"Honey," I call in a perverse parody of those stupid, campy old sitcoms, "I'm home!"
I managed to startle him, it seems, if the way he jolts, legs dropping hard off the desk, is any indication. Yami being Yami, though, he recovers quickly. "Well, you're exactly who I wasn't expecting to see tonight. Manage to give your keepers the slip?"
Okay, I was expecting him to recover quickly -- I mean, hell, it's Yami, and that's just how he is -- but I wasn't expecting the heavy dose of venom in his voice. Maybe I should have; didn't I just finish thinking to m yself that he can sometimes be a bit of a prick?
"And somehow managed to end up here. Hmm, I wonder how that could have happened?"
"Take a wrong turn at Kaiba's office maybe?"
"Or maybe at the lake. I do seem to have found the cat house."
"Ha-ha, very funny. So I'm catty now, am I?"
You have no idea. "All I'm saying is, claws in, Pharaoh."
"That was pretty damn weak, even for you."
I roll my eyes heavily. "Fine, sure, pick on the sickie. Just because I'm not up to my usual witty glory is no reason to--"
"Wait a minute," he cuts in sharply. "What do you mean? You're still sick?" I nod slowly, and he exhales a groan. "I thought Kaiba-sama was supposed to fix that."
"I guess there aren't enough master vampires in the world to fix all the shit that's wrong with me. The brat tells me I should just be glad to be awake." Wow, that came out kind of gloomy.
"What's left?"
Dare I hope it? This almost sounds like my Yami again.
"Well, I can see most of the time, so that's good." Color me impressed: I even manage to sound nonchalant about the whole thing. "I can still use my abilities -- also in the good column -- but I get tired more easily when I do. And I seem to have developed a growth that looks strangely like my twin, but the jury's still out on that one."
And I've yet to take another step into the room. I haven't even closed the door behind me yet. A lesser man might think I'm afraid of him, but that's not the truth. I'm not afraid of him. It's more that I'm worried about how this conversation is going to go, and when -- if -- he throws me out, I'd rather not have as much ground to cover.
"Well, both your 'growth' and Kaiba-sama," there's that spitting venom again, so I guess Seto really pissed him off this time, "warned me to stay away from you, so that's what I've been doing."
Wait, wait, wait-- What? "What?" Another thought abruptly occurs to me. "And since when do you listen to what anyone else tells you to do?"
Faster than my eyes can track, which is actually really saying something lately, he's around the desk and practically in my face. "Since Kaiba fucking Seto informed me it was my fault we all ended up in the damn dream world! Since he threatened to kill me if I ever laid a hand on you again! And, oh yeah, since your little brother promised to gleefully kill me in my sleep."
"Not if I kill them both first," I mutter darkly. Seriously, barely letting me out of the house on my own is one thing. Threatening to kill him is entirely something else altogether.
Thankfully, that seems to take some of the wind out of his sails. "You didn't know about this?"
For some reason, that sort of pisses me off, more than I already was. "What planet are you on right now? How often have you known me to let my brother fight my battles? Exactly never. Seriously, what the hell?"
"Because Kaiba's right: it was my fault we ended up in there." If I weren't looking right at him, I would swear I'm talking to someone else altogether. Or what the hell, maybe pod people are for real, because this doesn't sound like my Yami at all.
"Well, he's wrong, and so are you if you honestly believe that crap. You aren't the one who called that demon down. I believe that was -- wait a minute, let me think about this -- oh yeah, it was me. If anyone's to blame for this mess, it's me."
"If we hadn't fought, though, you wouldn't have been off with Kaiba and in a position for that to happen."
I shrug one shoulder with a casualness I don't particularly feel. "It would have happened sooner or later. That thing was living in my head for years after all." I take a deep breath and release it as a sigh. I feel like I've been doing that a lot lately, and it makes me feel like Ryou. "Can we not fight about this please? It might be the stupidest thing we've fought about yet."
I hear an answering sigh, and I have to resist the urge to do the same again. This isn't working. This whole thing sucks. In fact, the majority of the last two weeks has sucked so badly that I almost have to wonder if I'm still in that damn dream world. Hell, maybe I only dreamed waking up -- and wouldn't that just be a bitch? To have survived all of that and think I'm free, only to still actually be caught up in the dream?
"So what are we going to fight about then?" It's said so quietly that I can barely hear it over the sound of the door finally closing behind me, but hell, it's there and it's pretty much a goddamn offer, and I find myself answering in kind.
"I'd rather we skip the fighting part completely, if it's all the same to you." I try for a cocky grin, and if the answering smirk that slowly builds on his face is any indication, I think I succeeded. "I'd rather skip to the make-up sex."
His smirk grows and he leans closer to me, and I swear, it's like sex on a stick, sin, and dark chocolate rolled into one. "I can get behind that," he drawls, a hand already fisting in my shirt.
Hallelujah.
"So what's in the folder?" Yami asks a few hours later.
"Ugh, business," I complain grumpily. "Not appropriate pillow talk."
"What pillow?"
"Wiseass." Either way, I'm already up, pulling on my jeans, and retrieving my folder where it got dropped a while back. That would be what I got for carrying it in the back of my jeans on a glorified booty call, but it seemed the safest place for it when I was preparing to scale a fence to get off Treeboy's property.
"So what does Kaiba have you working on now?"
I'm not going to comment about how annoyed he sounds for someone who just got laid. I'm not going to comment on how quickly he's throwing all his layers back on. Hell, I'm not even going to comment on how it makes me more nervous when Treeboy doesn't ask me to take on these little assignments.
"Seth actually asked me look into this, not Treeboy." Okay, and now I sound way too annoyed for just finally getting laid -- and that's no damn fair.
"Not a lot of difference between the two of them."
"No one ever said you had to help."
14 June 2010
I was starting to think this chapter was going to get away from me, but I persevered somehow. I think I'm at about the halfway point of the story and to my word count goal.
I'm still on for JulNoWriMo, and I'm even relatively certain it will be a Yu-Gi-Oh story - but AU, oh so very AU.
On the novel front, it looks like there will be some movement on The Preterhumans front soon. I can't say much more than that, not for another month, but here's hoping!
See everyone next chapter!
Ta!
~Apollymi