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

WARNING: Spoilers!

WAIT FOR YOU FOREVER
CHAPTER 3


He was curled up in a familiar bed. Familiar, although it was not his bed, and not his house. Not curled cosily, either, but protectively around the whirlpool where his belly should be. He wasn't crying, but he wasn't -not- crying. It was 1am, and he was too tired to figure out how upset he really was.

He was in Motou Yugi's bedroom - although not in the way that sounds. Yugi very rarely slept there any more, so when Mokuba showed up at his flat the younger Kaiba was welcome to it. This was becoming a regular occurrence. Mokuba wasn't entirely sure if he visited Yugi on these occasions because he thought his friend would be able to help, or if - somewhat sadistically, and in true Kaiba form - Yugi's suffering made him feel better about himself.

He could hear Yugi in the lounge room, muttering. If the other boy was asleep, he'd be sprawled half-over the couch, fingers and eyes twitching, and lips forming words in a kind of pidgin-Ancient Egyptian, alternating between mumbling and calling desperately -

"... no, Atemu ... Pharaoh! ... no, Aibou... Ai...?"

Mokuba shuffled down the bed, and pulled the covers over his ears. He couldn't block the sound right out. But, perversely, he wasn't sure he wanted to. Yugi's pathetic pleading took some of the edge off his own frustration - or else it made a piquant accompaniment to his (rather more self-indulgent) misery. Mokuba knew that Yugi wasn't alright, and he knew that Yugi wasn't getting better. And he also knew that he couldn't do anything to ease Yugi's mind or heart. The kid was sick. When he answered the door to Mokuba that night, the younger Kaiba was shocked to see how dull Yugi appeared. His skin was not just pale, but greyish, his eye sockets were indigo and hollow, rimmed with white and red, and his famous hair barely stood up. Mokuba was also shocked to realise that Yugi was almost four inches shorter than himself. They had been the same height for almost a decade, growing at the same rate - and Mokuba didn't think he'd shot up so much as Yugi had somehow shrunk. Not back to the midget he was in middle-school, but he seemed to be less... there. Thinner. More transparent.

Yugi had briefly mentioned the anniversary of the spirit's... Surely something that exists without a body for five thousand years is already dead? At any rate, Mokuba assumed that the morbid anniversary was more painful than usual for Yugi, as these occasions are wont to be. Mokuba had found the other boy awake at midnight the previous week, sitting with his head in his arms - rocking, rocking - and talking to his extinct other self. Crying. Calling.

"No! No ... Yami ... spirit ... ATEMU!"

Mokuba tuned his face to the pillow to muffle his own frustrated scream. -He's not coming back, Yugi. He's gone. Gone! Just leave it. Move on...- Mokuba thumped the pillow, hard, and sat up, spilling sheets and covers down his torso. Move on. He rubbed his hands over gritty eyes, and ran them through his hair, combing out the night-tangles.

-Your hair is fabulous-.

Apparently in the mood for hitting things, Mokuba slammed his fists into the bed and his thighs, angry, excited, pissed off - remembering Seto's hand at his throat, and his eyes glittering and burning like ice and fire, his own heart thumping, and his brother's face only inches away... Mokuba groaned and winced as his fist came down a little too hard on his leg. "My hair is fabulous? What the fuck, Seto?" He pulled a lock over his shoulder and examined it.

It was soft and strong and shiny, and - in the midnight glow - black. Really black. Not the sort of dark chocolate brown of some people's, and not the blue-black of permanent dye. Black like... Mokuba couldn't summon a poetic simile. The only thing it came close to was the fur of a black cat, and he didn't suppose -Your hair is as black as the black hair of a black cat, only yours is longer- was quite the same as -Your hair is like night-. But his hair -was- pretty spectacular. It was his trademark - almost to the extent of Yugi's. "And for that reason," he said to himself, feeling epic and tragic, "it must be removed."

Sliding out of bed, he padded to the door, pushing it open a fraction to see if Yugi was awake. As Mokuba had found him many times before, Yugi's small frame was half on, half off the couch, one leg over an arm and his head in the gap between the cushions. A blanket lay on the floor. Poor kid, thought Mokuba, staring at the small, worn face. At least he's quietened down. As he tiptoed to the desk and picked up a large pair of scissors, he realised he'd grown used to thinking of Yugi as a kid. His heart went out to the former game king again, and he felt an urge to look after his friend, picking the blanket of the carpet and placing it gently over Yugi's emaciated form. "Sleep well," he whispered, then crept to the bathroom, softly sliding the door closed before he turned on the light.

Blinking in the sudden glare of the fluorescent globe, Mokuba thought his mirror self looked not unlike Yugi - pale and drawn, both more pointy and somehow less structured than a person should look, as if his bones had been sharpened and enlarged and his skin was melting away from them. As he placed the scissors on the side of the sink, Mokuba enjoyed a flash of lucidity, which told him that he was not in the right state of mind to make large decisions, that he was being juvenile and petty, and that he would probably regret his actions in the morning.

That brief glimmer soon disappeared. Mokuba shed his pyjama top and stood semi-naked in Yugi's bathroom at 2am, blades at the ready. In the next room Yugi continued his one-sided sleep conversation, "Atemu... Pharaoh... spirit... aibou..."


NOTE/S: Also, if you want to read an EXCELLENT mokuba/seto story, you can NOT go past "Birthday Wishes" by REM. I have said it before, and I'll say it again, the dom!mokuba in that fic is SUPERB!!!