When Yami wakes up, it's in an unfamiliar bed with unfamiliar warmth beside him, and just like the warmth radiating from it, the body is (he convinces himself) unfamiliar.

But some distant, three thousand-year-old memory insists that it's achingly familiar. For the first time, Yami ignores such memories, and turns his attention onto why he feels so exhausted, why he's awake when he's feeling like this, and why it's one-ten in the morning.

Then memory kicks in.

And then he doesn't have to ask himself who's in the bed beside him, or how Yami got there. He remembers. Doesn't, actually, regret it, which is unexpected but gratefully acknowledged.

Belatedly, he realizes that Yugi is the reason he's awake. Yugi, calling faintly from the back of his mind.

{Yami, curfew is in twenty minutes. Where are you? Are you all right?}

[I'm fine.] Yami slides out of bed, and he knows that he sounds anything but fine, although he isn't sure what he sounds like. But it isn't fine.

{You don't sound fine,} and Yami thinks that Yugi needs to stop picking up his private thoughts. {Where are you? Where have you been? I've been worried half to death; you usually call!}

[I'm coming home.] He knows that he isn't being fair with these short, clipped answers, and Yugi deserves to know where he's been but Yami doesn't want to talk about it now. Not now, while he's pulling on his pants and discovering his shirt and wondering how it managed to get under the bed.

{Yami—}

[I'm safe. I'm fine. I'll be home soon. Don't worry any more. I'll explain later.] Yami cuts him off, and that's really unfair, but. Yami just doesn't want to deal with Yugi right now. He's not, actually, freaking out about this. He's just not sure what to do with it.

And he'd tried to be quiet while leaving, but he bangs into the night table while grabbing the Puzzle, and he thinks that the part of him that's still attached to the Puzzle caused him to do that, because he wasn't fair to Yugi and leaving at one-ten in the morning without so much as a note would be insanely unfair to his bedmate, and even if his bedmate is unorthodox in some (okay, most) of his methods, Kaiba Seto has always been fair.

"Leaving so soon?" He didn't even hear Seto moving (but the bed isn't squeaky, he knows) but when he turns around, Seto is sitting up and supporting himself on his arms. There isn't a single emotion on his face or in his eyes, but there's an echo of 'stay' hanging around the room like an unpleasantly thick fog that neither of them can properly navigate through.

"I have to be back in twenty minutes," Yami says tersely, because he's trying to deal with the fact that Seto is there, not Kaiba, and he knows that if he leaves now he'll never get a chance to see Seto again. "Curfew."

Seto blinks, slow and lazy, and Yami feels oddly like their should be a curving smirk/smile on Seto's face, and he thinks maybe there could be if—

"It's not a school night." Seto's eyes flicker to the clock, then back to him. "Morning," he corrects.

'Stay'

—if Yami would stay.

It's hard to say no, because Seto is looking at him and even though he's pale and slim he's anything but fragile, but Yami thinks that maybe somewhere inside Seto might be.

Yami wants to kiss him.

Or rather, wants to kiss him again, because he'd kissed Seto tens of (feels likes thousands, want thousands more) times, and he knows what that mouth feels like before sex, and during sex, but not after sex, but he wants to know because with Seto he would probably the first to know what Seto kisses like after sex.

'Stay'

And he knows what those eyes look like before sex, too, but mostly during sex, because Seto's eyes are sharp and focused in an almost disturbing way, like Seto is trying to memorize everything.

As if he knows that of his own violation he won't see it again.

Or maybe he just looks like that with Yami.

But one image Yami can't get out of his head is how wild Seto's eyes looked for a split second. Wild and open and Yami knows that Seto didn't mean to let go of his mask, of his control, but for a second Yami saw Seto's soul, and in that second it was the most beautiful and frightening thing he's ever seen.

For just a second, with him, Seto let go.

And he thinks it scared them both to death and back again.

"I—" he stumbles.

I love you, he doesn't say, only because it's stupid to say that to Seto because Seto, strong-willed cocky Seto, couldn't handle it, and he would run, and Seto has resources and could run much farther than most people and leave no trail, or at the very least, no way to get within ten miles of him.

"I have to go," he finishes finally, and he thinks that might have been a worse statement than 'I love you' would have been, but 'I love you' is explosive and dangerous and not in a good way, and 'I have to go' is damage control.

But Seto's good at hearing things unsaid.

Later that day, Seto leaves for America a week earlier than planned.

And Yami knows he heard it anyway.

Comments/criticism, anyone? And should I do a second part?

Also, THEY ARE SO DYSFUNCTIONAL OMGWTF. Seto, you are an emotional freakshow. Yami, you need to stop trying to be an emotional freakshow, because Seto does not need more instability and insanity in his life, no matter how much he wants it.