Truths

Players:

Seto, Isono, Doctor: SG
Mokuba, Atsuko: Kikyana

A blue-eyed brunet stumbled forward and sprawled out over the patterned sofa, landing ungracefully on his stomach and eventually managing to roll onto his side, muttering to himself. The bottle clutched in his hand sloshed, but the contents hadn't yet spilled; the precious alcohol remained safe. Speaking of the precious alcohol... The bottle raised to his lips without any help from his hand, as far as he could tell, and the cold, burning liquid solace ran down his throat. It was his thirty-third birthday, and he was alone.

Every year this day came around he found it hard to resist the temptation to call. The images of his last encounter with his elder brother were still burned into his mind. "Papa! Papa! Is my dress all right?" Mokuba's daughter bounced up and down on the balls of her feet beside his desk chair, eagerly awaiting the answer. "Oh...it's fine." At some point over the course of three years Mokuba had lost his spark. Without his brother it didn't really seem to matter anymore. Even his children, who at one point has been his inspiration to keep on living, offered little solace from a mind that was far to wrapped up in past events.

As happened every night, one shaking hand reached for his cell phone, and then fell away. Couldn't call... couldn't force the brother whose life he'd ruined to acknowledge him... he didn't deserve him. He had done enough already. He wished Mokuba would just talk to him... it had been two and a half years...

Mokuba shifted slightly to look over at his daughter, but what he was faced with was his wife. "I can't deal with this anymore." What the hell was she talking about now? "You've been this way ever since you stopped talking to your brother." Oh god, not this again. "I don't care what the hell happened between you two. You are going to call him right now." Atsuko demanded, holding out the phone for Mokuba to take. A sigh. "Atsuko, are we going to go through this every month?" "Every month until you stop this." He went quiet, and she stormed off. Same old argument.

Isono quietly entered the room and gently pried the bottle from his fingers. "Come on, Seto-sama," he said soothingly, helping him to his feet and supporting him. He leaned against him, too drunk to stand on his own, and let him lead him. Then he staggered out of his arms and half collapsed against the table again, clutching his phone. "Maybe he'll call tonight..." he mumbled. Isono said nothing and helped him back up, half carrying him toward his room. Seto had been like this ever since Mokuba's last visit...but it was especially bad on his birthdays. Each of his birthdays that passed without so much as a phone call, never mind the lavish parties Mokuba used to throw for him, Seto became a little more depressed and drank a little bit more...

He stared at the piece of technology in his hands. The familiar numbers were already there...He only needed to press one button. Why the hell was this so hard? Surely Mokuba could call and give his brother a simple birthday wish. It couldn't be that hard. Finally, with a deep breath, he pressed the button down. At least Atsuko would stop nagging him...

Both Seto and Isono jumped as the phone rang, and Seto clutched it tightly, not remembering to look at the call ID for two rings, and then fumbling it open. "Mokuba?" he asked, or rather slurred. "'Zat you...?"

Silence for a moment, before a voice finally pushed it's way through Mokuba's mouth, "Y-yeah..." He did not like the way his brother sounded at all.

"Oh gods..." Seto said weakly, and suddenly passed out. Isono caught both him and the phone, lifting the latter to his ear and holding it there with his shoulder as he carried Seto to bed. "Master Mokuba-sama?

"Isono?" Mokuba sounded a bit shocked to say the least, "What's wrong with Seto...?" Though his brother being drunk was what first came to mind.

"He's had too much to drink tonight," was Isono's neutral reply, as he undressed Seto and made him comfortable, lying on his side so that if he threw up he wouldn't choke on it, an easy routine by now. Of course, Seto had had too much to drink every night for about two years now.

"This isn't the first time I take it..." Isono's calm voice made that quite obvious. "Look, I'm sure he'll forget by morning anyway...Just don't mention that I called him." Because Mokuba knew damn well that he'd never be able to call Seto again.

"I'll do no such thing," Isono said just as calmly. "He has been waiting for your call for two and a half years, Mokuba," he notably dropped the honorific, "and he will not forget, though he may think it was a dream. That would only hurt him worse. If you wish, I'll take a message for him, or tell him you have no desire for him to call you back."

"Because that would be so much better?" There was a spark of anger in his voice at Isono's words. "Just let him think it was a dream, what is so wrong with that?"

"You don't know how he is now... It would be no better, but at least he would be killing himself because of the truth." He looked back at Seto and shut out the light so that he could rest, carrying all the alcohol out of the room. "I know everything that happened between you."

Again, silence flooded the line before Mokuba felt he was composed enough to speak, "You what?" Oh fuck, this was all far to complicated now.

"Seto-sama is a very emotional drunk, and he's drunk quite a lot of the time. He told me what happened. My only concern with it is the effect it's had on Seto-sama..." He didn't think that needed a lot of explanation. The effects, or at least some of them, were probably fairly obvious. Mokuba didn't really need to know that Seto hadn't been to work in a week, or that Isono had saved him from two previous half-hearted suicide attempts in the middle of his drunkenness...

Mokuba had no idea how to react. And just like he had the last time something became to difficult, he ran away...Or in this case, hung up the phone. The man slammed the handset down into the charger, breathing rapidly. A mistake...Trying to call Seto had been a terrible mistake. He could only hope that Isono would let Seto believe that he had dreamt the call.

Isono hung up and calmly took the phone back into Seto's room, sitting beside him as the other man unconsciously cried in his sleep.

Living wasn't his favorite thing at the moment, but seeing as he wasn't looking to kill himself any time soon sleep was the next best option. He trudged slowly up to his room and collapsed wordlessly onto the bed beside his wife. Atsuko looked up from her book, sighing slightly. "Did you call?" "Unfortunately." "And?" Mokuba pulled the blanket over himself, "And he was too busy to talk..."

After a long time, Seto passed truly unconscious and Isono was able to leave him alone without fear of him hurting himself.

"You'll try again tomorrow." She said simply, shutting her book before leaning over her moody husband's body to kiss him goodnight. "I'm not calling him again..." "It's going to happen eventually, so just do it tomorrow." She said, sounding exhausted as she tried to fall asleep. "Fine...whatever..." He muttered, shutting his eyes so he too could fall asleep