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Deliverance	By : thelostogg Category: Yu-Gi-Oh > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 8811 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh. I don't profit from these ramblings.

Chapter List
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Chapter 4

                “What the hell are you doing here?” Seto demanded, glaring over his desk at a woman who was so beautiful that it nearly hurt to look at her.

                His sometimes lover, sometimes therapist rolled her eyes, impervious to his glare. “Good to see you again too, Seto. Your brother left me a voice mail last night. He said that you needed help.”

                That little traitor. No wonder he’d taken off for lunch without even bothering to check in with Seto.

                “Help? Only help that knows how to solder. I have a bit of a mess on my hands to clean up from yesterday.”

                “The gas line? “ She raised a luxurious eyebrow. “You ended up with damage this far away?”

                “Just to all of our unshielded electronics… Our development servers were protected. Everything else is down. So, if you wouldn’t mind just reminding me that I’m antisocial and need to get out more, I can get back to work and you can tell my dear brother than he can stop worrying about me.”

                “Fat chance. Are you alright, Seto?”

                “Perfect,” Seto said quickly.

                “Are you sure? Mokuba said he was worried you might be experiencing some violent tendencies?”

                Seto forced his face to stay blank. “Violent tendencies?”

                “His words, not mine. It seemed like there was a lot on his mind. He spent eight minutes rambling on my voice mail.”

                Seto pretended to go through a stack of papers on his desk. “A few flashbacks, the explosion yesterday freaked me out a little. I think it freaked me out a bit more than Mokuba was prepared for. He tends to worry about everything these days.”

                “He cares a lot about you,” she agreed. “Do you want to schedule some time to talk about it?”

                “What do you think?”

                “Just checking. I’ll call him back and let him know you’re not going to go insane and blow up the building, then, shall I?”

                “Why? What did he tell you?”

                The terrified expression on Seto’s face must have been obvious, but after a few seconds of careful scrutiny, the woman’s face broke into a wry grin. “Cut the bullshit, please. It’s not cute, it’s not productive, and it scares him half to death.”

                “Sorry,” Seto recovered with the best smirk he could manage.

                “Alright,” his intruder smiled brightly, spun on her high heels, and headed for the office door, “If you do feel like talking, you know where to find me.”

                “Will do. Thanks for coming all this way.”

                And then Seto remembered the make shift restraints in which he had left Jounouchi. He had left the other man half naked, but covered with a blanket of course, strapped down to the queen sized mattress in his guestroom. He had also left him heavily sedated. The drugs would fade within six hours, so Jou was likely to be wide awake, possibly free, and furious when Seto got home. If he was still even there.

                “Hey, Temari,” he called out suddenly, “I do need some advice about something.”

                She stopped in the door, staring back at him uncertainly, then shut the door and returned to her spot in front of his desk. “What’s up?”

                “One of my employees has been acting weird,” Seto said carefully. “Talking about killing themselves. But he’s not acting depressed at all. He talks about his plans to kill himself like it’s no big deal. And he’s trying to act tough, like nothing in the world, even torture or rape, could faze him. He’s so cool about it that it makes me cringe, like it’s some kind of bad joke. Should I take him seriously, or should I fire his ass?”

                “You’ve actually talked to one of your employees?”

                “So what if I did? But seriously, if someone’s not all emotional about it, is it a safe bet that they’re faking it? Just saying stupid shit to get attention?”

                The woman stared at him for a moment, as if trying to read the motivation for his question in his eyes. “No,” she said at last. “It’s usually the opposite. Someone who is thinking about suicide, but who hasn’t quite committed to the idea, will be an emotional wreck. Usually, once someone who is depressed decides that they will kill themselves, their mood improves. They become calmer, happier, and seem like they’re less depressed because they feel like they are in control over when their suffering will end. They often have already planned how to kill themselves, updated their will, given away possessions they hold dear—that kind of thing. The fact that this person is talking about killing themselves calmly would make me more worried than if they were crying and wailing about it.”

                “Is there any way to tell if they are faking it?”

                “No, not really. Even if they’re not set on the idea, challenging them about it can push them to kill themselves just to prove that what they’re feeling is real. Even if they’re not going to hurt themselves, it can cause incredible psychological damage, to invalidate someone’s emotions by calling their bluff. Seto,” she shut her eyes and seemed to be trying to get control of herself. “You didn’t say something stupid to him, did you?”

                “Like what?”

                “Like accuse him of faking it for attention?”

                “No,” said Seto automatically. When Temari didn’t look away, he huffed. “Well, I might have.”

                “And what happened?”

                Seto rubbed the small white gauze bandage over the puncture wound in his palm. He didn’t want to remember the way Jou had held that damn little pistol steady, turned it on himself without the slightest twitch, and pulled the trigger. The stupid Mutt had actually pulled the trigger. Seto’s pinched skin, wedging between the hammer and the small primer charge in the bullet casing was the only thing that had kept the Mutt alive last night. “I don’t think that really matters…”

                “Seto…”

                “I’m sure he’s fine,” Seto insisted. “I made sure he was someplace where he couldn’t hurt himself.”

                “Seto, if you really want to help him, talk to his family. He will probably need to be admitted to a facility that can keep him safe.”

                “I don’t think he has any family left,” said Seto carefully. “I know his friends either lost track of him years ago or…” Seto almost grimaced at the memory of Jou’s dead eyes as he shot the friend Hirutani in the chest. Even when bits of blood-soaked tissue splattered on Jou, he hadn’t responded at all. “Well, I think he doesn’t have many friends left, either.”

                “What aren’t you telling me?”

                “Nothing,” said Seto, returning his attention to the papers in front of him.

                “Do you really want to help this guy?”

                Seto stared at her, trying not to radiate the uncertainty he was feeling. Hi imagination was painting vivid pictures in his mind—images of Jou hanging from the very restraints Seto had tied him down with, strangling in his guest room, or Jou’s crumpled body sprawled across the hardwood floors. “Yes, I really want to help him.”

                “Do you want to help him enough to stop lying to me?”

                Seto pressed his lips together and glanced up at her for a moment. “It’s… complicated…”

                “Fine,” she said with an indifferent grin.   “If he dies, feel free to blame yourself. I promise to say I told you so and let you stew in your own guilt.”

                Seto clenched his teeth together to keep his face still. He had to fix this. He couldn’t keep drugging the idiot, and he couldn’t keep Jou tied up in his guest room forever. But he would never be able to get any work done if he was constantly wondering if the damn Mutt would still be alive at the end of the day.

                He had to get home. He cocked his head to the side and smiled brightly. “I’m always amazed that someone as sweet as you is still single, Temari.”

                “Likewise. I hope your afternoon sucks, Seto.”

                Seto turned back to the paperwork and watched the door shut behind her out of the corner of his eye. He slowly counted to thirty in his head, then leapt from his chair and rushed around the desk and out the door himself. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” he said to his receptionist on the way out.

                “But the Board of Directors meeting is in two hours!” his secretary shouted.

                “Tell them I’ve had a family emergency. Mokuba can chair the damn meeting for me.”

                “But…” His secretary ran to keep up with him in the hallway. “Isn’t Mokuba…? I thought he was your only family…”

                “He is,” Seto said immediately. “Call it a personal emergency then.”

                “And what about your meeting with the programmers for the new arena holograms?”

                “Don’t care,” said Seto, hopping into a half-full elevator just before the door shut. People in the elevator shuffled nervously, inching away from him. He pulled out his cell phone and called his driver. “I’m on my way down,” he said without waiting for the man to say hello.

                Each second that ticked by during the drive from his office to his house felt like an eternity. He forced himself to think about coding, rather than think about all of the things inside of the guestroom that Jou could use to hurt himself. Jou seemed to have an extensive knowledge of how to cause harm to others, if the state of Hirutani’s body was any hint, and Seto didn’t want to imagine what might happen if Jou became determined to hurt himself through any available means. Unfortunately, he did imagine it. Over and over again, during the entire twelve minute drive, he imagined Jou getting a single hand free and breaking the lamp on the nightstand to use the shards to cut his wrists, or getting completely free and throwing himself headfirst out the window. Jou would never find the pistol he’d brought into Seto’s home, he had made sure of that, but there were so many other things that suddenly seemed dangerous.

                He didn’t even bother taking off his shoes when he got home. He just ran for the stairs, flying up them three at a time. When he threw open the door to Jou’s room, he swallowed hard, preparing himself for whatever he might find.

                On the bed, still in a happily oblivious drug-induced coma, Jou snored. He hadn’t moved from where Seto had left him.

                Seto shut the door and leaned against it, trying to calm down his racing heart. He shouldn’t be panicked over this twit. If Jou wanted to throw his life away, it wasn’t Seto’s business. It shouldn’t matter to him.

                But it did. No matter how hard Seto shook his head and tried to force logic and indifference to overrule his emotions, at the moment he felt like everything in his world hinged on whether Jounouchi lived or died.

                Gulping down as many deep breaths as he could, Seto forced himself to relax, forced his heart rate back down to normal, and casually sat down in the wingback chair that he’s placed beside the bed yesterday.

                He would fix this. Whatever the fuck was wrong with the Mutt, Seto would fix it.

                Somewhere in the back of his mind, a tiny sliver of guilt gnawed away at him, whispering that whatever was wrong with the Mutt was all his fault. If he hadn’t set out to fuck Jounouchi over after high school, if he hadn’t been so pissed off when Jou turned him down at Yugi’s graduation party, the idiot would have gone to college with his friends, spent his life managing a fast food restaurant, married Mai Valentine and lived happily ever after. If Seto hadn’t been such an ass, Jou’s eyes might still have a bit of their old life and light left in them.

                Seto’s stomach sank as he crushed those emotions and buried them deep inside. He might have ruined the Mutt’s life, but he was still alive. As long as Jounouchi was alive, Seto could fix it. Somehow.
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Deliverance