Moving On | By : NihilEtNemo Category: Yu-Gi-Oh > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1474 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own YuGiOh!, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
“How’s the hand?”
Seto shrugged a little. “About the same as it was yesterday…” Experimentally, he tried to close his left hand into a fist. Three of the fingers and the thumb curled loosely tighter, though the pinky remained utterly immobile, and he sighed and returned it to its normal loosely-curled position. Straightening them was harder.
“Can you flip me off yet?”
With a rather bemused expression, Seto looked up without moving his head, then concentrated on moving his mostly dead hand, painfully straightening the middle finger and curling the others tighter, and held it up to him.
The grin on his companion’s impish face was the response he’d been waiting for. “Good.”
Bakura grabbed that hand and gently straightened all of the fingers, together. He ground his teeth and narrowed his eyes slightly; most of the pain receptors, like all the other nerves everywhere from his forearm down, were dead, but what weren’t flared instantly to life and told him very clearly that he wasn’t supposed to move like this anymore. He ignored it and willed Bakura to keep going.
“You’re continuing the therapy after tomorrow, of course…” Bakura released his hand and sat behind him on the narrow bed, wrapping his arms around his shoulders.
“It isn’t going to be getting any better,” he protested weakly. In fact, it was mostly just a statement. He knew his hand was never going to regain any more mobility than it had now, but yes, he would continue the physical therapy in hopes that maybe someday he could actually use it for something…
He didn’t need to explain himself to Bakura; the erstwhile yami understood him perfectly. “But it won’t get any worse,” he pointed out. Seto nodded slightly and leaned hid head back against his shoulder, loosely holding his arm with his good hand, the bad one resting limply on his lap.
Bakura began to sway back and forth; then again, he was almost never completely still. After a while, he idly traced the scar on his forehead that disappeared into his hair, which was, coincidentally, growing back nicely after the explosion and then being cut, in some places downright shaven, so that they could work on him. It wasn’t anywhere near as long as it used to be, but he looked nice.
“You know,” he said finally, lifting the side of his glasses off his face, then letting them fall again. “I actually like these. You look more grown-up.”
Seto opened his eyes and looked straight ahead. “They’re a sign of the gradual retinal degradation cause by the secondary explosion, at which I happened to be staring. I’m glad you like them, because I’ll be wearing them for years; right up until I go blind.” It wasn’t that Bakura didn’t already know all of this; he had been present when the doctors told him, after all. He just had to point it out, though.
Bakura brushed it off. “That won’t be for ten years or more – they’ll find a way to solve it before then. Until then, you get to look sophisticated.”
He might normally have been irritated by Bakura’s blithe handling of what was really a very serious problem that would likely plague him for the rest of his life, but at the moment, any sort of levity to lift his spirits even slightly was appreciated, and any sort of reassurance and confidence was welcome. Bakura told him it was going to be okay; he had little choice but to believe it actually might be, in time.
Bakura kissed his temple lightly. “From now on, I get to watch you eat. I think you’re losing weight again.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re also not eating.”
Seto shrugged slightly. “I’m not hungry…”
Bakura smirked. “No even for green Jell-O?” he asked, leaning around to kiss him better.
The brunet flushed immediately and dropped his eyes with a tiny smile in an endearing flash of shyness, or at least propriety, but his voice managed to stay steady. “I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for green Jell-O…”
Bakura grinned and turned Seto slightly in his arms, holding his head to kiss him more firmly, his other hand already working to unbutton his shirt while Seto agreeably draped his arms around his waist and held onto him. Maybe they’d actually be left alone long enough this time… since the first time, it seemed they never managed to get enough privacy for him to more than get Seto’s shirt off.
He could have bashed his head into a wall when he heard the door open, and a female’s muffled “oh!”. With a heavy sigh and a matching glare, he looked at the nurse, trying to silently will her away before Seto noticed and cut him off.
Too late. Seto was once more flushed a somewhat magenta-ish hue, and he gently but firmly pushed Bakura back, working with his usable hand to rebutton the two buttons that Bakura had so painstakingly unfastened. The yami gave up with a growl and leaned back against the bed, crossing his arms, waiting.
The nurse stuttered a bit, but thankfully didn’t mention it. “M-Mr. Kaiba, you have some visitors…”
Seto looked (adorably, in Bakura’s opinion) confused. Bakura was the only visitor he ever got, unless there was a servant to bring him clothing, homework, or KaibaCorp work, and there wasn’t any reason for it to be work now…
“Well?” he asked when she didn’t bring them. She seemed flustered as she nodded and left. A moment later, the door opened again, and Seto’s eyes widened just a little in surprise, watching Yami and Jou step into the room.
“Hey, Kaiba…” the blond said, as they hovered near the door, uncertain whether they were welcome or not. Yami was actually looking at him this time, and appeared to be doing much better; Jou was good for him. Seto was vaguely glad to see it.
Bakura responded before he had a chance to, wrapping his arms around his shoulders again. Yami’s eyes showed surprise for a moment, but he understood. “What are you two doing here?” he demanded sneeringly. “We sure as hell weren’t good enough for you before.”
Jou winced, but Yami was apparently undisturbed. Seto touched Bakura’s arm. “Yami, don’t,” he said quietly to him. “They’re under no obligation to visit me…”
Calling him ‘yami’ instead of ‘Bakura’ had the desired effect, i.e. distracting him suitably from the visitors and making him grin to himself and pulled Seto closer. The brunet gave up and allowed it.
For a moment longer, the two only looked at them, especially him. He knew what they were looking at. He looked nothing like he used to… very little like he had the last time they had seen him, even. His hair had been cut so that it was even, of a more normal length than it ever had been before, only an inch or so long. He was wearing glasses, thin for the moment but destined to become progressively thicker as his eyesight steadily deteriorated, with thin blue metal frames. One arm was sitting limply in front of him, and the other was holding onto Bakura’s arm. He had scars on the left side of his face, which he knew were visible under the lights, even if they weren’t discolored, and both hands had scars as well from where he was burned. There were more scars, but his clothing concealed them. It didn’t conceal how thin he was with any real success, though.
“Bakura’s right,” Yami said finally, lowering his eyes briefly in apparent shame. “We should have visited you before; we had no reason not to.”
“You had no reason to, either.” It was Seto who said it, Bakura maintaining his silence.
“Hey,” Jou said before his apparent lover could reply. “You’re in the hospital, and we keep trying to claim you’re our friend even if you don’t want it… we should have visited you. Even if you weren’t our friend, it’d just be common courtesy.”
“So why didn’t you?” Bakura demanded, looking over Seto’s shoulder.
Jou shrugged a little, looking down, ashamed of himself.
“We didn’t think you’d want us to,” Yami told him. “We know you don’t like us, especially after how we treated you before…” I.e. ignored him. “Especially after I blamed you for aibou’s death.”
“Seto had nothing to do with that!” Bakura said angrily, holding him tightly. “Don’t you ever fucking say he did again, or by Ra I will send your shriveled soul-“
“Bakura, stop it!” Seto said sharply. The yami obliged, looking at him curiously as though asking what he had done wrong. “They know I didn’t do it, and furthermore, I blamed myself at the same time they were blaming me…”
Yami nodded, and drew Jou further into the room, to finally sit in the chairs that never got used. “I accept now that you had nothing to do with the accident, and I wish to offer my apologies…”
Seto nodded to accept it. “I don’t really care if you blamed me… It doesn’t matter.”
“No, I suppose not…”
There was an uncomfortable silence for couple seconds, during which Bakura glared at them both with his arms protectively around Seto.
Jou finally spoke up. “So, Kaiba… what’s with the glasses?”
“They help me see,” he answered flatly. Bakura smirked, and Jou rolled his eyes, apparently currently with a greater tolerance for Seto’s attitude now that he was sitting in a hospital bed…
“I mean, are they just temporary, or what?”
“No… I was looking at my experiment when it exploded, and my eyes were damaged. They’re permanent.”
“Oh.” All in all, that seemed like a pretty dumb response, even to himself, apparently. “They make you look really sophisticated, you know… Not that you aren’t, I guess…” He decided to shut up before he insulted Seto for real.
Bakura was smiling a little, though. “See? I told you.” Seto just shrugged. None of this really mattered to him at the moment… he’d rather Yami and Jou just go. They had fulfilled their duty by coming here to make sure he was still alive.
“So, are you going to be coming back to school?” Jou asked curiously. “There’s still a couple weeks left, and we heard from the nurse that you’re getting out tomorrow…” He looked around, evidently seeing the stack of books and papers by the bed, and smiled in chagrin. “You’re still at the head of the class…”
Seto nodded. “Yes, I’m going back.” Bakura opened his mouth to reply, but Seto didn’t let him get anything out before he went on. “I have to graduate, and I’m going to do it this year. When I was supposed to.”
Yami nodded. Evidently, he had also stayed in school. “I applaud that.”
He was so thrilled he got the ex-pharaoh’s stamp of approval. Now, if only he knew what he was going to do after he did graduate… KaibaCorp, of course, but he couldn’t focus on it enough to block out the hole where his brother used to be…
Bakura sensed his turmoil and rubbed his arms, soothing him. Yami watched the interaction and nodded, leaning closer to Jou, who absently put an arm around him. They’d figured out how to survive with most of their sanity intact… He applauded them.
“Is that all?” Bakura asked belligerently. “You’re disturbing my hikari-pretty.” Seto groaned quietly and Jou laughed simultaneously, as Yami raised an eyebrow. He willed them not to say anything about the nickname.
Jou seemed to be about to comment, but Yami pulled on his arm and he just shook his head, getting to his feet. Seto watched listlessly, not really caring.
“We’ll see you in school, then,” Yami said, and Jou nodded.
“Bye, Kaiba. Bakura. Have fun with your new hikari.”
Seto just closed his eyes and waved them away, not much in the mood for teasing, and Bakura growled at them until they left like a vicious dog on a short leash.
“You don’t need to growl at them,” Seto told Bakura resting against him. “I can defend and take care of myself…”
“They’re annoying you,” the yami – his yami – told him. “I don’t want them to.” He kissed the wearily unresisting Seto lightly and held him silently until the nurse returned to tell him that he had to go now.
“Bye,” Seto said, lying down and watching him dully.
“I’ll be back to get you tomorrow, and we’ll get out of this joint for good,” Bakura said, leaning down to kiss him. He kissed him lightly back and watched as he left, then sighed and peeled his glasses off with his good hand, setting them aside and curling up. He didn’t really have any reason to stay awake any more.
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--AUTHOR'S NOTE - 02/11/11--
This story has been abandoned. Reasons:
-I no longer like OOC uke Seto. He's too OOC to fix here.
-Lack of ideas.
-The story is old and crappy.
-This story was a bad idea.
I'm very sorry to everyone who wanted it finished, and thank you for your reviews and interest, but it is dead.
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