[fic] Foster Care VIII
So...this follows everything that's come before. Also, directly follows this bit of Apocrypha.
Seto/Anzu. R. And I don't own.
She woke to a murky darkness, lying on a bed she didn’t remember getting on, and pressed up against a body that definitely wasn’t Mokuba’s.
And with the logic of the newly awake, it was the fact that she wasn’t wearing shoes that bothered her the most.
She tried to sit up, but the weight of an arm thrown over her stopped her.
“Kaiba-kun?” she whispered.
“Mmm.” She felt his hair tickle her cheek, pressed as she was against his side with her nose almost touching the crook of his neck. He needs a haircut, she thought.
“Where are my shoes?”
He mumbled something that might have been “entranceway” or might have just as easily been “New York City” because he was sleeping on his stomach and his face was buried in a pillow.
And Anzu, still drunk and drowsy enough to be satisfied with this semi-coherent bit of sleeptalk, closed her eyes.
***
Anzu rolled over and wished to God that someone would take pity on her and just shoot her in the back of the head. It would only hurt for a minute, unlike the headache that felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to her skull.
She was freezing, and her legs were cramped, and she had a dim memory of emptying the contents of her stomach down a storm sewer.
It was official: she was never drinking again, not even on pain of death.
She could hear a shower running, and she wanted to puke (or at least crawl under a rock from the mortification) as she considered the fact that Kaiba had not only witnessed her inability to handle alcohol but had held back her hair when it had happened.
Moving to a remote corner of Antarctica and learning how to ice fish might be a good idea, too.
She must have - somehow - fallen back to sleep because the next thing she knew, the pillow she had put over her head was being pulled away, and something cool was being pressed against her lips.
“Get up.”
She squinted her eyes open. A glass of water stared back at her.
“I can’t drink lying on my stomach,” she groaned.
“Then sit the fuck up.”
Kaiba-kun was obviously not a morning person, but then at the moment neither was she. Still, Anzu was a bright girl whose parents had brought her up to follow sensible advice, and water sounded like a very good idea.
She raised her head as he tilted back the glass, and she swallowed. It was brackish, like all water was near the harbor, and she choked one her second mouthful, water spilling down her chin.
Warm fingers brushed the water off, and she shivered, his thumb hard against her lips as he held her mouth open.
“Breathe,” Kaiba whispered, and she thought of last night, and the way he had whispered into her ear. And for a moment, her headache fell away, and all she could feel was the press of his fingertips on her jaw.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, twisting herself over and into a sitting position.
The water splashed down her back.
He sat on the side of the bed, halfway leaning over her. On her knees as she was their eyes were nearly of a level, and she found herself staring at those thin lips of his, compressed into a hard, almost angry line. She wanted to kiss the hardness away, but it was he who leaned in and kissed her first.
Anzu let her eyes fall closed, fingers curling into the lapels of his suit jacket and pulling him forward.
“This…isn’t a good idea,” she said, even as they tumbled back on the bed, his weight heavy and solid above her.
“No,” he said, punctuating his agreement with quick, dirty little kisses. She could smell the cheap hotel soap he’d showered with and the residue of stale cigarettes smoke from the bar that even the shower hadn’t been able to remove. And underneath it all was the spicy scent of anise, and she wanted to press her mouth to the underside of his chin, right where it met his throat, and see if his skin was saturated with the taste. But she didn’t have time for that now, not when his tongue was hot in her mouth and his thigh was pressed between her legs.
Her cell phone rang, and just like that, it was over.
Kaiba swung his legs over the side of the bed, up and off of her, and removed her cell-phone from the breast pocket of his jacket.
He held the phone out to her, like the past few moments hadn’t happened at all, looking all cool and collected and not at all as if his heart was going to beat out of his chest.
And maybe it wasn’t; maybe it was just hers because she was obviously some sort of freak.
She reached out and took the phone from him, not even bothering to look at the number or even consider just why Kaiba had her phone in the first place.
“Hello?”
“Of all the times for you to be irresponsible,” her mother’s voice sounded tinny, but distance could do nothing to disguise the annoyance in Yoshiko’s voice.
And Anzu’s blood just froze inside her veins because there was no way, no possible way that her mother could know what had happened last night. Or this morning. Or (and here Anzu’s skin prickled all over) what might have happened if Yoshiko hadn’t called.
“Mom - I - “ she began, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth.
“Yugi called,” Yoshiko continued, still annoyed but apparently oblivious to her daughter’s almost palpable guilt. “And it’s fine if you want to spend the day over there, but you need to make sure Kaiba-kun gets over here. The media’s going to have a field day if it gets out he’s too stoned to pick up his brother on the first day he has visitation rights again.”
“Umm…”
“Is he there with you? Yugi didn’t say.”
“Umm,” Anzu said again.
“He’s not unconscious, is he?” her mother’s tone was still annoyed but now tinged with a bit of worry. “Because if the two of you can’t wake him up, you’d better call an ambulance - “
Anzu pulled herself together enough to cut off what sounded like the beginning of one of her mother’s famous nervous rants. “He’s fine, Mom.” And Kaiba did look fine, sitting there on the edge of the bed, absently straightening his cufflinks and politely pretending that he wasn’t listening to her phone conversation. And maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he didn’t even care because since when did Kaiba do anything polite and vaguely normal like feigning deafness to what was said over cell-phones or making sure that drunk-off-their ass teenage girls didn’t choke to death on their own vomit.
Or make those same teenage girls brush their teeth afterwards. She could still taste the cloying, too-sweet peppermint toothpaste the hotel stocked, now that the sense-memory of Kaiba’s kisses were slowly fading from her mouth.
“Tell him I expect him here within the hour,” Yoshiko said, her tone crisp. “And you and I, young lady, are going to have a serious talk.” And with that, she disconnected, leaving Anzu with only a dial tone.
“Mom’s out for blood,” she blurted to Kaiba as she flipped her phone shut. “What the heck did you have Yugi tell her?”
“Just that we were over there.”
Anzu shook her head. “No. It had to have been more.”
“Or maybe Yugi’s just a bad liar.”
This was true, but Anzu was loathe to agree with Kaiba at this point. Kaiba was going to get to spend the entire weekend with his brother whereas she would be at home. With her mother. Who was not pleased with her.
Kaiba obviously took Anzu’s silence for agreement. “I have to pick up Mokuba.”
“I know.”
Kaiba turned his wrist to look at his watch. “In twenty minutes.”
“And you’re telling me now?” Anzu said, sitting up in bed.
“Yeah,” Kaiba said. “I’m telling you now.”
Anzu’s cursory look in the bathroom mirror told her no amount of time was going to make her look anything other than what she was: a hungover girl who had slept in both her clothes and her make-up. And she had kissed Kaiba looking like this?
“Jeez,” she said, trying to quell the butterflies that seemed to be taking up permanent residence in her stomach. She splashed her face with water, smoothed down her skirt and figured she was as ready as she’d ever be.
Kaiba had her shoes ready for her when she re-entered the main part of the hotel room, and she had to wonder at how he could look so pulled together when he had been just as fucked up, possibly more, than she had been.
Practice, she told herself. It’s all about practice.
***
The subway ride home was dreadfully awkward. Their hands kept on brushing each other as they stood on the nearly empty train car, and Anzu wondered what would happen if she just reached out and grabbed his hand and didn’t let it go. If it would mean anything. If any of what had happened meant anything.
She wasn’t the type of girl who was overly analytical: it was something she recognized about herself. It was why she was never a good gamer, despite Yugi’s attempts to teach her the basics of strategy. But what else could she do but nervously speculate and almost - oh almost - reach out for his hand before drawing back and settling for that uncomfortable, jostling touch whenever the car rocked from side to side?
“Do you want me to walk you to Yugi’s?” Kaiba asked suddenly, even though they had been silent since before Kaiba had (calm as you please and ignoring the desk clerk’s raised eyebrow) paid the hotel bill.
Anzu thought about it. She would love nothing more than to go to Yugi’s and curl up in his beanbag chair and listen to him and Jounouchi good-naturedly bicker as they played cards. She wanted to escape to her usual daydreams of dancing in New York as the sun from Yugi’s skylight warmed her face. She wanted Yugi to ask her what was wrong and confide in him, in the same way she had when she and he were still in primary school. And have him tell her - in that absolute sincere way of his - that everything would work out in the way it ought to work out.
But she couldn’t do that. Not to Yugi, who looked at her with such hopefulness and adoration in his eyes.
She giggled, a high, strangled sound that made Kaiba turn his head towards her. “What?”
Now that she started, she wasn’t sure she could stop. “N-nothing,” she managed to get out. And then even her nervous laughter failed her: she struggled to find breath - let alone words - to explain. “I just - it’s all like a soap opera, isn’t it? Me. Yugi. You.”
Kaiba didn’t answer her. Instead he stared out the window as the subway car pulled into the station. And said, rather unnecessarily, “This is Yugi’s stop.”
She grabbed his wrist as he made to get off. “No.”
“No?” He raised an eyebrow, as if he didn’t quite believe her, but he made no further move to get off the train.
“I think,” she said. “I think I’ll go back with you.”
She held onto his wrist for exactly three heartbeats longer than absolutely necessary. She knew this because her blood was thrumming in her ears, a nervous accompaniment to the nonsensical thoughts swirling in her brain.
“All right,” he said. He almost looked as if he were going to say more, but the left corner of his mouth turned up instead, in that half-crook of a smile she was just now learning to recognize could be used for something more than mocking amusement.
And the next thing she knew, he had half-twisted his wrist and she had slid down her hold upon it so that their fingers intertwined and their palms met. And they were, really and truly, holding hands.
The train car doors slid shut, and the subway continued on its way.
***
Seto/Anzu. R. And I don't own.
She woke to a murky darkness, lying on a bed she didn’t remember getting on, and pressed up against a body that definitely wasn’t Mokuba’s.
And with the logic of the newly awake, it was the fact that she wasn’t wearing shoes that bothered her the most.
She tried to sit up, but the weight of an arm thrown over her stopped her.
“Kaiba-kun?” she whispered.
“Mmm.” She felt his hair tickle her cheek, pressed as she was against his side with her nose almost touching the crook of his neck. He needs a haircut, she thought.
“Where are my shoes?”
He mumbled something that might have been “entranceway” or might have just as easily been “New York City” because he was sleeping on his stomach and his face was buried in a pillow.
And Anzu, still drunk and drowsy enough to be satisfied with this semi-coherent bit of sleeptalk, closed her eyes.
***
Anzu rolled over and wished to God that someone would take pity on her and just shoot her in the back of the head. It would only hurt for a minute, unlike the headache that felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to her skull.
She was freezing, and her legs were cramped, and she had a dim memory of emptying the contents of her stomach down a storm sewer.
It was official: she was never drinking again, not even on pain of death.
She could hear a shower running, and she wanted to puke (or at least crawl under a rock from the mortification) as she considered the fact that Kaiba had not only witnessed her inability to handle alcohol but had held back her hair when it had happened.
Moving to a remote corner of Antarctica and learning how to ice fish might be a good idea, too.
She must have - somehow - fallen back to sleep because the next thing she knew, the pillow she had put over her head was being pulled away, and something cool was being pressed against her lips.
“Get up.”
She squinted her eyes open. A glass of water stared back at her.
“I can’t drink lying on my stomach,” she groaned.
“Then sit the fuck up.”
Kaiba-kun was obviously not a morning person, but then at the moment neither was she. Still, Anzu was a bright girl whose parents had brought her up to follow sensible advice, and water sounded like a very good idea.
She raised her head as he tilted back the glass, and she swallowed. It was brackish, like all water was near the harbor, and she choked one her second mouthful, water spilling down her chin.
Warm fingers brushed the water off, and she shivered, his thumb hard against her lips as he held her mouth open.
“Breathe,” Kaiba whispered, and she thought of last night, and the way he had whispered into her ear. And for a moment, her headache fell away, and all she could feel was the press of his fingertips on her jaw.
She pushed herself up on her elbows, twisting herself over and into a sitting position.
The water splashed down her back.
He sat on the side of the bed, halfway leaning over her. On her knees as she was their eyes were nearly of a level, and she found herself staring at those thin lips of his, compressed into a hard, almost angry line. She wanted to kiss the hardness away, but it was he who leaned in and kissed her first.
Anzu let her eyes fall closed, fingers curling into the lapels of his suit jacket and pulling him forward.
“This…isn’t a good idea,” she said, even as they tumbled back on the bed, his weight heavy and solid above her.
“No,” he said, punctuating his agreement with quick, dirty little kisses. She could smell the cheap hotel soap he’d showered with and the residue of stale cigarettes smoke from the bar that even the shower hadn’t been able to remove. And underneath it all was the spicy scent of anise, and she wanted to press her mouth to the underside of his chin, right where it met his throat, and see if his skin was saturated with the taste. But she didn’t have time for that now, not when his tongue was hot in her mouth and his thigh was pressed between her legs.
Her cell phone rang, and just like that, it was over.
Kaiba swung his legs over the side of the bed, up and off of her, and removed her cell-phone from the breast pocket of his jacket.
He held the phone out to her, like the past few moments hadn’t happened at all, looking all cool and collected and not at all as if his heart was going to beat out of his chest.
And maybe it wasn’t; maybe it was just hers because she was obviously some sort of freak.
She reached out and took the phone from him, not even bothering to look at the number or even consider just why Kaiba had her phone in the first place.
“Hello?”
“Of all the times for you to be irresponsible,” her mother’s voice sounded tinny, but distance could do nothing to disguise the annoyance in Yoshiko’s voice.
And Anzu’s blood just froze inside her veins because there was no way, no possible way that her mother could know what had happened last night. Or this morning. Or (and here Anzu’s skin prickled all over) what might have happened if Yoshiko hadn’t called.
“Mom - I - “ she began, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth.
“Yugi called,” Yoshiko continued, still annoyed but apparently oblivious to her daughter’s almost palpable guilt. “And it’s fine if you want to spend the day over there, but you need to make sure Kaiba-kun gets over here. The media’s going to have a field day if it gets out he’s too stoned to pick up his brother on the first day he has visitation rights again.”
“Umm…”
“Is he there with you? Yugi didn’t say.”
“Umm,” Anzu said again.
“He’s not unconscious, is he?” her mother’s tone was still annoyed but now tinged with a bit of worry. “Because if the two of you can’t wake him up, you’d better call an ambulance - “
Anzu pulled herself together enough to cut off what sounded like the beginning of one of her mother’s famous nervous rants. “He’s fine, Mom.” And Kaiba did look fine, sitting there on the edge of the bed, absently straightening his cufflinks and politely pretending that he wasn’t listening to her phone conversation. And maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he didn’t even care because since when did Kaiba do anything polite and vaguely normal like feigning deafness to what was said over cell-phones or making sure that drunk-off-their ass teenage girls didn’t choke to death on their own vomit.
Or make those same teenage girls brush their teeth afterwards. She could still taste the cloying, too-sweet peppermint toothpaste the hotel stocked, now that the sense-memory of Kaiba’s kisses were slowly fading from her mouth.
“Tell him I expect him here within the hour,” Yoshiko said, her tone crisp. “And you and I, young lady, are going to have a serious talk.” And with that, she disconnected, leaving Anzu with only a dial tone.
“Mom’s out for blood,” she blurted to Kaiba as she flipped her phone shut. “What the heck did you have Yugi tell her?”
“Just that we were over there.”
Anzu shook her head. “No. It had to have been more.”
“Or maybe Yugi’s just a bad liar.”
This was true, but Anzu was loathe to agree with Kaiba at this point. Kaiba was going to get to spend the entire weekend with his brother whereas she would be at home. With her mother. Who was not pleased with her.
Kaiba obviously took Anzu’s silence for agreement. “I have to pick up Mokuba.”
“I know.”
Kaiba turned his wrist to look at his watch. “In twenty minutes.”
“And you’re telling me now?” Anzu said, sitting up in bed.
“Yeah,” Kaiba said. “I’m telling you now.”
Anzu’s cursory look in the bathroom mirror told her no amount of time was going to make her look anything other than what she was: a hungover girl who had slept in both her clothes and her make-up. And she had kissed Kaiba looking like this?
“Jeez,” she said, trying to quell the butterflies that seemed to be taking up permanent residence in her stomach. She splashed her face with water, smoothed down her skirt and figured she was as ready as she’d ever be.
Kaiba had her shoes ready for her when she re-entered the main part of the hotel room, and she had to wonder at how he could look so pulled together when he had been just as fucked up, possibly more, than she had been.
Practice, she told herself. It’s all about practice.
***
The subway ride home was dreadfully awkward. Their hands kept on brushing each other as they stood on the nearly empty train car, and Anzu wondered what would happen if she just reached out and grabbed his hand and didn’t let it go. If it would mean anything. If any of what had happened meant anything.
She wasn’t the type of girl who was overly analytical: it was something she recognized about herself. It was why she was never a good gamer, despite Yugi’s attempts to teach her the basics of strategy. But what else could she do but nervously speculate and almost - oh almost - reach out for his hand before drawing back and settling for that uncomfortable, jostling touch whenever the car rocked from side to side?
“Do you want me to walk you to Yugi’s?” Kaiba asked suddenly, even though they had been silent since before Kaiba had (calm as you please and ignoring the desk clerk’s raised eyebrow) paid the hotel bill.
Anzu thought about it. She would love nothing more than to go to Yugi’s and curl up in his beanbag chair and listen to him and Jounouchi good-naturedly bicker as they played cards. She wanted to escape to her usual daydreams of dancing in New York as the sun from Yugi’s skylight warmed her face. She wanted Yugi to ask her what was wrong and confide in him, in the same way she had when she and he were still in primary school. And have him tell her - in that absolute sincere way of his - that everything would work out in the way it ought to work out.
But she couldn’t do that. Not to Yugi, who looked at her with such hopefulness and adoration in his eyes.
She giggled, a high, strangled sound that made Kaiba turn his head towards her. “What?”
Now that she started, she wasn’t sure she could stop. “N-nothing,” she managed to get out. And then even her nervous laughter failed her: she struggled to find breath - let alone words - to explain. “I just - it’s all like a soap opera, isn’t it? Me. Yugi. You.”
Kaiba didn’t answer her. Instead he stared out the window as the subway car pulled into the station. And said, rather unnecessarily, “This is Yugi’s stop.”
She grabbed his wrist as he made to get off. “No.”
“No?” He raised an eyebrow, as if he didn’t quite believe her, but he made no further move to get off the train.
“I think,” she said. “I think I’ll go back with you.”
She held onto his wrist for exactly three heartbeats longer than absolutely necessary. She knew this because her blood was thrumming in her ears, a nervous accompaniment to the nonsensical thoughts swirling in her brain.
“All right,” he said. He almost looked as if he were going to say more, but the left corner of his mouth turned up instead, in that half-crook of a smile she was just now learning to recognize could be used for something more than mocking amusement.
And the next thing she knew, he had half-twisted his wrist and she had slid down her hold upon it so that their fingers intertwined and their palms met. And they were, really and truly, holding hands.
The train car doors slid shut, and the subway continued on its way.
***