticky patch on the floor.

     Of course it was. 

     Alistair was wishing yet again that he hadn’t listened to whatever inner masochism kept dragging him here. 

     “Léan needs you,” Nuala told Phemus, indicating some other part of the building with a tilt of her chin. “There’s something with the baby and she should probably go to the hospital, but he won’t go with her, so she doesn’t want to go.” 

     “He probably hopes it dies,” Phemus muttered angrily, already shouldering past her and hurrying down the hallway. 

     “It’s not actually that serious,” Nuala added to Alistair after Phemus was out of earshot, noting how Alistair had started towards the door despite having no means of being helpful. “She’s maybe going into labor or it might just be cramps. But now he’ll insist they go to the hospital just to be sure. I wanted to get rid of them,” she explained. “Didn’t know you were here, but hi, I guess. Why are you here? Are you here to meet Valon? I can get him for you, but he’s really moody right now. I’m sure he told you what a horrible bitch I am.” She tossed a long lock of red hair over her shoulder in a gesture not unlike one Mai Valentine would have made. “But I’m not wasting my one lucky break I’ve ever had in my entire life on him .” She ducked back out of the storeroom, doing an impressive little hop over the beer spill, the thin heels on her shoes clicking loudly on the floor. “You coming?”  

     “I’m not here to meet Valon,” he said, following her into the hallway he knew led to the dressing room he’d seen before, and to the main part of the club. Someone had strung up colored lights, and he realized suddenly once the smell of cardboard and beer was replaced with the trace scent of rosemary and cinnamon incense that they’d probably just celebrated the mid-solstace.  

     “Oh. Then why are you here?” Nuala asked, unaware of the nostalgia he was feeling over something she was unlikely to give a second thought. She paused just outside the door into the dressing room. 

     “I was just supposed to pick up some money from Léan.” 

     “ Ooh . Whoops. Well, you’ll have to come back later because she’s a little busy. Sorry.” 

     “It’s not important,” he shrugged, coming back around to the idea of establishing enough of a relationship with her to build on later. He was hoping she’d bring up the job at Kaiba Corporation herself so he could ask her how that had come about. “Why did you want them gone? Just for a break, or…?” 

     “Oh, umm… ” She began fiddling with her hair again, and he suddenly noticed how light the hair just beginning to grow in at the roots was. “Yeah, I know,” she snapped, not sounding too angry, seeming to notice where he was looking. “I’m not secretly really old; it’s just always been white like that, so I dye it. But not anymore,” she went on with a grin of self-satisfaction, shoving the entire wave of her hair into a thick scrunchie pulled from around her wrist. “I’m actually supposed to be getting ready to meet Taki; he’s on his way over to drop off my passport with my new visa!” The cool nonchalance of her normal affect couldn’t stand up to this genuine excitement, and he could only imagine the shock and disbelief she must have felt when Tanaka had first told her. 

     Alistair still couldn't fathom why Seto had chosen to pull strings to make this happen, if that was in fact what had happened, but whatever calculated chess move this was, it was at least one that helped someone else. 

     “Valon told me about that,” he offered, holding the door to the empty dressing room open for her. “Congratulations. It sounds like a really amazing opportunity.” 

     Sensing that he wasn’t going away, Nuala smiled and sauntered to her place in front of the large mirror. 

     “Thanks!” She pulled several tubes of makeup and a glass jar of brushes towards herself and began drawing on contour lines. “It was really wild. I don’t even think it was Taki’s idea because he seemed super pissed off about it. I guess he got in trouble at work for bringing me to that party or something. I don’t really know. But I do know that I’m getting out of here! ” She sing-songed the last few words as she started buffing out the lines she’d made along her jaw, hairline, and nose. 

     “And do you know what you’ll be doing at Kaiba Corporation?” he asked, trying not to sound too inquisitive. 

     “I’m going to be a ‘secretary.’” She paused in applying her makeup to add air quotes around the word, rolling her eyes. “Which like, ok, I know what that means, but it’ll still definitely be better than this. At least I’ll get to see a different building. I’ve been here for almost three years and the only times I’ve left here were to go get surgery, which does not count because I looked awful and I felt worse.” 

     She seemed to realize she was sharing all this with a relative stranger because she suddenly stopped talking, ostensibly to pay closer attention to applying eye shadow. 

     “Do you know who you’ll be, uh , working for?” he asked, seeing no way to avoid asking her outright. To his surprise, she shot him an amused smile through the mirror. 

     “I’ll tell if you do. Unless you’re just planning to take over with Taki. Then, I guess I could give you some advice. I told Valon you weren’t here to help him do whatever he thought you were going to. Not that I blame you,” she added, now tracing her eyes in dark eyeliner. “He’s an idiot. Like, Taki is too, but he has money . What does Valon have? Sure, he’s cute, but…” 

     Despite how angry he was with Valon, Alistair couldn’t help but feel somewhat defensive on his behalf. 

     Valon was an idiot, and maybe he’d been somewhat manipulative, and he was certainly girl crazy, but he wasn’t malicious . And even if his infatuations with women like Mai or Nuala were misplaced and he sometimes whined as though he were entitled to their affection, Alistair believed he did care about them. 

     “He actually wants to help you get to California, you know,” he told her, trying to sound earnest rather than accusatory. 

     “Maybe.” She shrugged, daintily dabbing at the corners of her mouth to remove any excess lipgloss. She blew herself a kiss in the mirror before getting up again and sweeping everything off the counter and into a grocery store bag she’d had at the ready. She carefully wrapped it around itself a few times before stashing it in a large duffel bag sitting on the chair beside her. “Anyway, not to be rude, but Taki’s going to be here soon, so I have to be ready to go.” She indicated the bag. 

     “Are you staying with him?” Alistair asked in some alarm. After his own experience with the head of PR, he could only imagine how the man would act towards someone trapped in his home. 

     “Oh my god: no.” Nuala giggled. “I’m gonna stay at a hotel while I look for a cute little apartment somewhere. I know he’s pissed off right now, but I’m sure Valon will help me.” She was glancing around the dressing room as she spoke, and darted over to a dresser, rifling through the top drawer and pulling out an old-fashioned, dark blue embroidered sash, presumably a family heirloom. This, she carefully tucked into an inner pocket of the duffle bag. 

     “I’m sure Valon could help with that, but…” Alistair began, his words getting somewhat ahead of any kind of well thought out plan. “But if you want, you can use my apartment and I can help you find one of your own, just so you don’t have to waste any money on a hotel. I can stay with a friend,” he added when he saw the suspicion in her surprise at this unexpected generosity. “I know you don’t really know me, but I just… I don’t want you to feel like you have to get involved with him again if you don’t want to. And Domino…it’s…the people can be… I wish I’d had someone to help me get used to it when I first got here, so I just thought I’d offer. At least,” he went on, digging in his coat pocket for his phone. “Let me give you my number, and you can think about it.” She didn’t decline, though she continued to look at him questioningly just as he realized he didn’t have anywhere to write it down. 

     “Here.” She handed him a receipt from a nearby pizzeria and a black eyeliner pencil she took from one of the other girl’s makeup stations. “I don’t have a phone yet,” she said as he messily jotted the number down. “But maybe I’ll text you once I do.” She shoved the receipt into the shallow pocket of her skirt and Alistair could only hope the message wouldn’t smudge. 

     “Nuala: your lord and savior’s lookin’ for ya.” Valon appeared in the doorway bearing a stormy glare Alistair hadn’t often seen on him. Alistair noticed he was wearing the broken Orichalcos ring, the cracked stone just visible under his crossed arms. “Oh, and you’re here too; must be my lucky day,” he added to Alistair, his lip curling. 

     “Tell him I’ll be right there,” Nuala replied, seemingly talking to whichever of the two of them would follow the instruction. Alistair began to move towards the hallway to sneak back out onto the street, but Valon misinterpreted his intention, and his scowl deepened. 

     “Back to punish yourself some more?” he asked with contempt, and Alistair thought he saw a small ripple of light dance across the surface of the ring. “Or did you decide you liked getting face-fucked by Kaiba’s lacky and you’re back for round two?” 

     “Shut up, Valon,” he snapped absently, his gaze fixed on the stone on Valon’s finger. It must have been a trick of the light; it was broken; it couldn’t possibly have any power left. “You know I just came here to get my money and that’s it. But since Léan’s not here, I’m leaving.” 

     To his consternation and slight trepidation, Valon didn’t step aside. 

     “As it happens, she left it with me since you took so long dragging your ass over here. C’mon.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the main part of the club. As he followed Valon into the hallway, Alistair made eye contact with Nuala, who rolled her eyes in commiseration as though to say: ‘typical.’ Even this briefest moment of superficial comradery gave him a warm feeling of accomplishment. A tiny indication that perhaps coming back here again hadn’t been a waste of time if there was the slightest chance a friendship could result from it. 

     That warm feeling was quickly replaced by shame when he realized, as he and Valon emerged into the main area of the club, its dark reds and velvets so much tackier under daytime fluorescents, that he’d have to see Tanaka again. 

     The PR manager was sitting at the same table from the night Alistair had dealt with him, busily typing into his phone. He’d evidently just come in from the cold. His nose and much of the top of his face were still red with windburn, and his overly pomaded hair was laying greasy and flat against his head. An unfashionable beanie hat lay on the table and his briefcase rested against the chair. Under the harsh lighting, he looked every inch the type of pathetic salaryman who would come to a place like Briseis. 

     Alistair cringed in revulsion as he recalled the fragments he could remember of what he’d done with such a sleazy loser. 

     Tanaka looked up when they entered the room, but with none of the bravado he’d had when Alistair had seen him last. Today, he just looked tired and vexed. 

     “Well?” Tanaka prompted expectantly, as though he’d been waiting for hours rather than the few minutes he evidently had been. 

     Alistair had the sudden urge to pick a fight, just to restore an ounce of dignity to himself. And with the businessman acting out his entitlement in just that one word, it would have been easy to do. But instead, he turned his back to the main part of the room, pretending to be looking at a framed vintage poster advertising cigarettes. No doubt Tanaka would recognize him in this moment, but in the astronomically unlikely event that he and Tanaka and Seto all ended up in a room together at some point in the future, he wanted the PR manager to be unsure whether he and the one he’d (as Valon had so eloquently put it) face-fucked in a back room at Club Briseis were the same person.

     “She’s comin’, alright?” There was no respect in Valon’s tone, and as he stalked around the bar, Alistair, without even being able to see him, could sense Tanaka’s displeasure at not being catered to with an apology and a promise to be swiftly given what he wanted. That would have been Kaiba’s reaction anyway. 

     In his impatience to leave, Alistair didn’t even realize that his thoughts had so easily tilted ‘Seto’ back to ‘Kaiba’ upon this observation. Because were Tanaka and Kaiba really so different in the end? 

     “Here.” 

     Alistair started, but took the envelope Valon handed him and shoved it in his pocket without opening it, before returning to staring at the poster. ‘ Do you inhale? ’ the tagline read over the image of a scantily clad woman lolling in bed holding a cigarette between two impossibly elegant fingers. 

     And in that moment, he realized he was holding his breath, as though by doing so he could avoid breathing in whatever it was making the atmosphere in the room feel suddenly so thick and alien and wrong. His gaze fell to the ring, then darted up to Valon’s face, catching his eyes, in which he could see the light from the cracked stone on his finger impossibly reflected. 

     “Valon,” he said quietly, taking a step back. “Don’t.” 

     He’d never experienced the Orichalcos magic as someone not wielding its power, and so until now Alistair had never understood just how instinctive the repulsion was. But he found himself backing away from the small tendrils of energy slithering out of the ring like eldritch tentacles. 

     And much as he disliked Tanaka, he’d decided in the year since Dartz’s downfall that no matter what they’d done, no one deserved to be on the wrong side of the entity the Orichalcos served. 

     “Shut up, Alistair,” Valon murmured. 

     Tanaka had sensed the Orichalcos now, the hand holding his phone hanging limply at his side as he cast around for what was radiating the danger his soul knew was there even if his eyes hadn’t seen it yet. 

     “Valon, don’t ,” Alistair repeated, not able to force a restraining hand on his ex-teammate’s shoulder as Valon stalked closer to Tanaka, who now couldn’t miss the eerie thin bands of turquoise light snaking eel-like up Valon’s wrist. It wasn’t, Alistair noticed, powerful enough to create a vortex of energy with the strength to blow out the windows as his necklace had, but there was still an evil sentience in the way it flickered. Almost as though it knew this was its last chance. 

     Last chance to save itself? To heal? To escape? Alistair had no idea; it wasn’t speaking to him this time, but he could tell by the way anger had etched its way across Valon’s face that it was speaking to him. Asserting, no doubt, that the man in front of him was the cause of his unhappiness, was the embodiment of how life had always been so unfair. Promising that if Fumito Tanaka simply disappeared, he, Valon, could have everything he’d ever thought he deserved. 

       “Y’know, blokes like you really piss me off,” Valon was saying in response to some garbled exclamation of confusion from Tanaka, who had risen from his chair, his phone dropping with a dull thunk onto the floor. He was backing towards the front entrance, his dress shoes sliding unsteadily along the cheap laminate. There was a twitch working under his left eye, and one arm was groping behind him, searching out the railing at the top of the vestibule stairs. 

     “You’re all these nerdy losers that used to get shoved in lockers by people like me, but who think everyone has to lick your boots just because now you work in a fancy office answerin’ emails all day. Not me.” Valon slammed the hand wearing the Orichalcos ring against his own chest, and the light grew thicker, twining up his arm to fan out along his chest. “Guy like you comes to a place like this because he’s too much of a jerkwad to get his dick sucked without havin’ to pay for it . I don’t respect that guy. I don’t respect you . And she doesn’t either.” He brandished a hand behind him to where Nuala had appeared in the back doorway. She’d started to walk into the room, her duffle bag hanging off one shoulder, but Alistair threw his arm out to stop her. 

     “She fuckin’ hates you, you know. She thinks you’re a slimy little creep. Only, she doesn’t get to say that because she thinks she needs you. Because you have money and I don’t. But you’re gonna change that.” 

     “What is that?” Tanaka asked, his tone somewhere between fear and loathing. He was still reaching backwards for the railing, but seemed unwilling to turn around even for the split-second it would take to realize it was just centimeters out of his grasp. 

     “This?” Valon held up his ring hand. “This is what’s gonna let me take your lunch money, which in this case means you’re gonna go over to that ATM and empty it with your credit card after you buy me and her two first-class tickets to L.A. Then, you're gonna crawl out of here and she'll never hear from you again.” 

     It was a routine Alistair had seen play out many times before. One in which Valon affected what in any other circumstance would have been a ridiculous swaggering caricature of an outlaw, always seeming to enjoy the spectacle of what the Orichalcos allowed him to get away with. It was something Alistair had often ridiculed him for. 

     But though the script was familiar, the good humor with which Valon usually acted it out had been replaced with a flinty coolness that told Alistair this wouldn’t end with just giving Tanaka a good scare Valon would laugh about later. With no contest to determine a winner and no Duel Monsters cards in which to trap a captured soul, Alistair didn’t know exactly what would happen if the magic reached a tipping point, but when Dartz had spoken of the ancient past, he had always used the word ‘devour’.   

     “Go to the storeroom,” Alistair told Nuala quietly, jostling against her until she began edging back through the doorway while Tanaka repeated Valon’s demands back at him uncomprehendingly. 

     Once he was sure she had done what he’d told her to, Alistair closed the door. He’d expected to do it without drawing attention, but the hinges creaked.

     From the moment the metal squealed shrilly against the doorframe and Valon started to turn around to see what had made the noise, several things happened in quick succession. 

     Without wanting to, without even knowing what it would do, Alistair lunged forward and tackled Valon from the side, bowling both of them over and into the nearest table, which broke into two pieces as it smacked into the floor and sent Tanaka’s briefcase skidding off towards a corner of the room. 

     Against every instinct, Alistair pinned Valon’s arm in place and in the split-second before Valon had recovered enough from his surprise–

      Take it from him , the Orichalcos crooned, though not without a pulse of panic underneath the cajoling words. You deserve power like this; we could be great together!--

     He smashed the heel of his boot into the ring as hard as he could from his awkward half-crouch on the ground.

     Valon yelped in pain and tried to yank his hand away, but Alistair pressed his full weight into Valon’s shoulder and brought his shoe down on the ring a second time, then a third, grinding it down the way one might to stamp out an insect. 

     He could feel the resistance of whatever sentience remained within the cracked stone pushing back against him, the green light so bright he could barely keep his eyes open enough to aim properly, and there was a weight to it too, as though he were trying to stop up a geyser of water. Beneath him, Valon was thrashing around, trying to throw him off-balance, his free hand pulling at the thick fabric of Alistair’s winter coat so that he could feel it starting to tighten around his neck. 

     Behind them, Alistair heard a loud crash, but he didn’t waste time looking up to see what had caused it. Using every bit of the small amount of leverage he had, he kicked at the ring a fourth time, catching the edge of the stone from the side. 

     The break, when it came, made no sound; there was no death rattle or shriek or even a last flash of light. It happened in an instant: the light disappeared, and the unnatural pressure with it, so that at once Alistair found himself with his foot pressed hard against the top of Valon’s hand. He quickly moved it, and just managed to see the remants of the stone vanishing into nothingness from within the ring’s now empty bezel before Valon succeeded in knocking him off. 

     He quickly scrambled to his feet, much as he had the other day when they’d fought on the floor of his apartment. He tensed, expecting Valon to also regain his footing and possibly try to tackle him in turn, but when he looked down at his old teammate, he saw that though Valon had pushed himself up onto his arms, his expression was unfocused, he’d lost all color in his face, and he seemed barely able to keep his head up. Then, he slumped down, unconscious, and Alistair let his shoulders relax in relief that it seemed to be over. 

     He crouched down next to Valon and examined the remains of the ring, now twisted sideways on a finger already beginning to show signs of swelling, and Alistair winced when he realized he’d probably broken at least one of Valon’s fingers in his attempts to destroy the stone. 

     His own shoulder throbbed where it had hit the table and it would likely bruise, but he felt otherwise unhurt. 

     So many questions remained even now that the last Orichalcos stone that he knew to still be around was gone, but the more immediate issue was getting out of the club with Nuala. Surely, Phemus wouldn’t be back for at least another hour, but the commotion had undoubtedly roused the other girls living at Briseis, and one of them could have easily contacted someone else to come investigate what had happened. 

     He spared a moment to look down at Valon, passed out on the floor, messy brown hair falling into a face once again smoothed of anger. Valon had brought whatever consequences there would be on himself, and he was lucky it hadn’t been worse than a few broken fingers and losing a cushy job at a disreputable establishment. Nevertheless, it was strange to think this was the last time they’d see each other. Stranger than it had been when he’d told Valon so the other day when he’d only half meant it. 

     He supposed this might not literally be the last time either, if Valon chose to stay in the city, but it was the last time Alistair planned to acknowledge him in any way. There was nothing left tying them together but dark memories and old delusions of righteousness Valon seemed unwilling to let go of. But he knew that wasn’t going to be a part of his own future. In a strange way, by criticizing him for treating Club Briseis as a punishment, Valon was the one he had to thank for that. 

     As he was raising his gaze from Valon passed out on the floor, he saw a dark shape out of the corner of his eye that turned out to be Tanaka sprawled at the bottom of the vestibule stairs. It would have been best to leave that wrinkle to the next person to enter the room, but some morbid sixth sense made him look more closely.  

     One of the PR manager’s feet was resting on the edge of the bottom step while the rest of his body lay spread-eagled on the floor, one arm twisted above his head, the other at his side. His face, which Alistair quickly looked away from, was grotesquely slack, the dark open eyes appearing almost black against skin already pale and waxen. But it was the wet shine of hair grease on the decorative rounded top of the handrail post that brought enough bile up his throat to make Alistair heave even though in a surreal moment of cognitive dissonance, he found himself laughing at how stupid it was that after all of that, Tanaka had fallen down the stairs, whacked his head on the banister, and died. 

     And now here he was, stuck in the middle of a brightly lit brothel with no good reason to be there, standing between Kaiba’s dead PR manager and the unconscious person indirectly responsible.

     Fuck.  

    He couldn’t stop laughing even as his stomach turned, and he threw up a second time. 

Chapter Text

"No safety nets, no regrets, no hesitation"

~Free Fall, Slot Machine

Hold Me for One More Minute     

    The digital clock on the conference room wall flickered as the hour changed from seven to eight, and Seto was impatient. His phone had been vibrating almost nonstop for the last hour and a half as the entire upper management team pinged strings of panicked messages back and forth despite no one having any more information than they’d had ten, thirty, forty-five minutes ago. 

     He’d ignored two phone calls from Tanaka’s top underlings after telling them in no uncertain terms that any press releases had to go through him directly and that they wouldn’t be saying anything until Roland had locked down the immediate members of Tanaka’s family so that they could be encouraged not to post anything about Tanaka’s death publicly that wasn’t company approved. 

     The evening had consisted of an unspooling skein of potential disasters starting from the moment Valarie had told him the dean of medicine at the Kaiba Hospital was on the line. 

     “I assumed you’d want a heads up that one of your employees got dropped off DOA here just now,” he’d said in a breathless, excited tone so mismatched with his message that it took a moment for Seto to make sense of it. “Someone called Tanaka. Our EMTs got called to peel him off the floor of a …ummm… ‘ gentleman’s club’ in the financial district. I have to alert his family, but…”

     He’d gone on to describe what it looked like had happened based on an initial examination, clearly hoping to glean how important this news was and therefore what kind of reward he could expect for it, but Seto had managed to shake him without making any promises. 

     Tanaka was dead ? 

     He shivered, then sat for almost an entire minute at his desk without moving, barely breathing. His screensaver turned on, flashing the company logo across his screens, covering up his inbox, several spreadsheets, and the KOS proposal outline he’d been fine-tuning. 

      Dead ? Tanaka was dead ? 

     He’d always loathed the man, the one remaining holdout from his step-father’s management team, and he’d always wished ill upon him. But to hear that someone he’d known, someone he’d worked with for years, someone he’d seen just a few hours ago and so smugly sent off to complete an errand Tanaka hadn’t wanted to run was now lying dead and already rotting at the morgue was…unsettling. 

      Was this my fault?  

     He’d quickly dismissed the prick at his conscience. 

     Fault was irrelevant, especially when an event like this required closing ranks. Things had just started to pick up again, he was throwing a tournament and opening a theme park, and trying to get plans for a revolutionary operating system off the ground; the last thing the company needed was another scandal. Especially something that had the potential to spiral out into something far more serious than a salacious headline.

     Much as he hated to admit it, it wasn’t something he could contain on his own, though thanks to his conversation with the director of immigration services he knew of at least one other person for whom discretion would be equally vital.   

     That was when the queasy shock of the news had risen to alarm:

     What if Alistair was still at the club?  

     He’d swiftly pulled up the tracker on Alistair’s cell phone, his stomach dropping when he saw the small blip located right in the middle of Club Briseis. 

     “Fuck ,” he swore quietly, his grip around his own phone tightening. But the single syllable wasn’t enough to siphon off any of the anxiety twisting his insides. Still gripping hard onto his phone, he tried to fight back the feeling of suffocation pressing down on his chest. 

     He forced a sharp inhale, then another, until hyperventilation turned to shallow breathing. He still felt vaguely sick, but he couldn’t do anything else about it. 

     Just then, the phone in his hand began to vibrate, the incoming call from a number it didn’t recognize. There were very few people who would have been able to get access to his private number, and only one he could think of that would be calling him right now. 

     He immediately answered it.

     “So now you’re interested in talking.” Fujita’s voice was just as bullish as Seto remembered from the many times he’d heard him talking with his step-father over a decade ago. 

     “Unfortunately, we finally have something to talk about.” Seto got to his feet and strode the length of the wall of windows, glancing out at the lights of the city below. Negotiating with someone Gozaburo had viewed as a personal friend wasn’t something he liked having to stoop to, especially knowing what he did, but at this moment, Fujita was the one in control of what happened to Alistair. 

     It was the same feeling of helplessness he’d tried to hide when Pegasus had Mokuba locked in his dungeon, though at least this time he had one advantage: his opponent didn’t know the leverage he possessed. 

     “Good, so you've already heard. Then I assume you also know why it’s in your best interest to keep this quiet.” 

     “And yours. You and I have never been friends, so I know you’re not calling me to send your condolences. What do you want?” Cold indifference was a gamble, but Seto needed Fujita to get angry enough to reveal a door he could force open. Something that he could use to make sure Alistair walked out of that club without anyone finding out that was the only outcome Seto really cared about. Protecting the company was important, but at the moment it was a distant second. 

     “Your father never was able to teach you respect, was he?” 

     “What do you want ?” Seto repeated. He’d made it back to his desk, half of his attention now on sending a curt message to Roland, quickly typing out the key details, and ordering him to go to the hospital to sequester whatever family member of Tanaka’s showed up. Even under different circumstances, there were procedures for what to do if something happened to someone with as much insider knowledge as Tanaka had. Whatever files he’d had in his office needed to be gone through, his company computer and phone had to be processed. Normally, it would all be done without Seto’s involvement, and he was more than happy to delegate. Let some of the paper pushers sweat for once. Besides, he wanted Fujita to hear him typing. Let him think their conversation was barely worth his time.  

     “I want to know,” Fujita replied, and Seto was grimly pleased to hear that irritation was already creeping into his voice, “why you’ve been meddling in this all of a sudden. When you pulled that little stunt with the tank patents last year, just to get your hands on a few documents of some nobody soldier who’d been dead for years… It didn’t make sense then, but it does now that that man’s son is at my business with your employee in order to smuggle out my property! So, what I want to know, boy, is what the hell you think you’re doing!”

     Seto stared hard at the grain of his desk, putting together the picture Fujita had of what was going on, quickly snapping each detail into place so he could pretend to play along. Admittedly, it had been naive on his part to have thought his interest in those documents wouldn’t be noted and commented on. Because now, what other conclusion could Fujita draw but that Alistair had been sent to Briseis by him as a spy? In thinking that, it revealed how little Fujita thought of his intelligence, given how pointless such a sloppy scheme would have been, but Seto was used to being underestimated by men like him who thought him stupider than he was and themselves more important than they were.  

     It was the door he’d been looking for. 

     He forced an amused laugh. 

     “It figures you would assume everyone wants in on your disgusting little trafficking operation.” Fujita made a noise of dissension, but Seto talked over him, his idea for how to resolve this quickly gathering momentum as he spoke. “You might find it hard to accept, but this had nothing to do with you. Tanaka’s always been a moron, and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one going to your sleazy club, but he was the one I knew I could count on to be indiscreet, and I wanted to stay ahead of it by having eyes there. Especially considering that the border seems to be all anyone’s talking about these days, as I know you’re aware. And sure enough, he brought one of ‘your girls’ to a company event when he should have known better – the first mess of his that had to be taken care of.  

     Frankly, the reason I didn’t go through you to handle it is because I don’t like you. But to answer your original question: I’ll clean this up quietly; I have no interest in my brand getting mixed up in this. I’ll send someone to pick up the employee of mine that had the decency not to die in a whorehouse, and then as far as I’m concerned, you and I are done. In fact, I’ll go myself, just so you can be sure I’m taking this seriously.” 

     He began pacing again, full of too much nervous energy to sit still while Fujita considered his explanation. 

     “What about the girl?” Fujita asked finally, the shift in topic an indication that he at least chose to accept what he’d been told. In the end, he wasn’t surprised Fujita believed him. It was far less inconvenient to believe this version of events than to have to waste time and resources beating back a savvy enemy. 

     “What about her?” Seto snapped, feigning annoyance as he declined a call from Roland, glanced over a frantic series of messages from PR, then alerted Valarie that he would deal with whichever of Tanaka’s middle managers was trying to get through to his office once he was off the phone. “I told you my only interest in her was the optics of my PR manager being seen with her at a company party. But if she’s a KC employee then that problem disappears. That hasn’t changed just because Tanaka fell down some stairs.” He drummed his fingers on the glass of one of the windows, trying to calculate how much time it would take to redirect everything that needed doing through HR and through Tanaka’s own department before he could take one of the company cars and drive to Club Briseis. “Are we through?” 

     “Not until you tell me how you’re going to compensate me for the asset of mine you stole!” 

     “Consider it shrinkage,” Seto replied with a smirk. “Besides, between you and Mills over at Immigration, it seems you’ve got no shortage of opportunities to replace one interchangeable ‘asset’ with another.” 

      “Out of respect for your father, I’m going to give you a little bit of advice. Maybe this time it’ll stick." Fujita had seemingly gotten a hold of his anger, or, Seto thought, he at least wanted to sound as though he had. "You're nobody. Just a wunderkind with one decent idea who wasted it on making toys and who has failed at every turn to leverage a good name to make the right friends. So, in the future, I’d suggest staying out of things that don’t concern you and saying ‘yes, sir’ when talking to people who could take that playhouse you’re standing in away from you. And you wouldn’t want that; it might trigger another nervous breakdown. It’s been, what, four years since the last one? You must be due.” 

     Far from feeling insulted, Seto grinned at his own reflection in the glass. He’d been right to assume that Fujita saw him as just an upstart ‘kid’ playing at having power. Someone who could easily be controlled, and if not controlled, destroyed. It was the same mistake Gozaburo had made, to his ultimate detriment. 

     “Thanks for that. I’ll make sure to get that on a poster and frame it above my desk. But in the meantime, I need to get back to running the playhouse you were talking about, which apparently today involves taking a field trip to your impeccable establishment so your goons don’t bring today’s death toll to two. I really hate it when people break my toys. You can ask my step-father about that the next time you visit his grave.

     But in the meantime, since this seems to have upset you so much, I’ll be sure to send you a gift basket once I collect my assets: the old one and the new one.” 

     It had taken a little bit of back and forth since despite the urgency, Seto couldn’t bring himself to cede any ground to someone he disliked so much, but finally he’d been able to briefly turn his attention to directing the necessary ‘cleanup crew’ members responsible for containing any potential fallout from Tanaka’s unfortunate demise. 

     Then, he’d gotten ahold of Roland, who was still at the Kaiba Hospital to let him know he was to be the pointman and to expect to have to deal with a deluge of questions and information while he, Seto, went to the epicenter of the incident to make sure there were no loose ends at ground zero. 

     “But…sir… are you sure that’s a good idea?” Roland had asked with his familiar blend of anxiety, confusion, and exasperation. 

     “Don’t worry: as soon as I’m finished, you can go back to taking orders.” 

     He’d told Valarie to redirect anything Tanaka-related to Roland until he got back, then took his private elevator down to the parking garage where one of the company cars had already been brought around for him. The luxury vehicle was hardly discreet, but it was still more anonymous than his own car, and it would hardly be the first of its kind to drive up to Club Briseis, he had no doubt. 

     The puddles on the streets had frozen into dangerous obsidian mirrors, so despite Briseis being mere blocks from KC headquarters, the bumper-to-bumper traffic resulting from cautious drivers and slow-moving pedestrians left him gripping hard onto the steering wheel after getting only half a block in ten minutes. The impotence of the people around him slamming on their horns was almost more frustrating than the traffic itself, so that fifteen minutes later when he pulled up to his destination he was in the perfect stormy mood to knock down the police officers blocking the front of the club like so many bowling pins. His heavy, determined stride and deep scowl quickly had them getting out of his way after one officer tentatively directed, then accompanied him to the back entrance to avoid stepping over the scene of their investigation in the vestibule. 

     The lead detective was someone Seto vaguely remembered from the brief interview he’d given after Gozaburo had met his tragic end against the downtown pavement, though a little grayer and thicker around the middle than he’d been seven years ago. 

     If the detective thought there was anything suspicious about Seto’s involvement in two separate Kaiba Corporation employee deaths, Seto assumed he should know to keep it to himself. It really did pay to spend money sometimes. 

     “I’m just here for my employees,” Seto explained tersely. “Then we’ll be out of your way. I wouldn’t want to complicate your investigation; Tanaka deserves nothing less than your best, I’m sure. By the way, have someone bring me his briefcase and his phone; they’re property of Kaiba Corporation and they weren’t brought with him to the hospital.” 

     Daringly, the detective gave a wry smile. “Yes, I’m sure it would be inconvenient if anyone else had control of the information someone like him had access to. Don’t want that lying around. I’ll have someone bring you the phone, but we didn’t find a briefcase. If it’s in the car that looks like the one you drove up in, we’ll be done processing it soon and I’ll make sure someone sends it over, Mr. Kaiba.” He said the title with the barest hint of irony, and Seto stared coldly back at him. 

     “And my employees?” he prompted, crossing his arms to avoid shivering as the frigid night air blew through the thin, impractical fabric of a coat meant more for decoration than real protection from the elements. 

     “Which ones belong to you?” Again with the wry, knowing tone. Yeah, Seto was definitely going to make sure this guy wouldn’t be around the next time. 

     “Can we discuss this inside?” Seto snapped as another freezing gust of wind blew his bangs back from his face. 

     “Oh, of course.” The detective cheerfully pulled open the door and Seto quickly stepped into what turned out to be a dimly lit storage room that reeked of beer and wet cardboard. “Sorry about that.” he closed the door again once they were both inside. “You were telling me which of them are yours?” 

     But Seto had lost whatever little patience he'd had when he’d been forced to stand out in the cold. Fujita was someone who had earned the right to play games even if Seto didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to tolerate getting jerked around by some nobody detective who was enjoying this just a little bit too much. 

     “ Enough .” Seto gestured at the door leading from the storeroom deeper into the club. “Take me to wherever you’re keeping everyone in this building, get me Tanaka’s phone, have someone get his briefcase out of his car, and do it now . I want to be out of this dump in ten minutes. I’m incredibly busy and I’m not getting held up by you . Got it?” 

     With an impudent little shrug that made Seto want to hit him over the head with the nearest bottle of cheap wine, the detective pressed a button on the intercom clipped to his jacket, instructing whoever was on the other end to gather Tanaka’s personal effects. “And the names of your employees?” 

     Seto recited the girl’s name from the file he’d been sent and then, glancing around the room as though he barely cared, he added: “And Alistair. Ravensdale.”. 

     “Ravensdale. Unusual surname for someone from across the border, isn’t it?” 

     “Who cares?” Seto snapped, edging impatiently towards the inner door. 

     “Wasn’t that your father’s housekeeper’s name?” 

     Seto stared the man down with his most scalding glare. “Are you done with your trip down memory lane? I think I may have mentioned how busy I am.” 

     “Just asking questions, sir. Occupational hazard.” The detective smiled placidly. And all at once, Seto wondered if Fujita’s talk of spies had been projection. Clearly, he needed to be on guard here. 

     Everything about the interior of the club told Seto plainly that none of the money flowing through it stayed there very long. Cheap plaster walls, cheap paint, cheap furniture. He would have to be drunk to even consider sitting on one of the scratchy, fake velvet couches lining the walls of the lounge area. He couldn’t imagine why someone with even Tanaka’s relatively low standards would have wasted his money somewhere like this. 

     Over a dozen young women sat crowded together on one side of the room. Most of them appeared to be wearing pajamas, their clothing at odds with the dark makeup many of them had on. They were whispering together, the tempo of which increased once Seto crossed into the room, and he could sense them following him with their eyes after his own had swept carelessly over them. He couldn’t tell at first glance which one Tanaka had brought to the ball, but that could be sorted out secondarily. 

     Most of the other people there were Domino City police officers, two of whom were talking quietly with the only other man in the room, someone tall and bulky wearing an eyepatch. Definitely not Alistair. 

     “Well ?” Seto demanded without glancing in the detective’s direction. “Go get him.” 

     “Ah, he must still be giving a statement to one of my colleagues. He was the one that saw Mr. Tanaka’s alleged accident.” 

     “ Alleged.” Seto sneered, pulling his vibrating phone out of his coat pocket. “Whatever makes you feel useful. But that interview is finished. Contact my legal team if you think you need anything else. Go get him,” he repeated before putting the phone to his ear. “What is it, Roland?”

     While Roland reeled off a string of information Seto didn’t care about and passed on questions from Tanaka’s team he wasn’t interested in, he focussed on looking anywhere but at the door the detective had gone through. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have come here in person, but since he was there, and now that that detective was hinting at suspicions Seto didn’t like, he knew it was imperative to appear as distracted and impatient as possible. Even when – his chest tightened – Alistair emerged into the main lounge. 

     “Thanks, Roland: I’ll look into it.” He barely noticed that he’d cut his second-in-command off with a comment that didn’t fit what he’d been saying, and then hung up before Roland could react. 

     For a split-second, the Alistair standing in the room with him seemed off in comparison to the version he’d become accustomed to. This Alistair was slightly thinner, his hair a little longer, his skin paler, and with the dark line of a healing cut running jagged up his bottom lip. But this Alistair was real . More real even than the video image of him Seto had spoken to briefly several weeks ago. He couldn’t touch that image, those pixels, anymore than he could have touched the digital version of his own creation. And maddeningly – he glanced around at the other people filling the room – he couldn’t touch this version either. Yet. 

     If Alistair was surprised to see him, he did an extraordinarily good job of hiding it. He didn’t even look Seto in the face, his gray eyes fixed on nothing. 

     “I hope you knew better than to talk to them without consulting someone in Legal,” Seto said, not because it meant anything, but because something had to be said. “I’ll have you meet with someone once we get to headquarters.” He turned on his heel to go back through the storeroom, expecting to hear the sound of Alistair following him. Once they were out of this club, in the car, then he could say something different. More meaningful. Maybe. 

     “I…can’t leave. Yet.” 

     Seto turned back in complete surprise. Alistair’s tone was so odd . It was heavy with regret and…sadness. He couldn’t make sense of it. Surely, Alistair wasn’t trying to tell him that he intended to go down with this cursed ship. 

     Seto’s confusion gave way to anger. That couldn’t be allowed; they were leaving together. He’d let Alistair go the last time, and that had been a mistake he wasn’t going to be making twice. 

     “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said with derision. “We’re leaving. Now . As soon as someone brings me–.” But Alistair, incredibly, was shaking his head before finally raising his eyes to meet Seto’s, and Seto could see that same inexplicable sadness in them. 

     “I’m sorry, Mr. Kaiba. But I really need to stay here until Valon wakes up. I know they,” he jerked his head towards the nearest police officer, “want to pin this on him. But it really was an accident.” 

     Valon? 

     Why did that name sound familiar, and why was this someone Alistair cared enough about to want to (in a useless if self-righteous way) protect? 

     Seto stared at Alistair while he thought. He was furious with Alistair for whatever this was about, for not immediately following him out the door, furious at seemingly placing second to someone he didn’t even know when for months Alistair had been all he’d thought about. Chasing the stupid blip of his cell phone all around town, imagining how much better things would be, how much better he’d sleep, once Alistair was sharing his bed again. The hours he’d spent in the bunker staring with effete longing at the image of a memory that nodded and smiled no matter what he said to it. How he’d wished that stupid avatar could talk back, argue, console. Wished that he could touch it, be touched by it.   

     Valon. 

     Who the fuck was Valon? 

     He had to be the college student, Darren, somehow. Unless that had been a completely pointless red herring. 

     But he couldn’t stand there thinking it over in a roomful of people, some of whom he didn’t want noticing how thrown he was by this upset in what should have been a solid, simple plan. Couldn’t come across as though he didn’t already understand everything that had happened here. And he wasn’t going to give anyone an inch once he’d made a decision, not even Alistair.  

     “I appreciate your concern, but it isn’t necessary. ‘Until he wakes up’, you said. What, is he unconscious?” He retrieved his phone again once Alistair nodded. Stepping to the side, and indicating that Alistair should join him, Seto began slowly typing in the number for the dean of medicine at the Kaiba Hospital. “What’s going on?” he muttered without looking up from the dial screen. “Talk fast or else you’re going to end up unconscious.” Even though he was angry, he couldn’t ignore the fact that forcing Alistair to close the distance between them, that the light graze of Alistair’s coat against his arm, even through his jacket, caused his shoulders to relax a fraction.  

     “He’s an old colleague of mine from DOMA,” Alistair replied quietly, and even though Seto had asked him for a short answer, the response still felt cagey. “I just owe him, ok? Don’t worry: I don’t actually want to stick around. Anymore.” 

     “Decent play. Bad delivery.” Seto pressed ‘call’ while still holding Alistair’s gaze, as though in looking away he’d be giving Alistair time to hide something. Maybe claiming he was going to stay had been a bluff, but obviously this ‘Valon’ meant something if Alistair had gone to the trouble of bluffing in the first place. 

     An old colleague. 

     Somehow, Seto doubted that was what this was about. In the entire time they’d known each other, Seto couldn’t remember Alistair having ever mentioned someone named Valon. As he was thinking it over, he requested a second ambulance be sent to Briseis, and while he waited for confirmation, someone reluctantly gave him Tanaka’s phone, which he’d stuffed into his pocket. “And the briefcase?” he added. 

      “We didn’t find a briefcase, sir” the officer replied in a tone much more appropriately deferent than the detective’s had been. 

     “Fine.” Seto waved the man away before stowing his phone again.

     “I have it,” Alistair told him unexpectedly once the officer was out of earshot. “I can explain later.” He held a hand in front of his face as he spoke, and Seto looked at him questioningly. “You don’t want me to breathe on you,” Alistair explained, looking faintly embarrassed. “I sort of threw up. Thanks for calling that ambulance by the way. I’m sure he’ll be fine, but I didn’t want him to get stuck here.” 

     “You’ll be explaining that later too,” Seto told him. “Now, let’s get out of here. Where is she ? She’s coming with us too.” He looked back over at the group of girls. Several of them had fallen asleep in each other’s laps, but a few were still following the proceedings nervously. He expected Alistair to signal one of them over, but instead he said: 

     “She’s gone. After I realized Tanaka was… I made sure she got out. She has his briefcase. We couldn’t open it, but it has her passport in it, so I told her to just take the whole thing. I sent her to my apartment.” 

     “Wonderful,” Seto sighed, carding a hand through his hair. “Anything else I should know about?” 

     For some reason, Alistair glanced back at the one-eyed man standing near the bar, no longer occupied by talking to an officer. Seto saw how the man looked back and forth between them before shooting Alistair a disgusted glare and turning his back on them. 

     “No,” Alistair said softly.

     “Good. Then let’s go.” Seto indicated that they were leaving to the lead detective, who even from across the room had been observing them with an uncomfortable degree of scrutiny. But Seto wasn’t in the mood to play chicken with someone who he was increasingly sure was a spy for Fujita, so he gestured for Alistair to start walking towards the back exit before following after him. It was only afterwards that he second-guessed even that simple exchange. If Alistair had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have let them in front of him. Was that the kind of thing a detective would notice? 

     Nothing he could do about it now. 

     The brief walk through the club, out through the storage room, and to the car he’d left running in the alley was just long enough for Seto to start thinking ahead to what would happen next. There were strings of unrelated questions and problems and courses of action each tugging in a different direction. The more practical ones: retrieving Tanaka’s briefcase and figuring out where to safely stash the girl were certainly the most pressing. Equally important were the next steps the company needed to take in the wake of the death of one of its top managers. 

     But those just felt like cruel obstacles when what he wanted, what he’d wanted for months, was to drive Alistair back to the house, fuck him into the mattress, and then sleep for twelve hours. 

     However, the crease of Alistair’s forehead as he mechanically put on his seatbelt once they’d finally made it to the car, suggested that even without the girl, without the mess with Tanaka, he still wouldn’t have gotten what he wanted. 

     It was frustrating that this reunion should be complicated by extraneous factors, but it was infuriating that Alistair himself was part of the problem. It reminded him of when he and Alistair had had to pick Mokuba up in the middle of the night. The same simultaneous inconveniences of Alistair feeling emotions that interfered with the plans Seto had for them and of life setting him a side quest he didn’t want to complete. 

     Fleetingly, he wished he could ignore all of it by escaping into the virtual world in the bunker. He stared briefly at his own hand resting against the steering wheel. His mind automatically went into design mode. How he would render the models for this situation, what would have to be done to prevent stitching errors, how to tweak the LOD blending algorithm to avoid distortions in the graphics in a scene being rendered at such close visual range. But all the hassle would be worth it if it gave him the chance to threat model. But no. Real life only got to be played once, and here he was wasting time thinking of what he would do if it were otherwise. 

     His gaze strayed back to Alistair, now staring blankly out the window in the direction of Club Briseis, his cheek resting against a loosely closed fist. 

     Seto’s instinct was to press Alistair for information. What exactly had led to Tanaka falling down the stairs? Who was Valon to him really? Why hadn’t Alistair called him the moment everything had gone wrong? Why hadn’t he called him at all? Not once. Not a word. What had he been doing for the past two and a half months other than ignoring him? If he were in the bunker, he’d be free to ask Alistair these things. 

     But he’d learned enough in the last year or so to know that none of those were the questions he was supposed to ask in this moment, even if they were more practical. However, he realized suddenly, his eyes back on his own hand, even if it was unfortunate that he couldn’t practice how exactly to ask it, the right question in this case would finally give him the excuse to get closer to what he’d wanted to do since the day Alistair had left. 

     The drink holder wedged between their seats in the already cramped front seat of the car made it somewhat awkward, but with determination, Seto reached over and gingerly placed his hand on Alistair’s shoulder, his fingers sinking into the cheap polyester of his coat. 

     “Are you alright?” 

     Alistair started, as though he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone in the car, or perhaps because the gesture was wholly unexpected (Seto couldn’t be sure). His expression of a slight frown, a light furrowing of his eyebrows, was uncannily like one of the five his digital doppelgänger could make, but unlike that avatar, this Alistair could answer the questions Seto posed him. 

     “Not really,” he answered softly, reaching up so he could grasp onto Seto’s hand, still resting against his shoulder, and Seto had to fight hard not to let the thrill of that show after craving that kind of touch for months. “And I know that’s stupid because it’s not like Tanaka is worth crying over, but… it’s the first time I’ve seen someone die since Dartz and DOMA and it… I don’t know. I didn’t– I didn’t think that would happen. And I tried to stop it; I really did. But Tanaka’s dead and Valon’s…” He sighed deeply. “I just should never have come here. So go ahead and say ‘I told you so.’” 

     “I can’t say ‘I told you so’ since you didn’t tell me where you were going.” Seto wished the comment didn’t sound so petulant, but Alistiar laughed lightly, something of the waxen shock ebbing from his features. He briefly squeezed Seto’s hand a little tighter, and Seto had to fight the impulse to lean over and kiss him despite what Alistair had told him and despite that it would be a wildly inappropriate gesture in this moment.     

     “I’m glad to know that’s all that’s stopping you.” Alistair’s expression darkened, though he didn’t let go of Seto’s hand. “I know this creates a lot of problems for you, so I’ll get out of your way. Besides, I need to check on Nuala.” 

     Seto knew who he meant, of course, even though that wasn’t the name on the paperwork he’d been given. A nickname. Who cared? 

     “No, you don’t.” 

     Alistair looked startled, and let his hand slide into his lap, which Seto took as a sign to place his own hand back on the steering wheel before finally pulling out of the alleyway and onto the road.

     “What? Yes, I do.” 

     In a way, Seto welcomed the incredulity in Alistair’s tone because it meant for the time being they could operate within an emotional range he was better equipped to handle even if this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having.  

     “I assumed you’d know by now this is a complicated situation,” Seto began, texting Roland that he was on his way while pausing at a red light. “But in case you didn’t, then you should know the guy who owns that place probably has someone tracking me because he’s convinced you were there as my spy.” 

     Alistair stared at him, uncomprehending, and Seto realized he was going to have to show at least part of his hand if he wanted to get the chance to ask a few questions of his own. 

     “I told him as much because the truth is none of his or anyone else’s business. Besides, it was what he’d decided happened and I don’t care if that’s what he thinks except that I’m sure he’s going to have people tailing me and probably Roland and who knows who else for a while. I’m sure that detective you were talking to was one of his people.”  

     “That Fujita general guy, you mean?” 

      Seto glanced sideways at him, somewhat surprised that if Alistair knew that much he wasn’t angrier. The Alistair of a year ago would have been. “Yeah. He’ll get bored eventually, but he wasn’t happy to lose that girl, so I wouldn’t lead him straight to her if you don’t want all of this to have been a colossal waste of time.” 

     “Fine,” Alistair said after seeming to mull it over. “But if you want Tanaka’s briefcase back you’d better send someone to check on her tonight because I doubt she’ll stay at my apartment much longer than that. And have them bring her a cell phone so that I can at least call her.” 

     “Sure. Whatever.” 

     “Don’t you need me to give you the address?” But the question sounded insincere, and Seto looked over at him again in time to catch the meaningful quirk of his eyebrow. 

     “No,” Seto admitted finally. 

     “So you were following me.” Alistair didn’t seem particularly perturbed by this, and the matter-of-factness with which he said it made Seto flush. His only consolation was that it was too dark for Alistair to see it. 

     “Maybe I was.” 

     “And is there any chance you’ll ever tell me why you got Nuala that visa? Charity’s a little out of character for you.” 

     “I might. If you tell me who this guy Valon really is and why I’m paying for him to take a nap at my hospital.” 

     While Alistair considered the quid pro quo offer, Seto let the robotic voice of the car’s text-to-speech voice assistant rattle off Roland’s latest message about how Tanaka’s sister had arrived at the hospital in tears and that there was some question of his ex-wife also showing up (things Seto wanted to keep an immense amount of distance from); it was as good an excuse as any to deal with a more personal errand.

     Just as they were pulling into the hospital car park, Seto called Valarie to have her arrange for her assistant to drive to Alistair’s apartment with a spare phone for the girl staying there. “Have Saito go with her to deliver the phone and retrieve Tanaka's briefcase, but tell him to stay with her until I say otherwise. Make him aware that it's unlikely, but possible, that someone might come looking for her, so he should be on guard. He can report to me in the morning for further instructions.” 

     “Thank you,” Alistair said once Seto was off the phone. 

     “Yeah, well, the last thing I need is to lose track of that briefcase.” It was doubtful there was anything particularly important in it, but Alistair couldn’t know that. “Anyway, you’re coming with me to get checked out since you’re already here. It shouldn’t take long, but there are a few things I have to take care of, so just stay put until I come and get you. Then, we can finally be done with this for today.” He pulled up to an e-reader and quickly scanned the ID on his phone to be let into the hospital’s private parking area, the exit from which, he knew, would lead to the administrative floor where he would be able to flag someone down who could stick Alistair somewhere out of the way while he waited for this Valon guy to wake up. 

     He half expected Alistair to put up a fight at being ordered around, but not for the first time, Seto sensed that he was grateful to have someone else tell him what to do. 

     As soon as they were parked, Seto slid out of the car and started walking towards the exit, and was pleased to hear Alistair following behind him. But just as he was going to flash his ID again to get them in the door, Alistair stopped him with a soft ‘wait’ , and Seto turned to look at him in exasperation, expecting him to say something dramatic and asinine, like how he couldn’t possibly let himself be looked after because of… whatever ridiculous idea he had decided to fill the blank in with. 

     Instead, after a moment of hesitation, Alistair was suddenly flush against him, arms winding around his neck, his face tilted down so that he was breathing into the shoulder of his jacket. And for a second, Seto froze up at the unexpected intimacy of it. 

     “We’re not on camera – I checked,” Alistair mumbled against the collar of his coat. 

     Finally, with much more trepidation than Alistair had displayed, Seto let his hands rest on Alistair’s lower back. And then he couldn’t stop himself from tightening his hold, one arm twisting around his waist, the other sliding up the plane of his back so he could tangle his hand into the silky curtain of his hair and loosely grip a handful of it, half his palm resting against the nape of Alistair’s neck. He even let his eyes slide closed so that he didn’t have to look at the dingy cement column of the car park, could ignore the blinking light on the keypad mounted beside the door. For a minute, they could just exist together.    

     Seto had never held someone like this, and god it made him want Alistair so badly.

     They stood holding onto each other until eventually, reluctantly, Alistair pulled away, Seto’s hand sliding back out of his hair. 

     “Ok,” he said softly, taking a breath.  

     “Good. Let’s go.” Seto scanned his ID, and the door slid open, revealing the entrance to a long, deserted corridor, lit up with the horrible fluorescents peculiar to hospitals, no matter how lavish they billed themselves to be. “This shouldn’t take too long.” He had no idea if that was really true, but in a rare moment of superstition, he hoped to speak it into existence. 

     “Do you think someone could bring me a toothbrush?” Alistair asked ruefully, following Seto down the hallway. “I think I need that more than I need a check up.”   

     “I’m sure that can be arranged.”  

     Then, Seto had called the dean of medicine, ordered for Alistair to be given a private room and to be looked over by one of the ER doctors, and then, once Alistair was out of earshot, he’d asked for an update, not about Tanaka’s distraught sister, but about the other person that had been brought to the hospital from Briseis. 

     The dean of medicine had called someone to check, and told him that Valon was still unconscious, but could, theoretically, wake up anytime.     

     “Have someone come get me when he does,” Seto had said. “I need to talk to him.” 

     That had been twenty minutes ago, and he’d been stuck sitting in an empty conference room killing time ever since.  

     Seto was just starting to think it might have been optimistic to assume he'd be getting any explanations tonight just because it would be more convenient for him when there was a knock on the door, and a nurse poked her head in to tell him that Valon had finally woken up. 

     “He’s still pretty groggy,” she said when he started to get up. “So, I’m not sure he’s up to answering any questions yet…” But her words trailed off when it became clear he was uninterested in what Valon might or might not be ‘up to.’ 

     “As long as he’s conscious, I can get what I need, so take me there.”

Chapter Text

"If the whole world is against me, would you be
Dancing with the devil?
If I am not what you see, would you be
Here, far away from home?"   

~Dancing with the Devil, ISBANKY

Reconnaissance

     It figured that when Seto gave the order for his ‘employee’ to be set up in a room at the hospital that bore his name it would be nothing less than a private suite, but Alistair still thought it was ridiculous. 

     The stylishly minimalist design of the place was claustrophobia-inducing; its stark white walls and furniture presenting a clinical horizon only broken up by the signature Kaiba Corporation blue of the high gloss flooring. The only thing that differentiated it from a spacious hotel room was the hospital bed centered against a dividing wall between the bedroom and a living room and kitchenette. A wide bay window overlooked what some might consider an attractive cityscape from fifteen stories up. 

     After being checked over by a tired-looking ER doctor who had seemed relieved to have been given the temporary reprieve of looking after someone who wasn’t actively bleeding, broken, or dying, Alistair had been left to wait around for Seto to come back.

     A nurse had brought him some kind of cream for the cut on his lip that had tasted awful when he’d absent-mindedly licked his lips. She’d just left again after bringing him a toothbrush and toothpaste from somewhere. But after finally brushing his teeth, Alistair had nothing else to do or look at, and had been forced to finally face his own thoughts. 

     He couldn’t understand why even now he was uncomfortably aware of the beating of his heart, why he felt too nauseated to touch the tray of food that had been left on the living room coffee table, the dishes still covered by their silver lids. All things considered, he should feel relieved, if not happy. The Orichalcos ring was truly broken, he’d helped Nuala escape the extension of what had been a terrible life, his own romanticised notions of masochistic punishment were now more embarrassing than enticing, and even Valon would likely walk away from this with another chance to properly start over. 

     But… 

     Alistair got up from the edge of the hospital bed where he’d been perching for the past ten minutes and began pacing between the dividing wall and the living room couch. 

     Tanaka was dead– that was certainly part of it. 

     He knew it wasn’t his fault; it had been an accident resulting from a confrontation he hadn’t even been a part of, but that hadn’t made it any less disturbing to see Tanaka’s corpse sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. Just the thought of the pomade stain on the balustrade made Alistair’s already upset stomach turn, and it took a great deal of willpower and purposeful, deep breaths to keep himself from retching again. 

     Had it really been so long since he’d been confronted with the grotesque reality of death? The Orichalcos had done a lot to shield them all from that, he thought grimly, reflecting on all the duels he’d won, and all the people whose bodies had surely died before their souls had been released back to them. Those were people for whose deaths he was responsible, but indirectly, off-screen, never in front of him. Even now, he couldn’t feel guilty about it; something kept those memories remote and fuzzy, bubble-wrapped and sealed in boxes stored someplace deep he dared not go.  

     While on the run with Mikey, death had been all around them, the smell of it mixing with the acrid smoke and dust that clung to everything. But that was just it: it had been abstract: a stetch, an absence, a fear. 

     At no point had there been time to look too closely, to have the face of death imprint on him with the vividness to haunt his dreams. Not like today.  

     He glanced at the clock on his phone, then at the closed door, as though he could will Seto to walk through it. 

     He flicked through PictureThis, but without stopping long enough on anything to take it in. Neither scrolling nor pacing did nothing to ease his jittery nerves, so he tossed the phone on the bed before dropping to the floor and doing ten successive push-ups just to give his pent-up energy somewhere to go. 

     After several feverish sets of push-ups, he rolled onto his back and stared at the paneled ceiling, panting lightly. The exertion had accomplished what he’d wanted, and even though he was unhappy to still be stuck alone killing time, he felt less anxious than before. 

     He was just considering another exercise to serve as a distraction when his phone started buzzing. It didn’t really make sense for Seto to be calling him, but it wasn’t until he looked at the unknown number on the screen that he realized who it must be. 

     “Alistair?” Nuala’s voice was high and frantic, though oddly muffled, as though she were holding the phone so tightly she’d partially covered the microphone. 

     “Yeah, it’s me,” he replied, unconsciously beginning a loop from the bedroom, around the living room and back. “Sorry I haven’t made it there yet, but that’s because –.” 

     “Tell him I just want my passport,” she interrupted him in that same oddly hushed tone. “Tell him I don’t know anything, I don’t want this stupid briefcase; I just want my passport, so please: tell him not to shoot me!” She started crying. 

     “Shoot you?” Alistair asked, bewildered. If she was calling him it meant that Saito was the one at his apartment, not anyone from Club Briseis. “No one’s going to shoot you; he’s just there to–.” 

     “Some guy with a gun broke down the door,” she cut him off again, speaking quickly through her tears. “And he tried to take the briefcase, so I hit him with it and he dropped his phone and - and I took it, but then he tried to grab me and…I don’t know, something happened and he let go, but he’s still out there. You have to tell him not to hurt me! Please . I just want to go home.” She broke down completely so that all he could hear through the phone was the staticky sound of her uneven breathing.  

     “Nuala,” he said firmly. “Calm down. Listen: I sent him there to help you because I can’t go to that apartment right now. Everyone who was at Briseis when the police showed up is being watched, so you need to stay there. Saito isn’t going to shoot you; he’s there to keep you safe just in case one of Fujita’s people saw where you went. But they probably didn’t,” he added quickly. 

     “Are you sure?” she asked after a pause. She was still sniffling, but he could hear that something of what he’d said had registered. “Why’d he break in then?” 

     “Did he knock first?” 

     “Well…yes. But I didn’t answer. Why would I? I thought it was someone looking for you !” 

     “It was just a misunderstanding; I promise he isn’t there to hurt you. Where are you actually?” he asked, suddenly nervous that she’d slipped out of the building and was wandering around somewhere. 

     “In the bathroom,” she replied, somewhat sheepishly. “I’m sitting on the briefcase because your floor is gross.” 

    Alistair laughed a little at that, and discovered that laughing loosened the coil of anxiety in his abdomen, allowing him to take the first really deep breath he’d had in hours. “Sorry about that. But really, Nuala, you’re ok: you don’t have to hide in the bathroom.” He laughed again. 

     “It’s not funny !” she snapped, huffing loudly. “Who are you that you have friends like that?” 

     “ Uh… ” Alistair began uncertainly. “It's a long story. But that guy does security stuff for Kaiba Corporation. For their CEO mostly.” He’d thought this information would further calm her down, but instead it seemed to re-trigger her nerves. 

     “You mean like, Kaiba Kaiba? Ohmygodohmygodohmy god !” 

     “No, no: that’s a good thing,” he reassured her. 

     “Why would that be a good thing?” In the background he could hear a hollow scraping sound, then a bump, and assumed she’d kicked the briefcase against the door as a sort of symbolic barricade. “Valon told me about him. Isn’t he crazy? Valon said he pushed his dad out a window and then killed a bunch of people to get some Duel Monsters cards or something.” 

     It was so stunning to hear Seto described that way – the way he himself had described him just a year ago– that Alistair stopped pacing. Valon must have quoted him to her nearly verbatim. If Valon had told her that much, he must surely have talked about how much Alistair had hated Seto and his company, and therefore why he was so confident Alistair would help them rob Tanaka. How could he not have realized that? Of course none of this made sense to her. 

     “It’s…complicated,” he explained lamely. “But you’re not in danger, I promise. I know you don’t really know me, but please trust me on this.”

     “Where’s Valon?” she demanded abruptly. “I really want to talk to Valon.” She sounded like she was trying not to cry again, and it was then that Alistair realized her relationship with Valon ran quite a bit deeper than she’d admitted to before.

     “He’s in the hospital, but he’ll be ok; he just got knocked out. I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he wakes up.” 

     “I really don’t want to be here.” 

     “I know.” Alistair glanced back at the door again when he saw movement through the window, but it turned out to be a janitor pushing a cleaning cart up the hallway. 

     He wished again that Seto would hurry up. 

     The feeling of déjà vu was unavoidable as Seto followed the Kaiba Hospital nurse to the room they’d set this Valon person up in. A year later and here he was marching down another hospital corridor to interrogate some guy who’d tried to ruin his business completely out of the blue. This guy had even been on Dartz’s payroll too. It had all worked out quite nicely for him the first time – his eyes strayed briefly in the general direction he knew Alistair to be – but he didn’t need these people to keep popping up like they were playing an irritating game of Whack-a-Mole. 

     Just as they arrived, he had a brief, joking thought that if he was attractive enough, he should just bring this Valon guy back home with him too – double his odds– but then he was walking into the room and he dismissed every emotion that wasn’t strictly necessary. He wanted to know what gave some nobody the nerve to screw with his company, and he wanted the satisfaction of finding out by verbally ripping that nobody apart. If that had the bonus side-effect of allowing him to tear into the person indirectly responsible for the crappy mood he’d been in the past three months, so more the better.   

     It didn’t actually matter what Valon looked like, but when he saw the person blearily sitting up in the hospital bed, Seto couldn’t help sizing him up, ignoring the mundane contours of the room with its nondescript art on the far wall and a dreary view of the parking lot out the window. Instead, he took in the unruly hair and light eyes set in the angular face of the stranger he’d been shadowboxing with. Even half-covered in the rankled blankets, Seto could see that he wasn’t very tall, though he’d clearly tried to compensate by building up enough muscle to fill out the loose hospital gown he wore. 

     So this was who Alistair had been running around with. Nothing about this person reminded him of himself, and Seto didn’t know what to make of that, though his lip twitched in automatic distaste. 

      Valon hadn’t noticed him yet, so Seto took the opportunity to set the scene; much like in one of Mokuba’s fighter games, the one choosing the arena always had an advantage. 

     “I’m getting a little sick of you people showing up where you’re not wanted,” he drawled, staying where he was in the doorway so that Valon had to twist around to look at him. 

     It seemed to take Valon a moment to understand who was talking to him, because at first he just stared, his vacant, uncomprehending expression suggesting that the nurse had been right about him being too concussed to know what day it was, let alone hold a conversation. But Seto knew from his experience with Alistair that that would soon pass, so he crossed his arms and waited the full two minutes it took for sentience to flicker back into Valon’s face.

     “What the fuck?” Valon muttered, briefly pressing his uninjured hand to his face. He still looked confused, but was apparently attempting to work it out, his eyes darting from Seto to the beeping monitor beside him, the window, and back to Seto again. He sat up a little straighter, hissing in pain when he tried to use the hand thickly wrapped in bandages as leverage.  

     “I’ll save us both some time and catch you up,” Seto said, sliding the door closed, but not walking any further into the room. “Because of your little scuffle at Briseis, Tanaka’s dead, and the police will be coming here to drag you to the nearest station as soon as they finish dusting for fingerprints, and I assume they’ll be charging you with murder.” Valon made a garbled sound of surprise and denial, but Seto cut him off. “I hated Tanaka, so that type of punitive justice isn’t something I would consider particularly necessary except that I don’t appreciate having to deal with you people twice. And we both know that you weren’t there alone.” He crossed his arms again and leaned against the wall. “So, because I’m a nice guy, I’m going to give you a chance before they show up to blame someone else.” 

     In the silence that followed, Seto studied Valon’s expression with a shrewd eye. It was obvious that he was still having a hard time processing what was happening, but there was an unexpected defiance in the way he held Seto’s gaze while he thought it over. Finally, he relaxed back against the pillows, an impish grin splitting his face. 

     “No idea what you’re talkin’ about, mate.” 

     “I think you do.” 

     “Nope. I didn’t kill him, but I’m glad to hear he’s turned up dead, and I’m happy to take the credit for it. Anyway, I’ve heard Domino prisons are pretty chill, so…” 

     “Interesting that you seem to think you’d make it to the prison.” 

     Valon grimaced at the thinly veiled threat, but quickly smoothed out his expression once more. “I grew up in juvie, mate; you’re a lot less scary than the blokes I met in there. Anyway, I always play for keeps, so if this is my time to go out then whatever.” He shrugged, grinning again. 

     It was a level of bravado Seto hadn’t expected, and it was annoying, but he couldn’t help being grudgingly impressed since he himself approached the world with a similar brand of nihilism. Unless, of course, Valon was bluffing and would actually crumble if Seto were to apply a little bit of pressure. It was unnecessary since it had been obvious from Valon’s initial reaction that Tanaka’s death really had been an accident; Alistair hadn’t made that up to protect him. But now that the battle of wills had begun, there was no reason to withdraw if he could win. And it really was a win either way. Either Valon would give in and throw Alistair under the bus to try and save himself, revealing in doing so a lack of loyalty Seto would happily pass on to Alistair, or, he wouldn’t, revealing in not doing so that it would be in Seto’s best interest to let the police get rid of him.  

     “I wonder if Alistair feels the same way.” 

     Valon’s eyes widened, and his posture stiffened. “Alistair doesn’t have anything to do with this. He’s not even in Domino.” 

     And there Seto had his answer. The lie brought on a hot bolt of jealousy that fed his determination to crush Valon into the dust. 

     “Actually, I think he has everything to do with this,” he said coldly. “And not only is he in Domino, he’s in this building, right upstairs.” Seto smirked, then his expression hardened. “So, do you want to try that answer again?” 

     For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, Valon seemed rattled, his nonchalance of before quickly replaced by a kind of pathetic defensiveness Seto had only ever experienced in moments when Mokuba’s safety had been on the line. The feeling of jealousy intensified so that he could practically taste it, thick and acrid in his mouth. 

     “Kaiba, I swear he had nothin’ to do with this. It was my idea to– I mean, it was just about money. I was gonna freak Tanaka out with my ring.” He gestured vaguely with his bandaged hand. “I just wanted to scare him so he’d give me enough money to get to California. Alistair was only there because he thought it was a stupid idea and he wanted to stop me. But I seriously don’t have any idea what happened after that, just that it can’t have been Alistair’s fault.”   

     “I might believe you, if I believed in coincidences. But I don’t.” Seto stared him down, throwing as much venom into the look as he could without actually glaring. He now felt he understood at least one side of what had been going on since Alistair had left at the end of December, but there was one more piece of information he wanted to extract before leaving Valon to fend for himself against the Domino police.

     Seto was surprised by how long Valon was able to hold out, but eventually he saw the tell-tale set of the jaw, the tenseness in his stance despite, absurdly, still being half under the hospital blankets, that told him the other man was going to lose his temper, and in so doing, reveal more than he otherwise would have.  

     “I never understood Alistair’s thing with you,” Valon growled, hands clenching into the blankets at his sides. “But I’m startin’ to.” 

     “Maybe you both have good taste after all.” Seto’s smirk returned, even wider this time. “Then again, if he’s decided to settle for you, maybe not.”  

     And finally, Valon yanked himself up out of the bed, the IV ripping out of his arm so that a thin stream of blood ran down to pool into a tightened fist, though he didn’t flinch. Seto could see he was unsteady on his feet, and was mildly impressed he was standing at all.

     “What do you want?” Valon demanded. “Cuz I’m sick of people fucking with me, especially chumps like you that I can lay out no problem.” 

     “I doubt that,” Seto replied without changing expression. He had started to enjoy himself, settling back into a malevolent impulse he was only normally able to indulge when Wheeler was around. And it was a deeply cathartic use of his pent-up frustration. “But if this is upsetting you so much, I can only assume you hoped joining Alistair’s life mission to be a thorn in my side would get him to pay more attention to you than he did back when you were working for someone even more insane than either of you.” He carefully scanned Valon’s face to see if he had hit on a truth that would finally reveal if his jealousy was warranted. 

     Valon appeared to be taken aback by the sudden turn in Seto’s line of questioning, though he was still tensed in readiness for the attempt to ‘lay him out’ as he’d threatened. Behind the closed door, the nurse had come back and started to say something, but Seto held up a hand to cut her off without looking away from Valon’s face, and eventually she shuffled off again. 

     “What’re you–?” But Seto cut him off too. 

     “That’s what your ‘friend’ has been telling me. That you chased him down here in Domino and followed him around like a stray dog until he finally agreed to let you in on what he was doing at Briseis with that girl to try to get to me through Tanaka. So, unless you want to contradict that story, I think we’re done here.”  

     “You’re lyin’.” But Seto could see Valon wasn’t entirely sure of that. Even his tone was more hurt than angry and his shoulders had slumped a fraction. 

     “And why would I do that?” 

     “Like I said: I think you’re screwing with me because I know that isn’t what happened and I know Alistair wouldn’t say that.”

     “You can believe whatever you want.” Seto shrugged uncaringly, though he was displeased by Valon’s stubborn refusal to turn on Alistair. “But you’re a fool if you think he’s more loyal to you than he is to someone who can do more for him than you can.” Seto knew it was impulsive and unwise to reveal this much to someone like Valon – to anyone – but his need to prove he’d won a game of tug-of-war Valon hadn’t even known about overrode the far more sensible route of secrecy. He had lost his Duel Monsters title, his reputation as a businessman was on shaky ground, and the pièce de résistance KaibaLand had been supposed to be had stalled out, but in this contest he had been the victor, and he would have the satisfaction of someone else witnessing him walking away with his trophy. Especially someone who could do nothing about it. 

     “You ?” Valon said with almost comical incredulity, and after a moment’s pause, he unexpectedly burst out laughing so hard he had to sit back down on the bed. “Oh, tha’s funny.” He wiped tears of laughter from his eyes with his uninjured hand. “So, duelin’ you on top of a crashin’ plane in the world’s sluttiest top didn’t work, but turnin’ up for the death of your creepy employee did, hey? Wait,” Valon went on as Seto’s expression soured. “Is that what you’re doing talkin’ to me? Please tell me you’ve got nothin’ better to do than tryin’ to make me jealous of you; I need to go out knowin’ that.” He continued to snicker as Seto stared at him in stony silence. 

     This was not what he’d wanted, and he would not be treated like a joke. 

     “Make whatever smug pronouncements you like; I only came here to do you the courtesy of letting you know what was coming and to tell you no one is on their way to rescue you, in case you still thought you’d be walking away from your lame attempt to screw with my company.” 

     “Yeah, yeah, ‘abandon all hope’; I got it,” Valon said with a dismissive wave of his bandaged hand as he eased back against the pillows, no longer looking at Seto, but at the ceiling. “I hope you and Ali knock each other’s socks off, I really do. But,” he added with a small grin, “I know him better than you, so I can tell you right now that after he’s finished hate-fuckin’ you, he’s gonna push you off your yacht or poison your caviar.” 

     “Tcha ,” Seto replied finally, sliding the door open and preparing to leave. “It’s not like you’ll be around to find out.” 

     He paused just outside to order the nearest security officer to call down for a backup guard to stand in the room until the police arrived to question Valon about Tanaka’s alleged accident. But even as he was speaking, his thoughts were streaming off in several directions, none of which he liked. He hated the emotion of regret because of how it required looking backwards, but he did regret talking to Valon. Deeply. 

     In the first place, Valon had reminded him of Wheeler: stupidity bolstering an unearned, grossly overinflated sense of self-worth. Of superiority even. It was infuriating to have to deal with a person who didn’t even have the intellectual capacity to realize how worthless they were. At Battle City, Wheeler had told him it was ‘ridiculous’ to care about winning; something only a loser would believe. And now, Valon had been too much of a moron to even realize he had lost. 

     There wasn’t anyone around, so Seto allowed himself to siphon off a fraction of his anger through unnecessarily heavy footsteps, and he slammed the ‘up’ button for the elevator, tapping his fingers hard against the metal plate to prevent himself from tracing over the scars on the lower part of his wrist, just hidden by his shirtsleeve. 

     Mostly, he regretted the conversation because the confidence with which Valon had spoken of Alistair’s inevitable betrayal had pricked at the vestiges of doubt he himself had about Alistair’s loyalty. He still didn’t really understand what Alistair had been doing at Briseis with Valon or how or when they’d reconnected or even in what capacity they’d reconnected. Obviously, there had been some kind of alliance, and now he wondered if Alistair could be trusted to explain it. 

     It was a jarring reminder that Alistair wasn’t in fact a trophy Seto had won, not just a version of the avatar in his computer that he could touch, and he certainly wasn’t completely under Seto’s control.

     The elevator arrived, but he was so distracted, he stared at the empty box for a moment before remembering what he was doing and getting on. 

     Of course, he hadn’t forgotten that Alistair was a real person; he wasn’t actually that close to breaking with reality. And Alistair not being a yes-man was one of things Seto somewhat enjoyed about his company. It was a useful intellectual exercise to be presented with an opposing viewpoint from time to time, but the flip-side of that, as Valon had so helpfully reminded him, was disagreement which could, in its turn, lead to betrayal if it ran deeply enough. And he knew there were some key disagreements between them. 

     It was the reason after deciding he wanted him to stick around that Seto had avoided taking a stand on anything of consequence in Alistair’s presence. Alistair would likely always suffer from a bleeding heart, and so what good would come of a discussion of politics, of ethics, of fate? But it wasn’t as though Seto had ever hidden his opinions, so even without an argument, maybe once he was curled around an old friend, one who shared Alistair’s fantasies of a Fourierist utopia ruled over by some infallible arbiter of justice, Alistair had been reminded that he and Seto were too different. 

     And they were, Seto agreed with this imaginary version of Alistair. Too different.

     The elevator doors dinged loudly as they slid open to reveal a nearly identical hallway to the one Seto had just left, though a plaque on the wall nearby designated this floor as suites for long-term patients.  

     The simplest explanation was that Alistair had set aside his iron-clad worldview while staying at the Kaiba estate out of convenience or exhaustion or both, but had picked it back up again the second he’d left. He’d somehow ended up at Briseis with Valon and the two of them and one of the girls there had gotten mixed up with Tanaka, and… and… 

     Seto found himself slowly approaching the room where he’d left Alistair while he struggled to conceive of what exactly had happened. Valon had said they’d intended to rob Tanaka, but that was so petty, so small, that Seto refused to accept it. And it didn’t match up with anything he knew of Alistair. Thought he knew.

     He frowned, arriving at Alistair’s room at last. 

     It was all very chaotic and messy. So beneath him to even be engaging in it. He’d given Alistair everything he’d promised so off-handedly during their first duel – and much more– and in return he’d gotten to indulge in an uncharacteristic fantasy for a few months. And then gotten to play a frustrating game of cat and mouse for a few more, which had probably been a waste of time, but had at least broken up the monotony of His Job. 

     But… 

     Even just this cursory wall he’d placed around his feelings – the ones he’d locked away for so long he’d almost convinced himself they didn’t exist – was paid for with a heavy toll of loneliness so intense that all the color seemed to drain from the already washed out hallway.  

     Never being touched again. 

     Never touching someone else. 

     Sleeping alone, forever. 

     Forever. 

       For-ev-er for-ev-er for-ev-er  

     He could feel the three syllables in his heartbeat. 

     Could feel them in each shallow breath. 

     (inhale) For-ev (exhale)- ver (inhale) For-ev (exhale)- ver   

     Tanaka was dead and now Fujita was breathing down his neck and KaibaLand wouldn’t be finished on time and Mokuba was off the rails and Alistair hated him and he’d have to deal with all of it completely alone and it was all his own fault because he was a loser he was nothing he—

     His phone was buzzing. 

     The familiar, dull vibration of it was enough to bring reality back into sharp focus and he suddenly realized he was sitting on the floor, gripping hard onto his wrist. He attempted a deep breath, and as he stood up, he slid the phone out of his pocket. His phone hadn’t recognized the number, but it didn't matter who it was; they had saved him from completely spiralling out, and so even a telemarketer was worth his attention at this point. 

     “This is Kaiba,” he forced out, carefully angling the speaker away from him so he could take another deep breath and loosen his tie with his free hand. 

     “Sir, it’s me,” Saito began without preamble. “I’m with that girl, but something… strange happened you should know about.” 

     Before Seto could ask whose phone the bodyguard was calling him from, Saito proceeded to express concern that the girl he’d been tasked to watch over had the same destructive power he’d witnessed Alistair using. 

     “What makes you say that?” Seto asked sharply. Valon had said something about a ring, but he hadn’t been wearing one. Did the girl have it? He was reluctant to admit it, but the thought made Seto uneasy. 

     “Because…” Saito paused, seemingly trying to determine how to explain, likely knowing his boss would scoff at words like ‘magic’. “She knocked me down with something…bright. It wasn’t green like at the house. It was white. Maybe silver. And glowing. And it was heavy.” 

     “It sounds like a flashlight." Seto had no idea what Saito was talking about, but it didn’t seem Orichalcos-related, and he didn’t have space within his limited patience to add in anything else, especially with his nerves so shot. Now that he was feeling grounded again he was ready to wrap things up for the day. 

     “It wasn’t a flashlight, sir.” Saito sounded uncharacteristically frustrated. “It was more like…an animal.”  

     “Where is she now?” Seto asked, choosing to ignore this new piece of information. 

     “She’s locked in the bathroom talking to someone. Alistair maybe. On my phone.” 

     Seto forced himself to laugh, more as a means of breaking down the lingering vestiges of his recent attack than because he actually found the situation humorous, though there was something amusing about a highly trained professional bodyguard getting undermined by a girl presumably as waifish as those he’d seen at Briseis. 

     “Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you. Stay there for tonight and try not to let her steal anything else with her magical flashlight.” 

     While he’d been on the phone, Seto had meandered towards the opposite end of the hallway, which was empty aside from a cart of cleaning supplies he assumed someone would be coming back for in the near future. He still felt physically unsettled even if he’d finally gotten his thoughts under control. 

     His gaze flicked to the door to Alistair’s room as he slid his phone back into the inside pocket of his jacket. He was unpleasantly sweaty under his clothes, the stench of cigarettes had gotten into the fabric of his jacket somehow, and after dealing with Fujita and the police and Valon, he generally felt unclean. 

     He'd had just about enough of this day. 

     Pausing outside the door, Seto took a moment to slide into the right version of himself before entering the room. Alistair didn't know he'd just been hyperventilating on the hallway floor, didn't know how badly his conversation with Valon had rattled him, and he didn't need to know. Seto was in control. 

     Control. 

     He breathed the word in: c o n t r o l, rolling the smooth contour of each letter along his frayed nerves like a salve. Finally, he forced his shoulders back and opened the door.  

     "I just have to touch base with Roland, then we can leave," he said, striding towards Alistair even as he realized Alistair was on the phone. Right. Saito had said something about that. Alistair looked over and nodded even as he continued speaking. Seto frowned and crossed his arms, annoyed at being brought up short right at the last minute. Especially since he was unaccustomed to be being made to wait. 

     He could tell from Alistair's tone that he was saying something reassuring, though it irked him that he couldn't understand exactly what. Not that that couldn't be easily remedied; he'd mastered more difficult languages before. But it was yet another thing about Alistair that existed outside of who he knew him to be, another reminder that Alistair hadn't in fact spawned fully formed in his life a year ago. 

     "Sorry," Alistair said, stowing his phone and giving Seto his full attention. "You said we're leaving?" 

     "Almost. I just have to--"

     "Touch base with Roland. Sorry, yeah, you said that." 

     Alistair looked tired, grey eyes half-hooded by eyelids he was obviously struggling to keep open. Seto found himself scanning them for any detectable guilt, any downward glance, any unease that would indicate Valon was right about him. But after holding Seto's gaze, the only obvious emotion other than exhaustion was confusion as Alistair subtly drew his eyebrows down, and Seto realized he'd been staring silently at him for nearly a minute. He felt his cheeks starting to flush. 

     "Your 'friend' woke up by the way," he said, impulse getting the best of him again. "That's what I came here to tell you." 

     "Oh. I was sort of hoping you wanted to know how I was." Alistair's words were sardonic, but the small accompanying smile was fond, and even though it offered Seto a perfect stepping-stone to a much more desirable conversation, he simply could not deviate from the path he'd started down. They could come back to this, but not before he knew . Not before he was sure ...  

     "I thought you'd want to know that he blamed everything on you," Seto lied, and saw with satisfaction how Alistair's eyes, so heavy just moments ago, immediately widened in indignant shock. "He said you masterminded a plan to use Tanaka to get to me. Something to do with a magical ring and that girl at your apartment." 

     "Unbelievable ," Alistair muttered. 

     "You seem surprised." 

     "I shouldn't be." Alistair huffed and then composed himself. "Anyway, I don't want to hold you up." He flopped down onto the bed, his feet hanging off the edge. "I am fine by the way." He shot Seto a lazy grin. "But can you do something for me later?" The grin faded and he turned his head so he was looking at the ceiling. "Fuck me so hard I can't think anymore." 

     Seto was startled by the explicitness of the words, the very vulgarity of them provoking a frisson that ran the entire length of his spine, and he would have given anything he possessed to postpone his meeting with Roland. 

     "If I feel like it," Seto replied, pleased when the callback was met with another small smile. 

     "I hope you do."

     "After he’s finished hate-fuckin’ you, he’s gonna push you off your yacht or poison your caviar," Valon had said. If that was right, and Alistair murdered Seto in his sleep…well, he’d be dead and unable to feel double-crossed. Besides, Alistair clearly wasn't finished yet.   

Chapter Text

Said that we're not lovers, we're just strangers
With the same damn hunger
To be touched, to be loved, to feel anything at all

~ Strangers, Halsey & Lauren Jauregui

On Top of the World

     He wasn’t sure who he could complain to about the ergonomics of the Kaiba Hospital conference room, but if he weren’t so tired and distracted, Seto would have been determined to find out. The height of the table was just low enough relative to the chairs that he was forced to hunch awkwardly over the tablet he was typing into while Roland revealed yet another problem caused by Tanaka breaking his neck. 

     Roland’s entire face was shining with perspiration so that his thin mustache was askew, and the harsh fluorescent light had carved its way into every line in skin already prematurely aged by the strain of six years of shouldering the stress his young boss should have been feeling. 

     It was now midnight, and Seto was no longer listening. Maybe he’d feel guilty later about having put one of his only allies through an unnecessarily hellish day, but at the moment he just wanted him to stop talking. Roland might as well have been repeating ‘ blah blah blah ’ over and over again for all that Seto had taken in in the past ten minutes. 

     He’d wanted to know what had happened to Valon once the police had arrived, and Roland had told him Valon had been questioned and his statement taken, but that nothing in what he’d said or in the preliminary examination of the scene of the accident or of Tanaka’s body suggested foul play and that they’d likely let him go. 

     “No,” Seto had told him in a tone that precluded any discussion. “I want his work visa revoked and I want him deported.” 

     “But that…why…alright,” Roland had reluctantly agreed with a world-weary sigh that made Seto wonder in an off-handed sort of way what his second-in-command said about him in his off time. 

     After that, Seto had lost interest. What did he care about Tanaka’s sister breaking down in the morgue or about the paperwork, the repossession of any company files Tanaka had stored in his condo, the disbursement of Tanaka’s group term life insurance policy? Replacing his head of PR was something he’d have to oversee, and he hated the idea of a power vacuum at his company now that he’d made an enemy like Fujita, but that wasn’t going to be resolved tonight. 

     He had the impression that Roland also understood this meeting was of minimal import, but that he kept going simply for the vindictive catharsis of putting someone else through the upheaval he’d been experiencing, especially since filling Seto in meant he could finally step back. 

     But with the minute hand edging towards a ninety-degree angle, Seto dammed the flow, saying: 

     “Thank you for your report. It seems like everything’s under control.” He flicked the cover closed over the tablet and shoved it forward on the table. “You should go home; we both have a long week ahead of us.” 

     “Sir, can I ask something?” Roland asked, not moving from his chair. The request sounded so hesitant Seto wondered if Roland really wanted him to acquiesce. But now he was curious. 

     “What is it?” 

     “What’s going on?” The question came out in a rush, and Seto could hear anger in it, carefully layered under the professionally respectful tone used at all times. 

     Roland was rarely if ever critical of him even though Seto knew he didn’t agree with many of his management decisions, and he again felt a prick of conscience that his personal schemes had created a heavier workload for someone he hadn’t meant to get involved.

     “I’m handling it,” he answered, knowing even without seeing how Roland’s mouth flattened into a thin line of disapproval that the reply was unsatisfactory. But what could he say, ‘my elaborate ruse to establish a better work-life balance for myself actually just ended up creating more work for both of us – sorry about that’? 

     They both got ready to leave in silence, Seto carelessly tossing his work tablet on top of the other items in his briefcase, Roland neatly tucking his current spiral notepad and pen into his coat pocket. Seto had always thought it ridiculous that someone so high up at a world-renowned tech company should rely on paper notes, especially when Roland was always holding things up by frantically flipping the pages to find some piece of information he’d scribbled down. 

     Maybe it was because he was tired, but suddenly, Seto’s thoughts on Roland and his notepad softened. Sure, it was an anachronistic habit that wasted time, but Seto knew Roland was doing his best. And he really did put up with a lot. 

     “Roland.” 

     Roland’s shoulders instantly slumped in anticipation of being ordered to do something else that would keep him there even longer. 

     “Don’t bother coming into the office tomorrow. Work from home. I can handle this.” Seto realized that what he’d meant as a reward had come out as reprimanding and somewhat condescending, and he felt a muscle in his jaw tense. Whatever. If that’s how Roland chose to take it, that was his problem.

     “You’re welcome, sir.” 

     Seto’s gaze snapped up and met Roland’s. Something about his vice-president’s smile of understanding made Seto feel incredibly young, like a child who had offered their parent a handmade thank you card in which every other word was spelled wrong and half the letters written backwards. 

     It should have been deeply insulting to have his employee look at him like that, but Seto knew instinctively that Roland just wanted him to know that he knew Seto was also doing his best.

     Hospitals, like airports, exist somewhat out of time, and when you’re in one, so do you. There’s a lull overnight, but the lights are still on and for everyone working it’s either the beginning or the end of the day. But if you’re an outsider: a passenger, a patient, a visitor, it’s always just now . 

     Seto was fed up with ‘now’. He’d long since texted Mokuba so he could pass on the message to Trudy that he’d be staying in the city. It had been too late for this to do her much good, but even if she didn’t get to sleep in, maybe she could do whatever she did when she wasn’t working. Though that was hard to conceive of, like trying to imagine an NPC doing anything but standing in place until the main character showed up. 

     If he were being honest, Seto would have to admit he thought about a lot of people that way.

     So, when he finally arrived back at the suite where he’d left Alistair, he’d expected Alistair to be alert and waiting for him, but at some point in the last two hours, Alistair had fallen asleep on the hospital bed, curled up on top of the blankets and with his phone still in his hand. He’d gotten mostly undressed at some point, his bare feet tucked into a crease in the comforter. 

     For a moment, Seto considered taking off his shoes and jacket and just crashing beside him, but the idea of sleeping in his work clothes with nothing else to change into in the morning was deeply unappealing. As was the cheap hospital bedding. 

     “Wake up,” he said, hesitating just a moment before lightly jostling Alistair’s shoulder, his skin cool from the AC.

     “ Hmmm ?” Alistair murmured as he stirred, and Seto quickly pulled his hand back. “Oh, hey.” He squinted up at him before stretching his body back out, the movement smoothing down the bump in the comforter. 

     “We’re not staying here. Get dressed.” He waited for Alistair to ask why or where they were going, but he was seemingly in one of his more docile moods, and after yawning widely, pulled on the pair of jeans he’d discarded at the end of the bed and got up to retrieve his jacket from somewhere while Seto waited in the doorway. 

     “Do you want any of this food?” Alistair asked from the other side of the room. “I bet you haven’t eaten.” 

     “You sound like Trudy. And no, I don’t. Let’s go.”              

      On their first drive of the night from Briseis to the hospital, Seto had been feeling triumphant; it was part of the reason he'd wanted to interrogate Valon, however misguided that decision had turned out to be. This time, he felt uneasy. 

     He had expected Alistair to immediately start asking questions or offering explanations unprompted, but instead, he'd quietly sat back in the seat and turned his gaze out the window, resulting in a silence Seto wasn't sure was comfortable or not. But it did give him an opportunity to parse through everything that had happened in the past few hours with the cool detachment of hindsight. 

     In the hospital, the full impact of a million stressors had been enough to literally push him down, and that was, categorically, Very Bad. However, such an attack had only happened because of his erratic sleep schedule and had been compounded by a lot of unlikely concurrent events. Tanaka couldn't die twice. He'd fixed things with Mokuba. KaibaLand would succeed. He’d finally announce his KOS project. And Alistair...   

     Seto gripped onto the wheel but didn’t look over at him, forcing himself to study the illuminated strip of the road in front of them, the lines of paint eaten away by months of being covered in salted snow and ice. 

     It wasn’t exactly riveting.  

     He gave up and tilted his head just enough to see that Alistair was resting his face against his hand, propped up against the window. They were still downtown, and the intermittent city lights flitted across the glossy length of his hair that had grown down nearly to his chin.

     Seto tried hard to delete the poisonous suspicion Valon had planted in his mind and return to how he’d felt holding Alistair against him in the hospital car park. But even if Valon was wrong, even if he’d been defensively shooting in the dark, Seto couldn’t return to that split-second of nirvana because he knew that even if it had been sincere, it hadn’t been real . 

     No matter what had happened in the last few months, none of it changed the fact that Alistair had left in the first place because whatever had drawn them to each other hadn’t been strong enough to overcome his desire to do so. Simple as. 

     He hadn’t even come back of his own accord: Seto had gone to get him. If he hadn’t, what would Alistair have done? Just allowed himself to be arrested and interrogated? Would he have followed his friend to the hospital? Left with Valon when the police let him go? Gone back to Briseis? Gone off on his own to start over elsewhere, his time with Seto just an episode in whatever life he actually wanted? 

     The scars on his wrist itched, but Seto told himself it was just psychosomatic and ignored it as Kaiba Corporation headquarters loomed closer, its darkened windows reflecting streaks of yellow light from the streetlamps. Finally, he could be freed from this pathetic, redundant stream of uncertain questions, because once they were locked together in the skyscraper, he was going to force Alistair to answer them to his satisfaction. He was exhausted, and he knew Alistair was too, but the uneasiness was worse. Unease meant not knowing, it meant chaos, it meant someone else had more information than he did.   

     Beside him, Alistair didn’t stir until Seto pulled into his private parking space at the top of the underground carpark and shut the Corvette’s motor off, plunging them into sudden silence as it shuddered to a stop. Alistair sat up a little straighter, resting his head back on the seatrest and looking sidelong at Seto with half-lidded eyes, but didn’t speak. 

     Alistair had told him in no uncertain terms what he wanted, and it really would be in both their best interests for Seto to say nothing, take them to his office, and remind Alistair what he’d been missing out on the past three months.  

     Earlier, put in this exact position, Seto had gone against his instinct and set aside his questions, but now that he had another opportunity… 

     “We’re having that talk now,” Seto said, looking away from him and out into the empty expanse of concrete that gleamed wetly in the dimmed overhead lights. 

     “ Mmm ,” Alistair replied vaguely, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands and yawning before looking at him with a tired wariness. 

     He could still walk it back. He could ask something inconsequential. This wasn’t the right time for anything serious. It was a bad idea. Nevertheless, all the questions Seto had fanned across the screen of his mind, arranging themselves like Duel Monsters cards into a winning strategy. 

     “What were you doing there?” The question didn’t get to the heart of things, but if he wanted the truth, he needed to be prepared to wear Alistair down. 

     “At Briseis?” 

     “Obviously.” The fact that Alistair was already being cagey meant that he’d been right about Alistair not wanting to talk, and right that it was probably because the answers would displease him. 

     Alistair sighed, and through his peripheral Seto saw him cross his arms even though the interior of the car was still warm. “I’m not sure.” 

     “That’s not good enough.” 

     “You wouldn’t get it.” 

     “Try me.” 

     “I don’t want to talk about this right now.” 

     “I don’t care.” 

     Finally seeming to accept he was going to have to answer, Alistair crossed his arms more tightly, huffed out a breath, and looked resolutely in Seto’s direction, though Seto continued to look just as resolutely out into the carpark. “I wanted to know if I belonged there. It was stupid. And I don’t.” 

     It was an answer Seto could have predicted, but it wasn’t one he believed. 

     “I agree it was stupid.” Alistair snorted derisively and rolled his eyes, but Seto pressed on. “But the fact that you expect me to buy you went there for no other reason is even stupider. Unless you’re claiming it was a coincidence, or better yet fate that your ‘friend’ was working there.” 

     “It wasn’t.” Seto could hear the grimace in his voice. “He was looking for me for reasons I don’t think you’d really care about because all you want to know is whether or not I fucked him, right?”  

     “ Tcha . Why would I care about that?” Seto asked dismissively, not realizing he’d wrapped his hand around his wrist across the steering wheel until he felt the pressure through his jacket sleeve.   

     Unexpectedly, Alistair laughed, the sound filling the cramped space, then tapering off into something more like an exasperated scoff. 

     “You’re ridiculous!” 

     “Am I?” Seto snapped, glaring through the windshield as he tightened his grip around his wrist. This was the second time today he had started off with the upper hand and been undercut. This conversation wasn’t supposed to be about him . 

     “I did,” Alistair said, his gleaming eyes at odds with his small smile of self-satisfaction. He uncrossed his arms and planted them on the center console so he could lean far enough over that Seto had to turn his head to avoid looking at him, his fingers clenched so tightly around his wrist they hurt. “I went to his apartment and we got drunk and he told me he’d always wanted to try it with me, and I sucked him off on his couch and he told me I was perfect. Then, we went to his bedroom –.” 

     “Stop talking.” Seto forced the words through his teeth. A sharp pain from his fingertip told him the nail was starting to bend backwards from the pressure of digging into the fabric of his coat, but he didn’t let go. 

     “Not before I give you all the details,” Alistair said with more than a trace of cruelty, leaning as far over as his seatbelt allowed, his chest brushing against Seto’s shoulder, so close, Seto could smell the antiseptic scent of hospital soap on his skin. “Don’t you want to know how big his dick was? How it felt when he fucked me with it?” He paused to exhale angrily. “Or maybe you really don’t care and tracking me all over the city was just some insane game you were playing to amuse yourself. Tell me, because I honestly have no idea what you think.” His shoulders jerked upwards in a stiff shrug. “But why not take my chances with someone like Valon if you’re just keeping me around to entertain you when you feel like it?”

     Seto’s glare was so fixed that he could no longer see anything clearly.  His heart was bludgeoning his ribs and he was trembling with the effort not to react to Alistair’s goading. He felt trapped in every conceivable way, the seatbelt pinning him in place in the cramped car, Alistair physically forcing him to shift his weight against the closed door.

     This had been an impulsive mistake, his second in as many hours. He wouldn’t make a third.   

     “It’s late.” He finally released his wrist, stretching out the cramping in his fingers before resting them on the buckle of his seatbelt until he felt certain he could hold his hand steady. 

     There was a strained moment of silence in which he continued to stare out the window while Alistair stared at him. Finally, Alistair threw himself back in his seat and clicked the seatbelt open in a quick, irritated motion, and after deciding he wasn’t going to immediately retort, Seto let his posture relax a fraction.   

     But as he went through the motions of inelegantly getting out of the car, locking it out of habit with a mechanical chirp that echoed against the concrete, Seto was bracing himself for when Alistair inevitably lost his temper again. He chanced a furtive glance in his direction once they’d made it out of the car park and were halfway down the hall to the executive elevator. 

     “Did you pull your little sleight of hand with the security cameras?” 

     It was so unlike any of the accusations and criticisms he’d been preparing to stonewall that for a split second, Seto couldn't process the question. 

     “...no. That would be almost impossible.” He eyed Alistair suspiciously after swiping his access badge to call the elevator, its cables whirring softly behind the wall. 

     “Almost impossible for you maybe.” Alistair’s expression was still tense and his tone was hardly light, but when their eyes met, he let a smile flicker across his face so that Seto understood the jab was nevertheless meant to be playful. It seemed Alistair was going to let him get away with a hard reset after all. That was surprising. Such a shift in his personality was yet another blank when it came to what Alistair had been up to the last few months.

     The elevator arrived, its curved glass door sliding sideways as blue lights rippled along the interior walls. It was barely large enough for two people to stand side by side without touching. 

     “Executive suite,” Seto said carelessly as he walked to the middle of the narrow cylinder, and another light flashed in acknowledgement of the command as the door slid closed again, forcing Alistair to stand flush against his side. He smirked when the elevator began its quick ascent and Alistair swore in surprise and grabbed onto his arm. 

     “Scared?” he asked, amused for the first time that evening. 

     “Of course not,” Alistair snapped, releasing him and shoving his hands in his jacket pockets. “It figures your special elevator has to be freakishly fast.” 

     “I hate wasting time,” Seto replied as to one side the city lights flashed by, and on the other, the darkened hallways of his company. The closer they got to his office, the more anxiety he felt himself sloughing off even as the more time passed, the angrier Alistair's comments in the car made him. He chose not to focus on that now. It was an artificial, almost Pavlovian sense of ease, he knew, but Kaiba Corporation headquarters was his triumph over life made manifest, and his office was the pinnacle of that. Even Alistair would have to accept his authority here. 

     The elevator coasted to a stop as it reached the top floor, opening into a waiting room which, like everything at Kaiba Corporation, was characterized by sleek minimalism. The uniformity of the gleaming whiteness of the walls and furniture was broken up by grooves indicating that everything that could be had been tucked out of the way, only to be seen when called upon. 

     The emptiness was eerie, Alistair had always thought so when following the day to day workings of the company through the security cameras (even they had been installed to be optically flat and unobstructive). The only thing in the entire room that looked like it moved was a slim remote on top of a white slab jutting out from the wall that he knew to be Seto’s PA’s desk. And even that, he was sure, had some shallow depression it could be clicked into.

     It was certainly a design that fit someone like Seto, Alistair thought bitterly as Seto unlocked the door to his office with another swipe of his access card. Battening everything down so it would always be exactly where he wanted it.   

     Alistair was still frustrated that Seto had tried to push for a conversation he had made clear he didn’t want to have that night, but it shouldn’t have surprised him, and if he hadn’t been so unsettled and tired he wouldn’t have escalated so unfairly. He’d regretted talking about Valon the second they’d gotten out of the car. It had been spiteful, and he’d said it more out of anger towards Valon than because Seto’s questions (which, though ill-timed, weren’t unreasonable or unanticipated) warranted fighting dirty. 

     But then, none of his decisions that day had been particularly good ones. 

     Arguably, none of his decisions in the last few months had been good ones. 

     “Are you coming?” 

     Alistair shook himself and followed Seto into his office. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and hoped Seto understood that he meant it, though if he did, he gave no indication. 

     As the door slid shut behind him, Alistair was reminded that the futuristic aesthetic stopped at the threshold. Unlike the rest of the building, which had been updated to resemble the inside of an interstellar spaceship the second Seto had taken over the company, Seto’s office looked almost exactly as it had since Gozaburo had last redesigned it over fifteen years ago. A blocky wooden desk hulked in the far side of the room while an old-fashioned set of filing cabinets lined one wall and a spindly console table and futon ran along the other. Several leafy plants had been scattered around as though to fill what otherwise would have been empty space. 

     In spite of the expansive view of the city, its lights providing an ambient glow that should have inspired a cozy feeling of oneness, the room felt sad. 

     Or maybe that was just projection. 

    The metal joints of the futon creaked as Seto folded it out into a bed. But rather than joining him after kicking his boots off near the doorway, Alistair found himself approaching the wall of windows and looking out at the darkened glass columns of the banks and other office buildings across the street, at the billboard a dozen stories below, lit up with a flickering teaser for an upcoming action film, and at the sluggish late-night traffic, so far from where he stood the cars were just undulating streams of light.

     He was uncomfortably aware of the beating of his own heart, though he was so tired the feeling could have been brought on by exhaustion as much as by anxiety or even vertigo. 

     It had started snowing again, thick fluffy flakes of it backlit by the billboard which had shifted to display an ad for a popular cafe chain in which a pixelated Yugi was holding two specialty drinks while flashing his usual bashful smile. The rather uninspired tagline read: ‘King of Coffee.’

     Alistair grinned as he imagined Seto, almost literally on top of the world in his penthouse office, looking down only to see a ten-foot image of one of his least favourite people taunting him with a title he loathed. 

     He started to say something about it, but when he turned to face the room, Seto was no longer standing there. For a split-second, he couldn’t make sense of Seto’s sudden disappearance, but then, from beyond a second door, he heard the stuttering hiss of a shower turning on, and couldn’t help smiling fondly. For someone who tried so hard to project cool nonchalance, Seto could be incredibly fussy. It didn’t matter that he’d be getting up in a matter of hours to shower again; Alistair knew he hated going to bed without washing off the day’s sweat. 

     Even if once in bed a different activity rendered the entire shower pointless.   

     It was only when it occurred to him that Seto hadn’t invited him to join because he was angry about their argument in the car that Alistair’s smile slowly faded to a frown. It was so easy to forget that Seto had feelings to hurt since he tried so hard to project that he didn’t.  

     He knew he owed Seto a proper apology. Although, he thought, he had a right to be angry with Seto too. There had been a sense of fun, knowing that Seto was digitally trailing him around the city, but he didn’t like knowing Seto had dusted off his chess skills to manipulate events in ways Alistair still didn’t completely understand, and then he hadn’t even admitted to it. 

     It made him wonder too whether Seto had been honest about Valon. Sure, he and Valon hadn’t parted on good terms, but Seto’s claim that Valon had outright lied about what they were both doing at Briseis rang untrue. In the first place, he couldn’t imagine Valon being quick enough on his feet to concoct a fake story that positioned someone else as the mastermind. And even if given the time, Valon had never been one to avoid responsibility, if only because he enjoyed bragging about even his failed exploits.

     Granted, Alistair wouldn’t have branded Seto a liar either. He liked his games and his strategies, which sometimes made him evasive and his motivations murky, but he was generally more straightforward when it came down to it than dishonest. But he would surely lie if it suited him, so who knew? Alistair had meant it when he’d said he still couldn't say whether Seto actually liked him or just liked something about what he could get from him. It was a distinction that, if nothing else, Valon had shown him mattered.     

     Outside, the billboard was now displaying an ad for a casino along the riverwalk in which the ‘o’ in its name had been written as a spinning die. Alistair watched it idly, wondering if it would stop on any particular number before the ad changed again. 

     Eventually, he became aware that the sound of the shower had been replaced with the droning of a hairdryer, and realized he was forcing himself to stay awake because he still hoped Seto would fuck him. It was the best way he could think of to shut down everything within himself that was making him feel so unhappy when he just wanted to feel good for a change. 

      He didn’t think he actually fell asleep on his feet, but he certainly lost time watching the billboard cycle through its total of five adverts with heavy-lidded eyes that reduced the visuals to blurry splotches of colour.

     The hair dryer turned off, but Alistair made no move away from the window even when he heard Seto walking towards him, though he felt a pleasant anticipation in his stomach that quickly sank lower as Seto ran his hands down his arms from behind until he loosely held each of his wrists.

     “Take that hideous jacket off,” Seto commanded him quietly. He was keeping his distance so that aside from the hold on Alistair’s wrists, no part of them was touching.  

     “So, I guess you’re not–,” Alistair began, but in a quick series of motions, Seto manually spun him around so that he found himself stumbling backwards against the window, eyes wide and no longer feeling so drowsy. “So, you’re not–,” he started again.

     “You said no talking,” Seto cut him off, “so, no talking.” Even in the dark, Seto’s gaze was intense, and the grip he still had on his wrists was tight, possessive. All of it combined sent a bolt of pleasure down the entire length of Alistair’s body. 

     He grinned, all of the negative emotions from the day of creeping apprehension, of anger, of horror, of worry suddenly easy to push aside, as he’d known they would be.

     Pulling his wrists free, he eagerly unzipped his coat and let it slide to the floor at his feet. Without it, he could feel the coolness from the glass against his back. He went to put his arms around Seto’s neck, but again, Seto captured his wrists, this time pulling them over his head against the window, pressing hard enough that even when he let go, Alistair knew to leave them there. 

     Seto had never been aggressive like this, and Alistair assumed it was because he was still angry, but if this was how he chose to channel it, Alistair had no complaints. Although he’d re-dressed in a black shirt and pants not unlike what he might wear on a casual day at home, Seto hadn’t styled his hair after his shower, and it hung loose around his face. Alistair very much wanted to run his hands through it, but Seto obviously had something in mind, so with his arms still resting against the window over his head, Alistair raised his eyebrows as though to say: ‘what now?’

     Unexpectedly, instead of kissing him as Alistair had thought he might, Seto hooked his fingers under the hem of his shirt and slowly pulled it up so that his knuckles dragged along his sides. Alistair couldn’t help squirming under the light touch, though he tried his best to otherwise stay still. To his surprise, Seto stopped with his shirt still partway over his face, the room dark enough that he couldn’t see even a pinprick of light through the fabric. The realization that Seto was going to leave him blindfolded like that was enough to set his pulse racing. He tensed, waiting for Seto to pull him over to the futon, each second that it didn’t happen ratcheting up the anticipation until he was nearly panting. 

     He could sense that Seto was still standing mere centimeters in front of him, watching him, and even though his shoulders were starting to ache and the cold from the glass had sunk into his back, Alistair didn’t move. 

     With Alistair so compliantly stretched out in front of him, backlit by the city lights, and obviously in the mood to set aside whatever angst he was apparently otherwise feeling, Seto contemplated what to do with him.  

     As he thought, Alistair shifted position to rest more of his weight against the window, and Seto was reminded that unlike in his digital rendering, he didn’t have infinite time with an avatar on standby while he mulled things over. Besides, he’d done enough of that in the shower.

     Just as slowly and deliberately as he’d dragged Alistair’s shirt up, Seto traced his fingers down his bared torso, feeling the bump of each rib, the firmness of the muscle pulled taught along his sides, watched the slow rhythm of his breathing. 

     It wasn’t the fact that Alistair had done this with someone else that had made him so angry, he’d decided. It was the nonchalance of admitting that he’d done it with someone about whom he’d claimed to care very little. Did he not recognize what a luxury that was? 

     Standing under the shower, Seto had finally allowed himself to reflect on just how lonely he’d been. And Alistair hadn’t. If they’d really been playing a game, Alistair had cheated. 

     However. 

     Seto hooked his fingers around the waistband of Alistair’s jeans, quickly undid the button and yanked so that he pulled them and his underwear halfway down his legs. Alistair started, thudding dully against the glass as he caught his balance after kicking them all the way off. 

     With Alistair dutifully holding his silence, it was all rather mechanical and impersonal, but that was the point. Because after acknowledging his feelings, Seto had dismissed them; they were useless. Moreover, they’d been wrong. He’d been torturing himself for months acting as though Alistair was unique, special, the only person he could fuck, the only person who could share his bed. When had he become so sentimental? 

     He sank to his knees, his hands pressed against Alistair’s thighs to hold him in place against the window as he took him into his mouth, his grip tightening in warning when Alistair attempted to roll his hips. 

     This could be anyone. Anyone he wanted. Doing anything he wanted. Technology hadn’t yet advanced far enough that he could replicate this using the currency of time and lines of code, but had he not always said the point of money was the power it gave him to shape reality? The only reason he’d thought that impossible was because, naively, it hadn’t occurred to him that they didn’t have to look at each other. Didn’t have to talk to each other. The whole thing could be done not without consent, but without much involvement. 

     He should have known. He’d witnessed Gozaburo do it often enough. Until it had gotten him killed, Tanaka had done it. Fujita surely did. They were men who repulsed him, so he’d incorrectly decided everything they did must be repulsive. Maybe transactional sex was the one thing they’d gotten right. 

     “That’s really good,” Alistair mumbled, then immediately sucked in a breath as though in self-chastisement for breaking the rules. 

     At the words of praise, Seto backed off as much out of surprise as to catch his breath. With one fist still curled around Alistair’s cock and the other on his hip, Seto looked up at the visible part of his face to see that Alistair was biting his lower lip.

     With just that small gesture, Seto’s short-lived determination to mechanize intimacy shattered. Those words, that expression, they wouldn’t mean anything coming from anyone else, and he would never pursue it even if Alistair didn’t stick around. Maybe it was a flaw, but suddenly, overcoming it seemed pointless. 

     He stood, letting go of Alistair to pull his shirt the rest of the way over his head so they were looking at each other. Even in the darkness, Seto could see he’d never gotten the eyes of his avatar quite right, the exact curve of his eyebrows, the slight pout of his lips. But even if he had, it would never have been the same. 

     The adrenaline he felt staring into Alistair’s face wasn’t arousal or even anger – it was fear. 

     Don’t leave me again. 

     He slid his thumbs along both sides of Alistair’s jaw, his fingers splaying out along his cheeks.

     You can’t leave me again. His grip tightened as though he could imprint that message with his fingertips. Looking somewhat graver than before, Alistair hesitated, then lowered his arms, flinching at the stiffness from holding them in place for so long. His eyes shifted between each of Seto’s, and seeing no push-back there, mirrored the gesture, raising his own hands to Seto’s face, his skin cool from resting against the window, though that wasn’t why the light touch made him shiver. 

     Finally, Seto lowered his head and kissed him. It wasn’t a display of affection or pleasure. Not joy that they were finally reunited. Not relief. 

     As they lay on the futon together, Alistair willingly, eagerly pulling Seto on top of him, Seto gazed down at him, tensing the muscles in his arms which caged Alistair beneath him.    

     I won’t let you leave me again.