#askthebrotherskaiba1

[x-heartofthecards-x]

@ask-thebrothers-kaiba​

Can you come over? I can't be alone right now. Please? The door is unlocked.

Seto allowed very few things in life to perturb him. Ignorance was sometimes bliss in this regard, but as he stared at his cellphone, before the screen timed out, he began to wonder a few things: Should he have regretted giving Yugi his personal number? And would he lament the fact that he was seriously considering, potentially entertaining, maybe making the attempt to reply?

He'd kept staring long after the screen went black, preoccupied with circling thought. When Mokuba entered the room, it took him no time at all to sense something was amiss. Seto had tried to wave this off as a minor inconvenience, to which Mokuba did not believe, but did respect. The younger Kaiba could read his brother like an open book at times, and now he knew this was not the time to pry. He would have to get answers later.

"Alright, bro, whatever you say. Just making sure you're okay is all."

"Appreciated. Get to bed, now. I'll see you in the morning."

_________________________________________

Seto waited until the lights went off and not a peep could be heard throughout the halls of his home. Looking at his phone again, at that text message, it had been an hour and a half since he received it. He wondered for a moment if he'd be too late, and so he responded in haste.

[Seto Kaiba, CEO] You'd better not be dying. I'm on my way.

Something in that phrase felt sickening, a nauseating sensation at the bottom of his gut. He wasn't supposed to care, and he didn't. What good was having a rival if he wasn’t fit to be one? Seto would never accept anything less than the highest standard from his opponent. That meant if he had to fix the situation himself... He would.

From the other side of the city, it took Seto half an hour to reach the game shop. Two hours since he’d received the text, he was aware. Leaving his parked car behind, Seto barged into the shop, taking a look around. His inspection lead him to nothing out of the ordinary, and thus he made his way up the stairs in the back, quietly.

He came upon a closed door, noting the light coming from underneath, and the sounds of clanking, shuffling. The invitation he received having been open, Seto wasted no time on pleasantries - he opened the door, standing tall, ready to face whatever the scene would present itself to be.

It was not pretty. Seto’s brows furrowed deeply, a light but noticeable scowl reaching his lips.

“Yugi, what is this? What happened?”

In the two hours since he sent the message, Yugi had left the memory of even having done so at the bottom of a bottle of liquor. It was long gone.

He had drank until be got sick from it, his head pounding violently as he had crouched on his bathroom floor. He had only just in the last couple minutes managed to pull himself up and out to the kitchen where he drank water directly from the tap, rising out his mouth and spitting onto the dirty dishes before grabbing one of the partially drunk bottles to take another swig.

It wasn't until his apartment door opened and inside the frame stood the form of Seto Kaiba, which took several long moments to come into focus, that he even remembered that he had bothered reaching out to anyone.

He was sure that he painted a rather pitiful picture as he stood in the kitchen amongst the graveyard of empty bottles, still wearing his clothes from work earlier that day, with the plastic bottle of vodka in his hand, the long dead millennium puzzle around his neck. To make matters worse, one of Atem's matches was still playing on the TV in the living room, where his deck of cards had been thrown across the room and was currently scattered across the entire floor.

He looked up to the other man and for the briefest flicker of a moment had thought about trying to explain away the text and his situation. But he didn't have it in him.

Not even for Kaiba, who he was only vaguely even friends with, but had a deep understanding and connection with, even if neither of them had ever really taken time to define it beyond 'rivals'. Even though he knew that Seto was not all that likely to be sympathetic to his plight— he wasn't even sure that Seto actually believed that he and Atem were different entities. But regardless, he did not have the energy or mental resources to put on any kind of mask.

His features contorted in anguish for just a moment before he fully dropped the bottle in his hands, lifting his hands up to cover his face as he quietly sobbed, "I— I can't do this anymore, Kaiba-kun."

[x-heartofthecards-x]

@ask-thebrothers-kaiba

Seto could hear a distant echo of the Pharaoh’s voice coming from somewhere, in a match against himself. The sound of it now was enough to make him cringe, if only slightly – not at the embarrassment of the loss, but instead over the fact that he still had no idea where the Puzzle was, or why Yugi had given it up to begin with. He did, however, understand the state his rival was in. In truth, it hadn’t been much different from how Seto had poured all of himself into something in order to cope with the loss.

Unable to find it in him to come down to Yugi’s level, Seto instead walked forward, looking down at Yugi with the least amount of intensity he could manage.

“So, your way of dealing with this is drinking yourself into a stupor? You willingly let go of him, and now you want to cry about it?” He deadpanned, the disappointment evident in his tone. This was not his way of being unkind, but rather, his way of offering a logical perspective.

“You have to decide one way or another if this was a worthy decision. You can’t keep sitting on the fence until you give out. When you make a choice, you stick to it. You have to be okay with it, or else you’ll end up a pathetic mess for the rest of your life - and personally, I don’t accept that. I expect better from you, Yugi.”

“Your strength and determination have carried you this far. I won’t allow you to go any further down this path of weakness. Get up, get your deck off the floor, move on. I’m turning this garbage off.”

Without another word, the man turned to find the source of the sound, and left the room to turn the television off. With any luck, by the time he returned, Yugi would have made the correct decision to stand and face him.

Did he expect to be coddled by Seto Kaiba during his mental breakdown?

Absolutely not.

If he, in his state of severe inebriation, had been looking for someone to just hold him and tell him everything was alright, he would have sent the message to Anzu or Jonouchi.

Somewhere, deep in his subconscious, he knew that he needed someone that wouldn't enable this.

Even so, he still looked like a scolded child as the taller man berated him and told him all of the things that he already knew.

He was well aware that this was pathetic. He knew profoundly that he had made the choices that left him here. Of course he knew that his situation was entirely his own doing.

He lowered his hands away from his face as Kaiba barked his orders at him. Instead of waiting, he followed after him with a hangdog expression, his eyes focused downward as he staggered along, his steps unsteady and unbalanced.

When he reached the living room, he slowly dropped to his knees and began, with shaking hands, picking up the cards he had thrown earlier in frustration.

After only picking up two or three of them, he replied in a wavering voice, "I know. I tried. I did. But I am nothing without him. You expect better from me because the me you knew was the me I was able to be because of him. Without him…"

Yugi glanced down at the puzzle that had been sent to him piece by piece by persons unknown and now hung around his neck on its familiar, thick chain. Of course, there had been no flicker of magic from it since he had been able to reassemble it. He sniffled as he lifted his hand to grip the chain and said, "I need help, Seto."

[x-heartofthecards-x]

Yugi wasn't doing well.

Not in any definition of the word.

He had tried to move on after that fateful ceremonial duel that released his partner from the puzzle and allowed him to finally rest. He had tried to find it in himself to be whole on his own. But the more time that passed the more he realized that when Atem left, he had taken with him all of the parts of himself that made his life worth living.

He had managed to get through highschool, but only just barely. He had taken over the game store when his grandpa had gotten too sick to manage it on his own. He went through the motions of daily life and managed to plaster a smile on his face, but he felt truly empty and hollow.

As soon as he had closed down the shop, he would retreat to the apartment he stayed in directly above it. He would watch reruns of old tournaments on a loop just to hear Atem's voice through his own body, to see the way the Pharaoh stood and held himself. He'd close his eyes and try to remember the sensation of the spirit inside him, but it always just felt cold now.

His kitchen was overflowing with empty bottles of cheap booze which he used to try to fill that hole within his chest. The warmth of the liquor providing only a temporary reprieve, a cheap and almost mocking imitation of the warmth Atem had given him.

Yugi had just polished off the latest bottle of vodka and laid down on the floor of his apartment, staring up at the ceiling fan until his vision went fuzzy and dark thoughts began to creep up on him. He couldn't do this anymore.

He picked up his phone and scrolled through his contacts to draft a message. A lifeline that he hoped would be taken.

[Yugi Mutou]: Can you come over? I can't be alone right now. Please? The door is unlocked.