That Was Death.
Title: That Was Death.
Fandom: Yuugiou
Pairing:Seto/Ryuuji
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,076
Summary: Seto's dead. Ryuuji's mourning practices are far from conventional. Dark, twisted, bittersweet, possibly disturbing. No necrophilia, before anyone jumps to that conclusion. Humor of the morbid variety, a little on the dry side. Dedicated to Savior, for letting me bounce ideas off him, and because he was nice enough to load it with commas beta it.
That Was Death.
It was horribly, horribly like Seto to insist on his funeral being held on the one day in the year that torrential winds would strike, Ryuuji thought to himself resignedly, pulling the hood of his windbreaker a little further over his hair. Not that it did any good - his hairstyle was absolutely ruined. Thank goodness he wore waterproof mascara at least, since it would be a shame to look anything less than perfect in front of the crowd of paparazzi that had somehow managed to get access to the ceremony. Or at least, Ryuuji assumed they were paparazzi because he could think of no other reason why a sane man would be hiding in a masouleum with a camera on a tripod in the middle of a wind strong enough to make trees give warning creaks.
Come to think of it, if a tree fell on Ryuuji right now and killed him, it would be just about perfect. Not fully perfect because he’d be dead after all, but perfect for the press - “lovely in life and in death not divided”, or so Ryuuji thought the saying went. Seeing as he wouldn’t be alive to reap the benefits of the publicity, though, Ryuuji considered that on the whole, it would be better to just get the funeral over with before the undertaker’s ended up with more business. Fairy-tales were all very well, but happy endings only happened to the heroes and heroines. Anti-heroes and outsiders just had to make their own stories up, and if their type of story meant that one of them died before the other, well, that was life.
Or rather, that was death.
It was hard to hold back a smirk at that thought; Ryuuji bowed his head in a semblance of respect to stop any of the spies from seeing the sudden amusement in his eyes. This was ridiculous, really. Why bother feigning a sorrow he didn’t feel? He loved Seto. Seto loved him. Seto died in a car accident along with Mokuba. Very well. That was just how it happened. After all, Ryuuji have grown up intent on having Yugi and Yugi’s grandfather killed; and when that had failed, he hadn’t been too concerned about the death of his father. So really, it was simply quite stupid to think that death would affect him overmuch. Growing up with the idea of it, of being the one to cause it, does tend to warp a person after all, pretty as they might be on the outside.
And Ryuuji was very, very pretty, even soaked to the skin and rather annoyed by Seto’s ability to always choose the option most certain to inconvenience him. Lightening cracked across the sky and Ryuuji flinched slightly, not really paying attention to the man that had stepped up to him, handing him a shovel and mumbling something about it being traditional to allow family members the chance to throw the first shovelful of dirt onto the coffin. Not that Ryuuji was family of course, but by the terms of Seto’s will, he was the only one allowed to attend the funeral.
Ryuuji personally thought that was something of a shame; perhaps Yugi’s presence would have inspired Seto to rise from the grave simply to challenge him to another match. Then again, the idea of a zombie Seto dueling Yugi wasn’t a particularly attractive one, so it was most likely for the best. Seto usually knew what to do, which of course tied back into the fact that he just had to have his funeral on such a godforsaken miserable day.
Pushing the shovel into the ground, Ryuuji mentally muttered to himself about how the windbreaker did absolutely no good when it came to keeping off the rain. Cheap, shoddy thing - he should have known better than to borrow an article of clothing from the grave-diggers little tool shed but honestly, ruining a perfectly good suit went beyond the call of duty.
Not that it was duty that dragged him out here, but it was easier to think of it like that. Disliking pain as he did, Ryuuji avoided it whenever possible. Being numb was less noticeable than being cold and unlike being cold, it was possible to be numb and charismatic.
So, he tossed a shovelful of dirt onto the grave, waited respectfully while the grave was covered up - with, of course, a continual mental litany of complaints about the weather- and then went home.
~*~
Sitting back in the chair in front of the fireplace, Ryuuji sipped at a glass of sweet red wine idly, the warm flames of the fireplace serving to take some of the bone-deep chill away from his limbs. It was odd to be in Seto’s mansion on his own; Ryuuji had dismissed all the servants for the week as he was not really in a mood for company. Now, though, he thought it might have been a mistake as his gaze fell upon the rug in front of the fireplace where Mokuba would sprawl out and struggle with his homework. Odd, really, that he kept thinking of it as Seto’s funeral when Mokuba had died as well. At the very least, considering how well the two of them had got on, Ryuuji should call it “Seto and Mokuba’s funeral”. Then again, the accident had left Mokuba’s body too mangled to bury as it was, resulting in him being cremated then the ashes being put in a small box and placed in Seto’s coffin - perhaps that had something to do with it? Out of sight, out of mind.
Besides, why think about it when it would only hurt to compare the silence of the house with what it had been like before?
Another sip of wine, and Ryuuji ran a finger around the rim of the wine-glass idly, doing his best to block out any thoughts of how odd this situation was. It was just a mansion after all. Just an extra-large house. An extra-large, empty house that had been decorated by the man who adopted Seto, and never redecorated because nobody in the mansion really cared enough about interior design.
So it wasn’t even as if it was Seto’s house really. It was just somewhere that Seto had lived. Had, because he didn’t any longer. Live, that is. Did he reside, though? Ryuuji pondered that for a little, focusing on diction to avoid other matters. After all, it should be possible to reside in a coffin, and the word ‘reside’ certainly lacked the implied vitality that ‘live’ did.
Rather a let-down really, to go from living in a mansion to residing in a coffin. It didn’t seem fair to Ryuuji at all, who frowned at his wine-glass before draining it, then tossing it into the fireplace where it shattered quickly. He had picked the habit after reading about the Russians, who did it in times of antiquity during wedding ceremonies.
Now though, he was about to imitate another culture: that of the Vikings.
~*~
Grave-diggers needed to be paid more, Ryuuji was sure. Not that he knew how much a grave-digger was paid on average, but it certainly couldn’t be enough to recompense them for so much annoying physical labor. Only three-quarters of the way down, and Ryuuji was already so exhausted that lying down in the mostly-emptied grave and taking a nap was starting to look like an inviting prospect. That is, ignoring the damage it would do to his hair and clothes of course.
Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the rain that had been pouring down all day, Ryuuji most likely wouldn’t have managed to even get this far. Seeing as Seto wasn’t so much buried, though, as covered with slick mud, Ryuuji was making decent progress, even if he was convinced that his hands would be covered in blisters by the end of it. Blisters and mud, to make matters worse. Mud that worms had crawled through.
How utterly disgusting.
If he hadn’t loved Seto so much, there was absolutely no chance that he’d be out so late in the night, working so hard, and making such a mess of himself. But there was the crux of it - in his own distant, jaded and far-too-cynical way, he had loved the other boy as well as he could love anyone who wasn’t himself. The fact that he wasn’t crying, hadn’t cried even when he’d been informed of the deaths, didn’t mean anything. Tears were for other people to see, a visible sign of grief and a proud flag of mourning. As far as Ryuuji was concerned, you mourned a person on the inside and you didn’t mourn that they were dead; you mourned that the two of you were separated.
Except really, when it came down to it, he didn’t want to be separated from Seto. He certainly didn’t want to be dead, not when there was so much still left to explore, but he didn’t quite like the idea of living on alone. Especially not in Seto’s house.
The shovel hit wood with an audible thunk, and a few more scrapes had the coffin cleared enough that Ryuuji felt it safe to attempt to open it, scrambling to the side and putting both hands under the heavy lid before starting to heave upwards, shifting the weight to rest on his shoulder after a few seconds of effort. If he broke a nail doing this, he’d be very, very annoyed. Weren’t blisters bad enough?
No result.
With an exasperated sigh, he stopped trying and instead reached for the small black backpack of tools he’d taken with him. It looked as if he’d have to do this the hard way… A hard blade, an anti-sealant and a crowbar were the tools eventually selected; Ryuuji now opted for the skill-over-strength approach, working patiently at it for another thirty minutes or so.
His work was finally rewarded when he managed to lever the coffin-lid off, and pushed it aside to reveal a cloth-wrapped body. The car accident had been a pretty bad one, severing Mokuba into pieces and bloody pulp thanks to Seto having tried to save him by pushing him away at the moment of the collision. Seto had taken the full impact of the subsequent explosion, his corpse a mixture of charred flesh and blackened bone, leaving Ryuuji with the decision as whether to cremate Seto or have him merely wrapped up, mended as best as possible, then buried.
He’d viewed the corpse before making his decision, of course; impulsive as he was, Ryuuji nevertheless had little patience for stupidity.
Not cringing as he cut through the cloth carefully and revealed the charred skull, Ryuuji made sure his gloves were on tightly before pushing down the high white collar that concealed the fact the skull wasn’t actually attached to the neck. While he hadn't ended up in as many pieces as Mokuba, Seto still hadn't managed to make it out of the accident as a beautiful corpse.
Ryuuji could make him beautiful again, though; Ryuuji could make anything beautiful.
The skull was wrapped in a clean white cloth, placed reverently in the backpack; then Ryuuji began the hard task of filling up the grave again to make it look untouched so that nobody would seek to open the coffin and find it was missing the head. Only the head though, since he left the box with Mokuba’s ashes in the coffin. This way, it was as if they had divided Seto between then.
~*~
What the world needed was a good bone-polisher. Seto’s mansion had silver polish, copper polish, wood polish, glass polish - but did they have even a jar of bone polish? Nope. No such luck for Ryuuji, who was forced to scrub the skull clean by hand, turning it over and over in a running stream of water from a tap, a cloth filled with sand used to scour the charred sections away.
He had been half-afraid to do that in case the skull would shrink without the charred bits, grow smaller somehow. The idea of reducing Seto after he had died was not one that appealed to Ryuuji - hadn’t his undramatic death done enough damage to Seto’s status as a legend? A car accident was such a stupid, petty way to die, considering the drama with which Seto had lived.
It was also an ironic way to die, but Ryuuji deliberately didn’t think about that as he scrubbed patiently at the skull, hands reddened and raw like a scullery maid’s. He’d need to get them taken care of later. Soaked, then shaped and buffed. In one sense, it was a waste though; Seto wasn’t around to appreciate how it felt to be touched by such well-tended hands. Other people might appreciate how they looked, but that wasn’t as the same. At all. To put it in computing terms, a language Ryuuji and Seto had in common, touch > sight. Kiss > hug. Hug > glance. Glance > indifference. Indifference = pain.
Was Seto indifferent to him now that he was dead?
The thought made Ryuuji pause, holding the skull balanced on the palm of one hand, raising it to eye-level so that he could look at the empty sockets. Nothing there. Nothing there at all. Not even Seto’s genius brain.
But that didn’t matter; people loved with their hearts, not their minds.
Not that Ryuuji was willing to go back and cut Seto up again, though. Besides, Seto was dead. He couldn’t be indifferent, because he wasn’t here any longer. What mattered was that Ryuuji wasn’t indifferent to Seto.
He pressed his lips chastely against the white teeth of the skull for a moment, the gesture more of a promise of remembrance than an actual kiss, then went back to trying to clean it. Scrub. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Ryuuji had never washed dishes in his life, but dishes had never mattered to him.
~*~
The first wine, a bold, tough Nebbiolo, tasted odd when drunk from Seto’s skull. The taste of dried fruit and cherries was overwhelmed by the licorice flavor, and Ryuuji poured the whole bottle into the fireplace, disgusted. Italian wines are usually a little bit risky, but this bottle had been fine the last time Ryuuji had sampled some.
Deciding not to risk another disaster with Italian wines and to go for Pinot Noir instead, Ryuuji rinsed his mouth out with some water, washing the skull carefully and using a Q-tip to clean between the teeth. It would be a shame if the bleached white bone became stained, after all, when it looked so pretty as it was.
A bottle of Pinot Noir was duly opened; Ryuuji inhaled the mixed scent of black cheery, spice and raspberries to make sure it was fine. He didn’t like to drink from bottles usually, but he took a quick swig just to check it was okay before pouring a generous portion into the skull and sticking a straw into an eye.
While washing it, he had realized that drinking from it would be rather difficult, thanks to the cracks in it, and Googled for instructions on how the Vikings did it, only to find that they didn’t.
It was simply a myth.
…How very appropriate.
Undeterred - he had dug up his lover’s corpse and mutilated it; he was not giving up now - Ryuuji had simply gone and purchased bone cement to seal up the cracks, then gone over the outside of the skull with a layer of sealant. It hadn’t been easy to get bone cement, but since he not only had his own money from Black Crown but also everything Seto had left him, it hadn’t been difficult either. Money can buy a lot of things, but most of all, it can buy silence.
It could also buy Ryuuji the most expensive wines in the world, three of which he had had lined up on the table in front of the fireplace. The Nebbiolo was gone now, of course, having being deemed not worthy, but the Pinot Noir still remained, as did the Cabernet Sauvignon, supposedly the King of Red Wines. Eyeing the last, untouched bottle thoughtfully, Ryuuji sipped at the straw that protruded from Seto’s eye-socket, apparently not disturbed by the incongruity of the image, then choked.
It tasted awful.
Could it be possible that the sealant or cement was somehow throwing off the tastes of the wines? The Pinot Noir had been fine in the bottle after all… Disgruntled, Ryuuji let the rest of the drink drain out into the fireplace again, then once more washed and cleaned the skull thoroughly before opening up the Cabernet and tilting in a measure of it.
Expecting to be repulsed yet again, he inserted a clean straw into the left eye socket, and sucked lightly.
It tasted perfect. The dark red fluid shot up the hollow tube as if Ryuuji were taking a blood sample, dry and rich.
Astonished, Ryuuji stopped, moving the straw away to stare at the skull. Empty eyes stared back, and Ryuuji gave a small, quiet, half-laugh as he teased lightly, “Typical Seto. Can’t ever accept second-best.”
The rest of the wine was drunk in silence, but a thoughtful, comfortable silence, and when Ryuuji was done, the lovingly-cleaned skull got the place of honor on the mantleplace. Water was poured into the bottom, then white calla lilies (the flowers of death: streamlined, lovely and poisonous) were carefully inserted into the eye sockets around the rims, a single blue calla lily being given the place of honor in the center of each socket.
Stepping back, Ryuuji admired the effect, giving the skull a quick smile as he commented airily, “Did I ever tell you have a lovely skull? So very shapely, with such delicate coloring.”
The skull grinned back at Ryuuji; it always did, and Ryuuji enjoyed seeing that. Seto had never looked so happy when he was alive.
Some day, Ryuuji vowed, when he got tired of using Seto’s skull as a combination cup and vase, he’d fill the other’s head with earth, the earth that lay on his grave, then plant seeds in it, so that the flowers that should bloom would be alive, and not simply beautiful corpses. They’d expand outwards, knock out Seto’s teeth and be a profusion of color and vitality against the slowly-yellowing bone.
The irony of it would taste more delicious than any wine.
~Fin.~
Fandom: Yuugiou
Pairing:Seto/Ryuuji
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,076
Summary: Seto's dead. Ryuuji's mourning practices are far from conventional. Dark, twisted, bittersweet, possibly disturbing. No necrophilia, before anyone jumps to that conclusion. Humor of the morbid variety, a little on the dry side. Dedicated to Savior, for letting me bounce ideas off him, and because he was nice enough to load it with commas beta it.
That Was Death.
It was horribly, horribly like Seto to insist on his funeral being held on the one day in the year that torrential winds would strike, Ryuuji thought to himself resignedly, pulling the hood of his windbreaker a little further over his hair. Not that it did any good - his hairstyle was absolutely ruined. Thank goodness he wore waterproof mascara at least, since it would be a shame to look anything less than perfect in front of the crowd of paparazzi that had somehow managed to get access to the ceremony. Or at least, Ryuuji assumed they were paparazzi because he could think of no other reason why a sane man would be hiding in a masouleum with a camera on a tripod in the middle of a wind strong enough to make trees give warning creaks.
Come to think of it, if a tree fell on Ryuuji right now and killed him, it would be just about perfect. Not fully perfect because he’d be dead after all, but perfect for the press - “lovely in life and in death not divided”, or so Ryuuji thought the saying went. Seeing as he wouldn’t be alive to reap the benefits of the publicity, though, Ryuuji considered that on the whole, it would be better to just get the funeral over with before the undertaker’s ended up with more business. Fairy-tales were all very well, but happy endings only happened to the heroes and heroines. Anti-heroes and outsiders just had to make their own stories up, and if their type of story meant that one of them died before the other, well, that was life.
Or rather, that was death.
It was hard to hold back a smirk at that thought; Ryuuji bowed his head in a semblance of respect to stop any of the spies from seeing the sudden amusement in his eyes. This was ridiculous, really. Why bother feigning a sorrow he didn’t feel? He loved Seto. Seto loved him. Seto died in a car accident along with Mokuba. Very well. That was just how it happened. After all, Ryuuji have grown up intent on having Yugi and Yugi’s grandfather killed; and when that had failed, he hadn’t been too concerned about the death of his father. So really, it was simply quite stupid to think that death would affect him overmuch. Growing up with the idea of it, of being the one to cause it, does tend to warp a person after all, pretty as they might be on the outside.
And Ryuuji was very, very pretty, even soaked to the skin and rather annoyed by Seto’s ability to always choose the option most certain to inconvenience him. Lightening cracked across the sky and Ryuuji flinched slightly, not really paying attention to the man that had stepped up to him, handing him a shovel and mumbling something about it being traditional to allow family members the chance to throw the first shovelful of dirt onto the coffin. Not that Ryuuji was family of course, but by the terms of Seto’s will, he was the only one allowed to attend the funeral.
Ryuuji personally thought that was something of a shame; perhaps Yugi’s presence would have inspired Seto to rise from the grave simply to challenge him to another match. Then again, the idea of a zombie Seto dueling Yugi wasn’t a particularly attractive one, so it was most likely for the best. Seto usually knew what to do, which of course tied back into the fact that he just had to have his funeral on such a godforsaken miserable day.
Pushing the shovel into the ground, Ryuuji mentally muttered to himself about how the windbreaker did absolutely no good when it came to keeping off the rain. Cheap, shoddy thing - he should have known better than to borrow an article of clothing from the grave-diggers little tool shed but honestly, ruining a perfectly good suit went beyond the call of duty.
Not that it was duty that dragged him out here, but it was easier to think of it like that. Disliking pain as he did, Ryuuji avoided it whenever possible. Being numb was less noticeable than being cold and unlike being cold, it was possible to be numb and charismatic.
So, he tossed a shovelful of dirt onto the grave, waited respectfully while the grave was covered up - with, of course, a continual mental litany of complaints about the weather- and then went home.
~*~
Sitting back in the chair in front of the fireplace, Ryuuji sipped at a glass of sweet red wine idly, the warm flames of the fireplace serving to take some of the bone-deep chill away from his limbs. It was odd to be in Seto’s mansion on his own; Ryuuji had dismissed all the servants for the week as he was not really in a mood for company. Now, though, he thought it might have been a mistake as his gaze fell upon the rug in front of the fireplace where Mokuba would sprawl out and struggle with his homework. Odd, really, that he kept thinking of it as Seto’s funeral when Mokuba had died as well. At the very least, considering how well the two of them had got on, Ryuuji should call it “Seto and Mokuba’s funeral”. Then again, the accident had left Mokuba’s body too mangled to bury as it was, resulting in him being cremated then the ashes being put in a small box and placed in Seto’s coffin - perhaps that had something to do with it? Out of sight, out of mind.
Besides, why think about it when it would only hurt to compare the silence of the house with what it had been like before?
Another sip of wine, and Ryuuji ran a finger around the rim of the wine-glass idly, doing his best to block out any thoughts of how odd this situation was. It was just a mansion after all. Just an extra-large house. An extra-large, empty house that had been decorated by the man who adopted Seto, and never redecorated because nobody in the mansion really cared enough about interior design.
So it wasn’t even as if it was Seto’s house really. It was just somewhere that Seto had lived. Had, because he didn’t any longer. Live, that is. Did he reside, though? Ryuuji pondered that for a little, focusing on diction to avoid other matters. After all, it should be possible to reside in a coffin, and the word ‘reside’ certainly lacked the implied vitality that ‘live’ did.
Rather a let-down really, to go from living in a mansion to residing in a coffin. It didn’t seem fair to Ryuuji at all, who frowned at his wine-glass before draining it, then tossing it into the fireplace where it shattered quickly. He had picked the habit after reading about the Russians, who did it in times of antiquity during wedding ceremonies.
Now though, he was about to imitate another culture: that of the Vikings.
~*~
Grave-diggers needed to be paid more, Ryuuji was sure. Not that he knew how much a grave-digger was paid on average, but it certainly couldn’t be enough to recompense them for so much annoying physical labor. Only three-quarters of the way down, and Ryuuji was already so exhausted that lying down in the mostly-emptied grave and taking a nap was starting to look like an inviting prospect. That is, ignoring the damage it would do to his hair and clothes of course.
Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the rain that had been pouring down all day, Ryuuji most likely wouldn’t have managed to even get this far. Seeing as Seto wasn’t so much buried, though, as covered with slick mud, Ryuuji was making decent progress, even if he was convinced that his hands would be covered in blisters by the end of it. Blisters and mud, to make matters worse. Mud that worms had crawled through.
How utterly disgusting.
If he hadn’t loved Seto so much, there was absolutely no chance that he’d be out so late in the night, working so hard, and making such a mess of himself. But there was the crux of it - in his own distant, jaded and far-too-cynical way, he had loved the other boy as well as he could love anyone who wasn’t himself. The fact that he wasn’t crying, hadn’t cried even when he’d been informed of the deaths, didn’t mean anything. Tears were for other people to see, a visible sign of grief and a proud flag of mourning. As far as Ryuuji was concerned, you mourned a person on the inside and you didn’t mourn that they were dead; you mourned that the two of you were separated.
Except really, when it came down to it, he didn’t want to be separated from Seto. He certainly didn’t want to be dead, not when there was so much still left to explore, but he didn’t quite like the idea of living on alone. Especially not in Seto’s house.
The shovel hit wood with an audible thunk, and a few more scrapes had the coffin cleared enough that Ryuuji felt it safe to attempt to open it, scrambling to the side and putting both hands under the heavy lid before starting to heave upwards, shifting the weight to rest on his shoulder after a few seconds of effort. If he broke a nail doing this, he’d be very, very annoyed. Weren’t blisters bad enough?
No result.
With an exasperated sigh, he stopped trying and instead reached for the small black backpack of tools he’d taken with him. It looked as if he’d have to do this the hard way… A hard blade, an anti-sealant and a crowbar were the tools eventually selected; Ryuuji now opted for the skill-over-strength approach, working patiently at it for another thirty minutes or so.
His work was finally rewarded when he managed to lever the coffin-lid off, and pushed it aside to reveal a cloth-wrapped body. The car accident had been a pretty bad one, severing Mokuba into pieces and bloody pulp thanks to Seto having tried to save him by pushing him away at the moment of the collision. Seto had taken the full impact of the subsequent explosion, his corpse a mixture of charred flesh and blackened bone, leaving Ryuuji with the decision as whether to cremate Seto or have him merely wrapped up, mended as best as possible, then buried.
He’d viewed the corpse before making his decision, of course; impulsive as he was, Ryuuji nevertheless had little patience for stupidity.
Not cringing as he cut through the cloth carefully and revealed the charred skull, Ryuuji made sure his gloves were on tightly before pushing down the high white collar that concealed the fact the skull wasn’t actually attached to the neck. While he hadn't ended up in as many pieces as Mokuba, Seto still hadn't managed to make it out of the accident as a beautiful corpse.
Ryuuji could make him beautiful again, though; Ryuuji could make anything beautiful.
The skull was wrapped in a clean white cloth, placed reverently in the backpack; then Ryuuji began the hard task of filling up the grave again to make it look untouched so that nobody would seek to open the coffin and find it was missing the head. Only the head though, since he left the box with Mokuba’s ashes in the coffin. This way, it was as if they had divided Seto between then.
~*~
What the world needed was a good bone-polisher. Seto’s mansion had silver polish, copper polish, wood polish, glass polish - but did they have even a jar of bone polish? Nope. No such luck for Ryuuji, who was forced to scrub the skull clean by hand, turning it over and over in a running stream of water from a tap, a cloth filled with sand used to scour the charred sections away.
He had been half-afraid to do that in case the skull would shrink without the charred bits, grow smaller somehow. The idea of reducing Seto after he had died was not one that appealed to Ryuuji - hadn’t his undramatic death done enough damage to Seto’s status as a legend? A car accident was such a stupid, petty way to die, considering the drama with which Seto had lived.
It was also an ironic way to die, but Ryuuji deliberately didn’t think about that as he scrubbed patiently at the skull, hands reddened and raw like a scullery maid’s. He’d need to get them taken care of later. Soaked, then shaped and buffed. In one sense, it was a waste though; Seto wasn’t around to appreciate how it felt to be touched by such well-tended hands. Other people might appreciate how they looked, but that wasn’t as the same. At all. To put it in computing terms, a language Ryuuji and Seto had in common, touch > sight. Kiss > hug. Hug > glance. Glance > indifference. Indifference = pain.
Was Seto indifferent to him now that he was dead?
The thought made Ryuuji pause, holding the skull balanced on the palm of one hand, raising it to eye-level so that he could look at the empty sockets. Nothing there. Nothing there at all. Not even Seto’s genius brain.
But that didn’t matter; people loved with their hearts, not their minds.
Not that Ryuuji was willing to go back and cut Seto up again, though. Besides, Seto was dead. He couldn’t be indifferent, because he wasn’t here any longer. What mattered was that Ryuuji wasn’t indifferent to Seto.
He pressed his lips chastely against the white teeth of the skull for a moment, the gesture more of a promise of remembrance than an actual kiss, then went back to trying to clean it. Scrub. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Ryuuji had never washed dishes in his life, but dishes had never mattered to him.
~*~
The first wine, a bold, tough Nebbiolo, tasted odd when drunk from Seto’s skull. The taste of dried fruit and cherries was overwhelmed by the licorice flavor, and Ryuuji poured the whole bottle into the fireplace, disgusted. Italian wines are usually a little bit risky, but this bottle had been fine the last time Ryuuji had sampled some.
Deciding not to risk another disaster with Italian wines and to go for Pinot Noir instead, Ryuuji rinsed his mouth out with some water, washing the skull carefully and using a Q-tip to clean between the teeth. It would be a shame if the bleached white bone became stained, after all, when it looked so pretty as it was.
A bottle of Pinot Noir was duly opened; Ryuuji inhaled the mixed scent of black cheery, spice and raspberries to make sure it was fine. He didn’t like to drink from bottles usually, but he took a quick swig just to check it was okay before pouring a generous portion into the skull and sticking a straw into an eye.
While washing it, he had realized that drinking from it would be rather difficult, thanks to the cracks in it, and Googled for instructions on how the Vikings did it, only to find that they didn’t.
It was simply a myth.
…How very appropriate.
Undeterred - he had dug up his lover’s corpse and mutilated it; he was not giving up now - Ryuuji had simply gone and purchased bone cement to seal up the cracks, then gone over the outside of the skull with a layer of sealant. It hadn’t been easy to get bone cement, but since he not only had his own money from Black Crown but also everything Seto had left him, it hadn’t been difficult either. Money can buy a lot of things, but most of all, it can buy silence.
It could also buy Ryuuji the most expensive wines in the world, three of which he had had lined up on the table in front of the fireplace. The Nebbiolo was gone now, of course, having being deemed not worthy, but the Pinot Noir still remained, as did the Cabernet Sauvignon, supposedly the King of Red Wines. Eyeing the last, untouched bottle thoughtfully, Ryuuji sipped at the straw that protruded from Seto’s eye-socket, apparently not disturbed by the incongruity of the image, then choked.
It tasted awful.
Could it be possible that the sealant or cement was somehow throwing off the tastes of the wines? The Pinot Noir had been fine in the bottle after all… Disgruntled, Ryuuji let the rest of the drink drain out into the fireplace again, then once more washed and cleaned the skull thoroughly before opening up the Cabernet and tilting in a measure of it.
Expecting to be repulsed yet again, he inserted a clean straw into the left eye socket, and sucked lightly.
It tasted perfect. The dark red fluid shot up the hollow tube as if Ryuuji were taking a blood sample, dry and rich.
Astonished, Ryuuji stopped, moving the straw away to stare at the skull. Empty eyes stared back, and Ryuuji gave a small, quiet, half-laugh as he teased lightly, “Typical Seto. Can’t ever accept second-best.”
The rest of the wine was drunk in silence, but a thoughtful, comfortable silence, and when Ryuuji was done, the lovingly-cleaned skull got the place of honor on the mantleplace. Water was poured into the bottom, then white calla lilies (the flowers of death: streamlined, lovely and poisonous) were carefully inserted into the eye sockets around the rims, a single blue calla lily being given the place of honor in the center of each socket.
Stepping back, Ryuuji admired the effect, giving the skull a quick smile as he commented airily, “Did I ever tell you have a lovely skull? So very shapely, with such delicate coloring.”
The skull grinned back at Ryuuji; it always did, and Ryuuji enjoyed seeing that. Seto had never looked so happy when he was alive.
Some day, Ryuuji vowed, when he got tired of using Seto’s skull as a combination cup and vase, he’d fill the other’s head with earth, the earth that lay on his grave, then plant seeds in it, so that the flowers that should bloom would be alive, and not simply beautiful corpses. They’d expand outwards, knock out Seto’s teeth and be a profusion of color and vitality against the slowly-yellowing bone.
The irony of it would taste more delicious than any wine.
~Fin.~