WAIT FOR YOU FOREVER (A.K.A. SLEEPLESS II)

WAIT FOR YOU FOREVER CHAPTER 11 He slept fitfully as Seto made udon noodles. They ate in silence. The interrogation was coming. Seto cleared the bowls and made tea. Mokuba knew better than to say he didn't want any. He sat with the cup folded between his fingers, staring at the steam, at nothing, waiting for his brother to start. "Do you want to leave home?" Seto's voice was harsh. Mokuba immediately felt at least ten times more miserable. He shook his head. "Because we can get you an apartment." Mokuba turned the cup in his hands and shook his head again. Seto remained silent, waiting for a verbal response. Mokuba summoned up his voice to reply with a small, "No. Thank you." "Where did you go?" Again, Seto?s voice seemed to graze his ears. "I - " Mokuba ran through a list of locations in his head, and found that he didn't want to tell Seto some of the places he'd been. Besides, Seto probably already knew - he could spend his money in the right places to get the right information. What his brother was really asking was, -Did you do anything stupid? Any blackmail material?- "I - " Mokuba found that his throat wasn't assisting him at all. He coughed and rushed out, "There was something, this guy, we..." His fidgeting went up a notch, and he looked anywhere but the face of the man opposite. "At the club, I know," said Seto blandly. "It took some time to find him, and he didn't want to help us. But," Mokuba thought his voice turned wolfish, "he was persuaded to cooperate." Mokuba's fingers went white against the teacup. "You didn't...?" He felt desperately unhappy. His brother had been party to some extreme behaviour over the years. The guy had done nothing wrong. Not really. There was a pause, as the older man glared, and the younger man refused to look up. Then Seto replied abruptly, "I wanted to. No. You're an adult." He paused again, longer, then spoke softly, "I don't always do what I want, Mokuba, look at me." So Mokuba looked up, because when Seto asked like that, with that edge to his voice, it would be stupid and childish to refuse. And he noticed that Seto's shirt was creased around the elbows, as if the sleeves had been pushed up carelessly, and he noticed that Seto's liqueur-brown hair was rumpled at one side, as if it had been slept in clumsily, and the worry lines on Seto's temples made Mokuba feel stupid and childish anyway. But most of all he noticed that Seto's eyes were such a deep, deep blue, and he wondered how he could have ever compared them to another person's, or butterflies, or the sky, or a gem in a watch face, and a small bubble of hysterical laughter fizzed in his belly. Back to square one. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he babbled, and he meant it, but he couldn't stop a giggle escaping. "It's just... you," giggle "the watch..." he thwacked his arm out on the table so Seto could see, "I thought - " he put his face into his other hand and collapsed with broken laughter. Seto leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and sneered, and Mokuba kept laughing and laughing and hating himself for making Seto look like that, and Seto spat -What is wrong with you?- and got up and left, and Mokuba laughed and laughed, and laughed until he started sobbing (dry like crackled grass and kitten bones) into his arms, and he was -so sick- of this shit, and wished he'd never opened his mouth. Except that Seto -didn't- cross his arms or sneer, he just waited for Mokuba to calm down. And when Seto asked, "What's wrong?" it was such a soft plea that hot tears were halfway down Mokuba's face before he realised they had left his eyes. And it was such a relief to -finally cry-, that he didn't bother trying to answer, because he knew his reply would never really - could never - satisfy the question. Instead, he watched his brother watching him through his tears (which was almost poetic), and tried to stop his nose from running (which was not), and whispered, "I'm so tired, I'm sorry, I'm so tired." NOTE/S: So... should I stop here? Review and tell me!!! I think this might be the end of the story... Thanks again to all who have been reading. ;)