Nothing Quite Like

Title: Nothing Quite Like [5/5]

Author: Angryhamster

Rating: NC-17 [this part R]

Pairing: Seto/Bakura (Bakura/Ryou also implied).

Beta: Whosjeebus

Spoilers: Up to 'Battle City' may be mentioned. Set right after, so nothing
beyond.

Warnings: None to speak of. Unless the dub names bother you, that is.

Disclaimer: I wish that YGO was mine. I really, really do... It's not,
though.

Summary: Bakura takes issue with Seto's work habits, but how is he going
to promote change? In a completely bizarre and twisted way, of course.

Notes: I can't believe this took three months to write. I suck.

*

When Seto awoke, he felt rested for the first time in about as long as he could
remember. He shifted slightly, and it was then that he realized he had several
aches he couldn't remember getting.

In fact, the last thing he remembered was-- SHIT! He sat bolt upright in the
bed, looking around. The last thing he remembered was coming home to find Bakura
in his living room, and then... And then... And then, everything was... Hazy.
Seto Kaiba didn't do 'hazy', so he put it out of his mind for the moment and
glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 11:23am... Christ, it was almost noon.
Had he really slept through the whole night and most of the morning?

Well, the office could do without him for one morning, he reasoned. If it couldn't,
why the hell was he signing off on so many extortionate salaries every month?
He sighed and rolled out of bed, the need to urinate overwhelming. He couldn't
remember the last time he had been to the bathroom, probably some time at the
office the evening before, so it was hardly surprising. He stumbled into the
bathroom, yawning, scrubbing at his eyes with one hand.

Whatever had happened the night before between him and Bakura, he was certainly
feeling more refreshed now, Seto mused. He rested one hand against the wall
above his head as he relieved himself, looking downward to notice a variety
of marks across his skin. Christ, Bakura had certainly done a number on him...
Why the hell couldn't he remember?

Washing his hands, he studied his reflection in the mirror. Bite and scratch
marks aside, he looked better than he had in weeks; the sallow sheen was gone
from his skin, as were the bags from under his eyes. And actually, he felt better
than he had in months. Although he would never admit it (certainly not out loud),
he was actually somewhat grateful to Bakura. A night off and a lie in had been
exactly what he'd needed, and he should be able to attack all the problems at
the office afresh this afternoon. Hell, it was even remotely possible that his
absence had caused a flurry of work and competence in the office due to anxiety...
Though he doubted it.

He took a quick shower, mentally running through the list of tasks he'd have
to get through today. There were no meetings scheduled, but he would need to
have a little talk with the department heads, and the team leader in charge
of the satellite upgrade program; see what could be done about speeding things
along... And of course, being that it was a Saturday, it was entirely possible
that any number of board members might 'happen by' or telephone him in order
to discuss some completely inconsequential matter-- purely for the sake of bolstering
their own sense of involvement. Seto sighed heavily. He hated working weekends.
Not that he objected in principle, but once the weekday day-to-day pressures
were removed, people seemed to be of the impression that he would be more approachable,
and were far more likely to bother him.

Mokuba would probably call later too, to check in, he always did when spending
the weekend away from home. Of course, Seto knew his brother well enough to
know that the calls were more for Mokuba's piece of mind than his own, but continued
to play the part of the over-protective sibling for Mokie's sake. After all,
it would hurt Mokuba's pride if he thought his brother knew he needed to check
in with him sometimes.

Stepping out of the shower, Seto roughly towel-dried his hair, wrapping another
around his waist. Walking into the bedroom, he cast a glance at the bedside
clock, but his attention was quickly diverted to the man reclining on the mattress.
Bakura, wearing only his boxers, was lying flat on his back, one leg dangling
off the bed, the other bent at the knee. His arms were folded beneath his head,
and he was gazing at Seto with a bemused but slightly wary expression.

"Sleep well?" he inquired, a faint smile lingering on his lips.

Seto hesitated. "Fine," he allowed grudgingly, after a moment. It
was something of an understatement, but he had no intention of letting Bakura
know how much the previous evening had relaxed him. Bakura shifted, sitting
up, and something in the fluidity of his movement triggered something in Seto;
something between memory and instinct, tugging at the back of his mind. He studied
Bakura's face, and it occurred to him that he was being watched in the exact
same way he was watching: being studied and examined for reaction. Something
was... not quite right here.

"What are you still doing here, anyway?" he asked, crossing to the
wardrobe. "I thought you'd be on your way home by now to terrorize small
children and animals, or... whatever it is you do on weekends..." He yanked
a long-sleeved black top over his head, and missed most of Bakura's reply. He
hastily stepped into underwear and a pair of pants and strolled back outside
with them unzipped. "...Or did I wear you out last night?" He couldn't
resist adding, a small smug grin tugging at his lips.

"Not at all," Bakura replied, sounding slightly bored. "I said
I just didn't feel like sitting through school today."

"It's Saturday. Aw, did you get detention for mouthing off to one of the
teachers?" Seto asked distractedly, pulling on one of his boots.

"Ryou Bakura has never once been in detention," Bakura replied, amused.
"Besides, it's Monday."

Seto paused mid-motion, foot halfway into his other boot. "No, it isn't,"
he said, automatically. "It's Saturday."

"It's not," Bakura said lightly. He shrugged. "Check and see
if you don't believe me."

Seto tugged on his boot and walked over to the dresser, snatching his PDA from
it. A quick glance at the clock and day planner informed him that it was, indeed,
Monday. How could it be, when yesterday was Friday? But there was no evidence
that his PDA had been tampered with, and anyway-- what would be the point? Two
steps outside the door of his quarters and he could verify the date for himself.
Therefore, it definitely was Monday.

Seto's throat constricted. Monday. He was missing two whole days of his life--
forty eight hours... Or more. How was that even possible? He gaped at the offending
device before dropping it back onto the top of the dresser. He turned to find
Bakura regarding him with shadowed eyes and a slight smirk, and suddenly-- things
started falling into place.

He remembered coming home and finding Bakura waiting for him, remembered dragging
him into the bedroom and fucking him, and then-- Everything was indistinct,
blurred at the edges, but he had a vague sense of wrongness... Anger twisted
in his stomach, and it was suddenly accompanied with the feeling of panic and
terror, and he remembered Bakura leaning over him as he asked--

"Bakura, what the fuck have you done?!"

Bakura paled slightly at that, shrugging with one shoulder. "I'm sure
I don't know what you're talking about."

Seto's anger suddenly grew into rage, and he crossed the room in a few short
steps and dropped onto the bed, pinning Bakura by the arms, pressing him down
into the mattress.

"I won't ask you again, Bakura. What did you do?" he gritted out
through clenched teeth. Beneath him, Bakura squirmed slightly, silver eyebrows
knitting slightly as he stared up with narrowed angry eyes, clearly contemplating
the best method to weasel out of the situation. Eventually, he seemed to decide
on a course of action, and quit struggling.

"I drugged you," he said simply. Seto's mouth dropped open in shock.

"You... you what?!" he exploded, and Bakura took advantage
of his momentary lapse in concentration to slip out from under him. He backed
up to the armchair where his clothes were draped, and began getting dressed.
Seto simply stared at him in amazement.

"I drugged you," Bakura repeated, a cloud of silver-white emerging
from the neck of his t-shirt as he smoothed it down over his stomach. "Look,
Kaiba, the truth of it is this: you needed a fucking break."

"So... you drugged me," Seto said, flatly. The shock was beginning
to wear off a little, and his thinking processes were starting to function again.
"Explain to me how those two concepts are in any way connected."

Bakura shrugged, tugging up his jeans and buttoning them. "It's very simple.
If you keep working the way you have been, you're gonna kill yourself. You're
at school, you're at the office, you're duelling, you're looking after that
kid... You can't keep it up, and you know it. If you try, you're going to find
yourself in the hospital-- if you're lucky. And what then? Who runs the mighty
Kaiba Corp? Who looks after the kid?"

"I was wrong," Seto said, archly. "This is the longest
conversation we've ever had. And yet you still haven't made your point. You
drugged me why?"

The spirit sighed, his eyes rolling skyward as he toed on his shoes. "Because,
you fool, I knew it was the only way to get you take some time off. And I knew
that once you actually had a decent night's sleep, you might realize the damage
you've been doing to yourself."

"And I'm supposed to believe you're doing this out of the goodness of
your heart? Is this the part where you tell me you're madly in love with me
and you want to marry me?" Seto asked, sarcasm and disbelief dripping from
every word. He wasn't sure if he should be infuriated or worried; while there
was a clear violation of his personal liberties here, he was far more concerned
with Bakura's reasons for doing it. If he had, miraculously, spouted
some kind of sentiment and emotion, Seto would have to find a way to deal with
him, and fast. The only reason he'd even considered getting into this in the
first place was because he was sure that Bakura had no interest in a relationship
or a romance. This was meant to be about attraction and convenience, nothing
more.

Bakura snorted. "If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Besides,
I said 'a' decent night's sleep..." Bakura strolled out of the bedroom
and into the living room, and Seto followed, still slightly dazed. The spirit
picked up his coat and shrugged into it, heading for the door. "By the
way," he called over his shoulder, before turning with an amused smile
gracing his lips. "You really make a fucking delicious uke when you let
your inhibitions down." He winked, and opened the door.

For the second time in the conversation, Seto simply stared at him in shocked,
abject horror, and that was simply unacceptable. Everything made sense to him
now: the unusual aches, the scratches and bite marks... That bastard! Seto raced
after him, catching the white haired spirit in the hall and pressing him against
the wall.

"Do you mean to tell me that you... you..." He sputtered, unable
to find words to adequately express his rage at that particular moment.

"I think the phrase you're thinking of is, 'took advantage of you',"
Bakura supplied, that damn grin still curving the corners of his mouth upwards.
"And I suppose that might have been the case... But you were certainly
very willing at the time. Very willing," he repeated, and the smirk
seemed to broaden.

"I was drugged!" Seto spat, and he had the sudden urge to shake the
spirit until he lost that infuriating smile. "You drugged me! I wasn't
in my right mind! And you-- you--"

"Actually," Bakura said, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing
a small bottle of pills, "I wouldn't be entirely too sure of that."

"What bull are you spouting now?" Seto asked, his eyes narrowing.
"You said it yourself-- if you gave me drugs, then I can hardly be--"

"Well," Bakura interrupted smoothly, "that would very much depend
on the type of drugs, now wouldn't it?" He slipped the bottle into Seto's
fingers. Seto looked down at the container resting against his palm, squinting
at the small square printout on the front. While he was distracted, Bakura leaned
forward and kissed him; little more than a brush of lips against lips, but somehow
Bakura managed to bite him lightly. Seto twisted away, and then the spirit's
mouth was against his ear. "You didn't do anything you didn't want to do,"
he said quietly. "You just didn't know you wanted to do it."

Seto blinked, but Bakura was already pulling away, standing in the doorway.
"See you later," he said simply, and was gone. Seto stared after him,
watching the empty doorframe as if it could provide some sort of enlightenment
or information. He blinked again.

What the fuck?! Clearly, Bakura was out of his mind, Seto thought. Whatever
drugs the spirit had given him, they had obviously twisted his consciousness
so much that he was virtually someone completely different while under their
influence. Angry, he slammed the door Bakura had left open and stalked back
into his quarters.

He was fuming inside. What right did Bakura have to-- Where did he get the
nerve-- How could he possibly think that--

Seto was so angry he couldn't finish a single thought, the rage and frustration
rendering him inarticulate, even to himself. The only clear, coherent thought
he could manage was that he was going to kill Bakura when he laid eyes
on him next. He'd make the bastard pay for this tenfold, regardless of whether
he was right or not.

And he is right, a tiny voice in his mind supplied. He is right,
and you know it. For some reason, the nagging voice in his head always seemed
to sound like Mokuba, which Seto suspected was because he'd heard his younger
brother voice similar concerns on so many occasions. Bakura (and Mokuba, too,
for that matter) were quite correct in the idea that he was doing himself harm
by working too long. Much as it pained him to admit it, Seto could easily feel
the change in himself now as opposed to a couple of days ago; there was a world
of difference in terms of his energy level and how he looked, and that frantic,
awful sense of weariness, which had accompanied him for weeks without him even
noticing, was now gone.

Fine, he grudgingly agreed. So the spirit had a point, maybe he did need to
figure out some way to cut back hours-- somewhere, from something. Once he got
to the office that afternoon, he'd see how things had progressed without him,
and if nothing nightmarish had happened... then maybe... God, he didn't even
know where to begin. Seto sighed heavily. Whatever he did, wherever he decided
to cut back, it wasn't going to be easy.

Of course, before any of that, he had something very important to check. He
sank into the chair in front of his laptop and booted the system, his fingers
drumming on the keyboard as he waited for the machine to run through its usual
routine and fanfare. He set the little bottle of tablets down in front of him,
staring at it. As intent as he was on making plans-- both to begin rearranging
his schedule and for his revenge on Bakura-- there was something he needed to
do first.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the spirit's words out of his
head. 'You didn't do anything you didn't want to,' indeed. Bakura had
to have been trying to cover, bullshitting him somehow, because there was no
way that what the spirit said could have been true.

While it wasn't as though Seto had never been on bottom, there was something
in the way Bakura had said it that implied... Well, that was just it, wasn't
it? He wasn't sure what Bakura had been implying, but he was definitely
trying to impart something; the smugness of his attitude and the amused lilt
in his tone alluded to it in spades. And somewhere, just beyond the reach of
his conscious memory, he could feel something else, a niggling sensation of--

Seto thumped his fist on the table beside him in frustration, the laptop jumping
slightly. He could almost remember, so nearly-- But every time he tried to push,
every time he almost got close to remembering anything, it danced away from
him again. He knew he would remember, eventually-- a few little snatches had
already filtered through to him through the gauzy fog. He was sure that he would
be able to connect them at some point and figure out exactly what had happened
over the last two days while he was out of it, and when he did... When he did,
he was going to come up with a plan, and Bakura was going to pay.

The laptop jingled as it completed its boot sequence, and Seto quickly opened
the browser and typed the name of the drug into the search window. Several hits
were returned, most of them from various websites which offered illicit prescriptions,
presumably where Bakura had gotten them from in the first place. The fifth entry
on the list was from a medical database, however, so he opened it in a new window,
waiting for the page to load.

The information listing included a photograph which seemed to match the little
pills in the bottle in front of him. He skimmed the production and manufacturer
information, skipping directly to the effects and intended use. The information
provided on the site (which he fully intended verify later) indicated it was
generally used by psychotherapists in order to assist with sessions of hypnosis
in order to reduce inhibitions and lower the subject's natural internal resistance.
There were also mentions of side effects, but nothing that would indicate that
Bakura had been lying to him.

So... Did that mean that buried somewhere in his subconscious was some sort
of deep-seated desire to submit to Bakura? He didn't believe that, not for a
second. But then... how did that explain what the spirit had been implying...?

He could almost hear Bakura's laughing voice in the back of his head, standing
between him and the memories he wanted to recover. 'You didn't do anything
you didn't want to do.' God, his arrogance was infuriating, almost as if
he had planned this, all of this, right from the start... Seto's fingers curled
into fists at his sides, the anger starting to rise in his chest once again.

Bakura was really going to pay.

*

fin

*

Notes: I mistakenly thought this took two months to write, in actuality, it
only took two... which is still too much. :D The majority of the time was devoted
to the whole 'drugged Seto' chapter, which I was very nervous and anxious about
writing. I hope he didn't come off as too uke, but really-- well, he was drugged.
:D This fic was inspired by an image from the Bakura/Seto doujinshi ''Eclipse",
where Seto seems to be laid up in bed and Bakura is 'looking after' him-- but
he's still got the little devil horns. I have NO idea what's going on in this
pic, but it gave me the idea for this story.

I couldn't close up my notes without giving a special thanks to my supreme
and awesome beta, Whosjeebus. It's highly unlikely that this fic would have
been finished without her constant support, feedback and lurve. Aside from being
a great beta and much with the encouragement, she's a great friend and I'm looking
forward to seeing her in October for Yaoi Con. Seriously, CJ-- there's no way
I would have finished this story, all 13000 words of it, without you. Thanks.

FYI-- in case anyone was wondering, the title of the fic is from the NIN song
'The Only Time'. a listen, I think it's very apropos for this fic, as is VAST's
'Ecstasy'-- all the chapter titles are taken from random lyrics out of these
two songs. But werelittle too obvious to use for the title. :D Look up the lyrics,
I bet the subtitles will make LOADS more sense then... :D There may be a sequel
for this story at some point-- it *was* intended to be a one-shot, but as I
was writing the final paragraphs, my Seto muse was harassing me for a sequel
because he doesn't like the thought of Bakura 'getting away with it'. However,
my next project is a Seto/Joey story, in which he is not drugged or uke-d up
in any way so maybe that will placate him...

And now, FB responses, because the reviews for this story have really made
me glow, for serious. :D

Mehla Seraphim - I'm very glad you enjoyed the story so far, and I hope
this conclusion is to your satisfaction. Hope you didn't get into any trouble
for not doing your work, tho... :D Thanks for reviewing!

Kanzia - *jawdrop moment* OMG, a review from someone whose fic I know
and love! Those are especially awesome. I'm very fond of 'Everywhere and Nowhere',
and I'm thrilled you like this story. I hope you liked the ending, too. Thanks
for taking the time to review, it means a lot. :)

TwilightHunter - Heh. I'm very glad you enjoyed ch4, I wasn't at all
sure about it-- it was the main reason the fic took me so long to write, the
rest of the story came to me very easily. Anyway, I'm glad it worked for you,
and I hope you enjoyed ch5 as much, even if it was smutless. Thanks for reviewing
again! :)

Nancy - Yep, that Bakura's pretty damn evil all right... and that is
why I love him so. :D Glad it's working for you. Thanks for reviewing again!