nodjmet
yuugiou fanfiction
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Eh. --;; I think not. . .

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Present for Melon-chan! --;; I am by no means a fan of this coupling! Although I've spent so much time thinking about how to set this ficlet up that I think I might be becoming one. . .Oo;;;

I didn't bother with researching the Egypt arc for this one. ;; It's already so f-ed up I don't think making it more legitimate will help. Plus I'm lazy.

Mouuuu. --;;

Hm. I'm going by LFangor's shipping list here.

Voila! C'est une histoire de Distrustshipping avec le Prêtre Set et le Prêtre Shaada, en yaoi.

Priest Shaadi x Priest Set!

Oh my. .

Here you go, Melon-chan. Shaadi x Set. . .Priest and Priest! Ye gods. . .ye GODS! IT IS THE APOCALYPSE!! --;; Shaadi x Set. . .mouuuu. . .the wrongness, the wrongness. . .

goes somewhere to wash her mouth out with soap

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Stone is essentially cold, dead, unable to reciprocate the love that is given to it. Once, in Egypt, there lived a priest who loved the dragons carved of stone; once, in Egypt, there lived a priest who loved the priest who loved the dragons carved of stone. (yaoi, drabble-ish ficlet for Melon)

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Curved fangs and claws gleamed blue-white in the glow of the torches lining the temple walls. Four mammoth forms lazed across the stone altar while yet another eight of lesser size coiled about the alabaster pillars that formed the temple's vital structure, their jaws agape, teeth bared, bejeweled eyes of lapis gleaming. The sandstone-bricked steps of the sanctuary were already slick with water, the pyramids of Ankhamun barely discernable through the columns that marked the temple entrance, for the heavy rain sheeting down from the heavens and drumming upon the sands blotted out sight of much else. The young man kneeling at the foot of the Blue Eyes White Dragon shrine could hear the Life Giver's waters churning in the distance.

The man wore over his elaborately threaded shenti a cloak of finely- woven linen, held over his broad shoulders by a single, rounded blue clasp. His arms were bare and he wore no other decoration save the thin circlet of gold that marked his rank. He was tall and of slim build, with cropped hair the color of the darker mud on the river bank. His narrowed eyes, glaring out from beneath his Priest's headdress, rivaled those of the dragons he watched over.

They were beautiful creatures, these dragons. He stretched his fingers out so that they brushed against the cool stone, tracing the harsh curve of one dragon's proud, bright eye. And yet, that was exactly what these dragons were—stone. Messengers of the Gods, rendered so skillfully by the mason's hands that they seemed alive, but they were not.

Stone, and chained eternally to the walls of the temple.

"You don't deserve this," he whispered, stroking the angular head like he would one of Pharaoh's prize stallions. "You don't, and I don't, and what I wouldn't give to see you free! My heart, my life, my soul—take them, Blue Eyes—take them and let me wield your strength!"

He pressed his lips against the dragon's brow before drawing back reverently. As he knelt listening to the severe melody of the rain, two very cold, very wet hands slithered up his throat and covered his eyes. He heard the clink of an adornment and felt the metal of a ring against his cheek before a laughing voice breathed in his ear:

"Guess who, Set."

His hand, dancing over ridge at the base of the dragon's winding neck, slipped in his shock, and he let out a muffled oath as the sharp plate of stone scales bit into his fingertips, drawing blood.

"Am'mit take you, Shaadi," he snapped, twisting around so he could better see the man behind him. The other was sopping wet, saturated with rainwater, the linen of his garments clinging to his skin and reduced to a transparent mess; beads of water dribbled from his chin-length hair and trickled from his many bracelets and armbands. The equally sodden feather that was all but dripping from his girdle showed him to be a Priest of Ma'at.

"Ah, High Priest," said Shaadi, lips twitching as he gestured at the Blue Eyes Set had kissed, "I must have caught you two at a private moment."

Set flushed, more from anger than embarrassment, and lurched to his feet so that he towered over the other priest, who, though at least five years his senior, lacked any spectacular height. Shaadi was built more like Pharaoh's black leopard Hebeny—lithe and sinewy and dark.

"What are you doing here?" Set said, in a hiss.

Shaadi wiped at the rainwater still seeping from his hair, kohl running in rivulets from his slanted eyes. "I fairly drowned myself in that deluge out there to share my meal with you, and this is how I am thanked?"

Set bristled. "You would be lucky if I let you go with your life!"

"Now, now," chided Shaadi, producing from the depths of his robes some miraculously dry figs and dates. "We can't let our favorite High Priest starve to death, can we?" He piled the fruit on the altar, just below the clawed foot of a Blue Eyes, and leaned against the arched back of a second dragon. Set frowned.

The figs didn't look as though they were poisoned. . .

"I hope a crocodile takes it upon himself to eat you," Set muttered, helping himself to a fig. "Or maybe you'll be pecked to death by a flock of ibises. . ."

"How cruel," sniffed Shaadi through a mouthful of dates.

". . .or perhaps flattened by a herd of river horses," said Set thoughtfully, taking another fig from the mound. "Or I might be able to convince Hebeny to have you as a late-night snack. . .or, I might push you into the river one day when Pharaoh goes duck hunting. . .inform me, again, why you are here?" he finished, wiping his mouth with his arm.

"Well, it's raining," said Shaadi, pointing at the water pelting down from the sky. He smiled, his teeth flashing in the relative darkness of the temple. "And you know that I absolutely love rain."

Set laughed.

"So if Hathor's temple had been closer, it would be Isis who would be dining on dates and figs," he accused, plucking a fig from Shaadi's fingers. "And if the Guard's quarters had been closer, then old Shimon? No, Shaadi, that won't do. Tell me, why are you here, really?"

"Why are you here?" countered Shaadi, almost spitefully. "Even Pharaoh wonders what you do here sometimes. What have you been doing, High Priest of the Blue Eyes Temple? Whispering sweet nothings to your darling Blue Eyes Kisara over there? Ranting about power and dragons again?" He wrenched his fingers at the dragon shadows looming on the floor, the cavernous jaws yawning in the flickering torchlight. "By Ma'at, Set! They can't give you their loyalty or grant you their power. They can't love you. They're made out of stone. Stone, Set! Cold, dead stone!"

His words reverberated around them, rising to an almost hysterical pitch. Dead stone, the walls echoed. Cold. . .dead. . .

Set's head turned, his eyes flew back to the Blue Eyes; he gazed at their radiant blue-white bodies and intensely blue orbs, their knife-like claws and teeth, their tautly muscled necks and tails, their wide, mighty wings—

Stone.

"I am a Priest—the High Priest—of this temple," Set said heatedly, feeling a hot, terrible swoop of rage constricting his chest, "and a guardian to these Blue Eyes and the strength they house. What I do here tonight and all nights is no business of Pharaoh's, and certainly no business of yours, Priest of Ma'at!" He had no need to resort to a physical blow; Shaadi shuddered and flinched as though he had been struck.

"Why do you kiss them?" Shaadi's voice sounded strange to Set's ears. His head was bowed, tendrils of ebony plastered against his chin and neck. "Why do you want them?" He lunged forward, forcing Set's back into the altar, his long, bronzed fingers digging into rigid skin beneath the other priest's shoulders. "Do you ache for their power, the power of the dead? Do you prefer something dead to something alive?" He drew a quavering breath, his cat-like eyes alight with anger. "If I killed myself," he hissed, "would you have me then?"

Set gaped, wide-eyed. "Shaa—angh!!"

"Answer me!" Shaadi snarled, shaking the High Priest so violently that his head impacted with a Blue Eyes' stone flank. Set stared up at the other in a reddish haze, his mind fogged with pain. Vaguely, he recognized the coppery taste in his mouth as blood; even more vaguely, he thought he should try to throw the other away from him or at least make a scathing reply, but the jolt had so dazed him that he could only lie at the foot of the altar, stunned.

"Do I disgust you, because I am not of stone?" Shaadi murmured, moving yet closer, until their noses brushed. "Do you despise me because I am flesh, and blood, and alive?" And he dragged Set's parted mouth up to meet his.

The caustic retorts that had come to Set's mind fled with his remaining wits. Shaadi's mouth was chilled from the rain, his skin cool and smooth like the Blue Eyes'.

Like stone.

Even as Set broke from his stupor, raising himself onto his elbows—away from the cold stone at his back, away from the Blue Eyes, into Shaadi's frigid warmth—Shaadi was moving away, slipping his sodden head down so that the tip of his nose grazed the hollow of Set's throat and his forehead pressed against Set's lips.

"Set, they cannot be yours," he said flatly, his fingers stroking the High Priest's brow absently. Set could feel the other priest's drooping eyelashes quivering against his jaw, the man's dark fingertips caressing his temple, and sensed his previous rush of adrenaline draining away, leaving him lost and lightheaded in a smothering mist as he struggled to draw breath.

"They are mine!" Set gasped out wearily. "They are as much mine as I am theirs, and I need not worry—"

"Must I die before you will touch me?" Shaadi broke in. "Will you kiss me as you kiss them only when my soul has departed—only when I am as cold and as dead as they?" His grip tightened, his fingers clamping down on Set's forearms until the other was forced to stifle a cry. "Tell me, High Priest; I tire of guessing!"

"No," Set murmured. "You would have me abandon them. . ."

"They don't need you!" screamed Shaadi, lowering his head to hide his agony. "They don't need you," he repeated, softening his tone. "Look at them, Set. They're stone. They can feel nothing for you, and yet you sit here night after night, brooding, deceiving yourself into believing—"

"They are loyal to me!"

Incensed, Shaadi crushed their mouths together with brutal pressure, releasing the other only when Set uttered a strangled sob. "Shaadi—Shaadi, don't. . .don't you dare," spat the High Priest feebly, sucking in air greedily, his eyes half-lidded. "Stay here if you must, but we will speak no more of this, Priest of Ma'at!!"

"You and I are much alike," said Shaadi bitterly, his lips brushing against Set's as he whispered, his breath tickling Set's cheek. "We seek fidelity—love, even—from creatures that can never reciprocate. And we know it, Set," he said, "you and I know it, and yet we continue loving—without hope or end—"

"Shaadi," said Set quietly. Shaadi inhaled sharply and fell silent.

Set hoisted himself into a sitting position, and Shaadi slid from him like water in a single, fluid movement. The High Priest sat with one hand toying distractedly with his bleeding mouth, his glazed eyes staring, unseeing, at some point in the distance.

"My duty is to the Blue Eyes, Priest. . ."

"Chaos take us!" Shaadi exploded, his fist sending Set sprawling across the altar steps. "Can't you get it through your head that I don't care what your duty is? I don't care about them! I care about you!" He gave a wretched sob, tears mingling with rainwater. "Gods above, Set! You're wasting away—you're dying—and for what?!" he screamed. "For these! These dragons! For stone! For nothing!!"

Set wiped blood from the corner of his mouth, gulping for breath. "No," he wheezed. "You don't care about them. . .you don't care at all about them—"

"Do not tell me of what I should and should not care about!"

"Shaadi. . ."

Shaadi's face contorted and he spun away again. "Answer me this," he said in a wavering voice. "When I die—when I die like your beloved Kisara Blue Eyes—and they bring me to you, and place me upon this altar—will you weep for my death? Will you weep for me?"

"Why would I not?" said Set, resting his hand atop the center Blue Eyes' head. "I wept for Mahaado. I wept for Kisara. I would weep for you, Priest of Ma'at."

"I know you would cry for the Priest of Ma'at," said Shaadi, tremulously. "But the tears you have shed for Kisara and for Mahaado and will shed for the Priest of Ma'at are the same tears and a formality only. But will you mourn Shaadi? Will you tear at your hair and scream for Shaadi?"

"I will grieve for you," Set said through gritted teeth, "as I have for the others."

"Kisara loved you," Shaadi mumbled. "She loved you until she thought she might die from it, and yet she would never touch you. She thought you were a prince chiseled of stone." He smiled desperately. "You never loved her before, but she won in the end. Now she is of stone. Now you love her. Now you have eyes for no one else. Now you serve her, where she once served you. The High Priest, outwitted by a servant girl—and a foreigner, no less!"

Set, staring down impassively at Shaadi's dark face, noticed for the first time that the other priest's vacant, narrowed eyes were blue. He remembered Shaadi's clammy hands and cool mouth, and he felt vaguely unnerved.

"Shaadi," he said unsteadily. "Come here."

Shaadi came. Set leaned against a stone column, shivering as Shaadi kissed him. He could feel the rainwater from Shaadi's lips dripping down his own chin, through his robes, onto the floor. "You're cold," Set muttered. "Why are you so cold?"

"Because I'm wet. Don't you like it, High Priest of the Blue Eyes?" taunted Shaadi, pressing his icy lips to the corner of Set's mouth. Set shuddered. The ornamented crest of a lesser dragon was uncomfortably hard against the small of his back, but he couldn't move; Shaadi's cool weight held him pinned there. Oh, gods! His eyes are like theirs he feels cold he tastes cold he's cold he's dying he's becoming stone—!

The tears that came to his closed eyes were so hot they seared his eyelids, and Shaadi's cold fingertips wiped them gently away.

"No," Set whispered thickly. "No, I hate it."

fin

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Notes:

A shenti was basically a kilt that Egyptian men wore. Generally it was only poor men, but. . .heavily embroidered? Well. Priests could too, so there! And anyway, I like the idea of Set and Bakura and Yami in linen minis.

Am'mit eats things. Like hearts. ;;

Hebeny means Ebony. It's a nickname.

"Chaos take us" is kind of like saying "Shoot me!" The ancient Egyptians weren't too keen on the idea of chaos. They liked order, so Ma'at was their favorite goddess. Of course, for a Priest of Ma'at to be saying this, Shaadi must obviously be very distraught.

From what I hear, Kisara was an odd foreign girl, with blue-white hair and extremely blue eyes. . .and she sacrificed herself for Kaiba, to form the Blue Eyes White Dragon. And of course, Shaadi is jealous. But that whole theory about how she tricked Kaiba is feasible to me, because I've also heard she was something of a fiery one. --;;

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Hm.

Criticisms and other comments are welcome. However, flames for the unconventional pairing are not. sweatdrop I already know it's weird. You really don't have to point it out to me.

ryuujitsu & co.