Author's Note: Obviously I must start with a thank-you to all who reviewed! Feedback is like oxygen, feedback lifts us up where we belong, all you need is feedback.

Here are the last legs of Take Me To Water... there will probably be a tenth chapter or epilogue or something :p

Disclaimer: All characters are the brain children of Kazuki Takahashi, they do not belong to me.

Warnings: Swearing and mild violence.

Summary: Seto is coaxed into accompanying his brother and Yuugi's gang on a camping trip. How will he cope with socialising around open fires, toileting in a field, skinny-dipping in the river and most nauseatingly of all, sharing a tent with a mutt?

Chapter Nine

Strength and Weakness

By the time night had begun to drape a deep blanket of stars over the sky, everyone had returned to the campsite in dribs and drabs, the girls leaving first, solemnly chattering to each other, Otogi and Hiroto after them with a box of eggs and some dried fish that Honda-sama had 'donated', then Mokuba, forlornly with the company of two dogs which bounded along behind him.

Honda-sama had since disappeared into the depths of his house, complaining about his volatile television set, leaving Katsuya, Seto and Yuugi alone, hunched several feet away from each other around the long kitchen table. Their silence was noxiously fathomless, occasionally perforated by the drip of the kitchen tap, the sounds of the livestock outside and the clatter of claws as the collie Fly roamed around, looking for entertainment. Tentatively, Yuugi spoke into the quiet.

'The daifuku was nice.'

Neither Seto nor Katsuya made any indication that they had heard Yuugi, didn't stir or even blink as they stared unseeingly into the swirling grain of the wooden tabletop. Yuugi sighed.

'It was kind of Honda-sama to make us a meal.'

Again, Yuugi was met with the same stillness, until Katsuya shifted abruptly in his seat, but nothing was expressed. Perhaps he had only flinched at something, Yuugi couldn't be sure. Katsuya looked like he wanted to say something but couldn't brave eye-contact, so he fell back into his ashamed stupor, gazing at nothing.

Out of the corner of his vision, Seto looked at Yuugi. He was as gaunt and pasty as he had been earlier in the day at the shopping market, with eyes that seemed to have retreated into their sockets and small, worrying fingers that couldn't stay still, flickering and fidgeting wildly. He wasn't wearing his Puzzle pendant.

'I'm – I'm gonna go back to the camp... see you later.'

Yuugi slipped from his chair and out of the house like a shadow, leaving his greatest friend and his greatest rival sitting mutely at the table, opposite each other.

It may have only been a few minutes, perhaps half an hour or even several hours before Katsuya dared to look up through his hair at Seto.

Seto heard the fabric of Katsuya's clothes shift, so he looked up, a hard glare like flint on his face. Katsuya looked strangely at him as if he was trying very hard to solve a complicated mathematical problem, before trying to work the knot out of his tongue so that he could say something caustic, but he failed. His gaze fell to a point somewhere on the table by Seto's hands before he whispered,

'I'm sorry.'

Seto exhaled deeply through his nose. He didn't return the apology. A horrendous queasiness was building inside him as he remembered the way Katsuya's neck had strained and crunched inside his hands, the way his vision had pulsed as if there was a heart trapped inside his forehead. He listened as Katsuya struggled to make another word; his tongue finally excreting a floppy, pathetic sound. Perhaps he had tried to be angry at Seto's lack of apology.

'I –' Seto faltered. Katsuya looked up. 'I...' His attempt was just a breath.

How can words apologise for this? He thought to himself, staring at his long, white hands.

'I didn't mean... to... do that.'

His attempt was dismal, but he thought it would be enough, at least until he forced himself to look up at Katsuya's face. A black and somehow betrayed scowl had settled there, lips pursed and eyes narrowed like the spy-holes of a pillbox.

'Is that all?'

Seto didn't know what to say. For him it was so easy to blame everyone else for everything that ever went wrong, to postulate that there was always someone else more wrong than he was. His mind went tumbling back to what had happened at the campsite. Katsuya awaited his response with a clenched jaw.

'Well?' he hissed. 'Is that really all you have to say?'

Seto felt an unfamiliar flicker of panic. Katsuya had set his fists upon Seto before, maybe once or twice Seto's own had retaliated and some punches had been landed between the two. A bleeding nose here, some bruised pride there, never more. He cringed, still trying to forget the sensation of Katsuya's neck crushing between his palms.

'Kaiba!'

Katsuya had leapt to his feet, his chair clattering backwards onto the floor. Fly yelped and assumed a submissive crouch in the corner of the kitchen. The distant murmur of Honda-sama's television suddenly died.

Seto's breath hitched. He was quite unaccustomed to the feeling of guilt. 'Well!' he exclaimed. 'You shouldn't have hit me!'

Katsuya's mouth slumped. 'You shouldn't bitch about my friends!'

'You shouldn't be so sensitive!'

'You need to be more sensitive.'

Seto had nothing to throw back. He had heard these kinds of words many times before. He was sick of being told that he should care more or that he should feel more.

'I am plenty sensitive for those who deserve it,' he said, coldly.

In a swift motion that Seto would admit made him jump a little, Katsuya brought both of his fists down on the table, hissing through his teeth and quite pink with rage. Fly had obviously seen enough, fleeing from the kitchen with her tail between her legs.

'I'm – so sick – ' he screeched, 'so impossibly sick of you!'

Seto unfolded from his chair, towering above Katsuya across the table, ten times more imposing, but slightly at a loss. Somehow he didn't want to fight, and seeing the bonkotsu filled with so much rage that he practically became a spluttering animal was nowhere near as entertaining as it usually was. So Seto let him screech.

'I'm sick of you!' Katsuya repeated. 'Sick! We try hard, we really do! Or did – and just... in our faces!' He imitated the motion of something being thrown in his face. 'We wanted to be your friend! At least appreciate that – that some of us believe you to be our friend!'

He took a moment to gain some breath. Seto stared.

'Just – stop – walking all over us. Stop stepping on Yuugi.'

At last Seto found the end of his rope. He slapped his palms onto the table in an echo of Katsuya's frenzy.

'How dare you?' he bellowed. 'How dare you? You have no idea what you're talking about! You don't have a fucking clue!'

He waved his arms around in apparent frustration, paling with his anger in contrast to Katsuya's rising crimson.

'You don't know, do you?' He continued, his voice cracking with the immense volume he was generating, pointing a razor-like finger. 'You don't have the faintest idea; I'll bet he's never said anything about it to you!'

Katsuya was guarded now, his skin now beginning to whiten and his eyes darkening. He frowned, unsure of what to make of Seto's ramblings.

'What do you mean?' he warily enquired. 'Who are you talking about?'

Seto looked crazed and triumphant. 'That night, when Mutou-san died. Do you remember? Do you remember that?'

Katsuya's eyes flashed.

'I was there. I found Yuugi, I found him. It was me. And he wanted me to be there.'

Katsuya was paper white now, and his eyes were like tunnels.

'When I found him he was pleased,' sneered Seto. 'He let me hold him. He let me take him home. And I'll bet he never told you, his best friend.'

Seto finished, victorious. In a strain of warped it made him better, that he had been there for Yuugi at the time of his grandfather's death, and not Jounouchi Katsuya, but Katsuya did not react the way Seto had expected. He expected more spittle to fly, more whirling fists and shouting, but he was as still and silent as a rock.

'Was he wearing it?'

Seto gaped, taken aback by the steady, dark tone of voice. 'Wearing what?'

'His pendant.'

He didn't need to exercise any effort to raise his memories of that night. Seto knew that Yuugi hadn't been wearing his Puzzle pendant.

'... No. He wasn't.'

Katsuya sighed so long that Seto thought he might completely deflate, before he turned around, set his chair upright and slumped deeply into it, as if a goodly portion of life had suddenly been sucked out of him.

'I don't know what this means,' he said, curiously defeated. 'But it obviously means a lot to Yuugi.'

Seto also took his seat, hesitating as to whether he should tell Katsuya more about what had happened that night. Should he divulge the information about his meeting with the Spirit of the Puzzle? About his short stint as its host?

'He is deeply affected,' Seto offered, his anger suddenly removed as though by surgery, leaving him a little confused and hollow. 'He behaved quite bizarrely that day we met for Honda's birthday.'*

Katsuya sighed, chewing his thumb nail and frowning at the table. 'Did he say anything?'

Seto couldn't remember the particulars of the attempts Yuugi had made to engage him in conversation, but remembered an instance of the Spirit taking over Yuugi's body. It hadn't occurred so fluidly as it usually seemed to, and as the Little Yuugi elbowed his way back into tangible state, the Other Yuugi seemed to suffer a stab of pain and had fainted. Seto tried hard to remember more, as he was sure he had exchanged some words with the Spirit.

'I don't remember much,' he admitted.

Another awkward silence fell, and both noticed that Honda-sama's bothersome television had resumed its distant droning.

'Let's go back to the camp,' Katsuya murmured. 'And try to forget how we nearly killed each other...' He added that last note with an air of dry humour and perhaps he had smirked a little. Seto didn't quite know what to make of that, but somehow it was comforting. Perchance it was a premature form of forgiveness.

Having already supped at the house, the most anyone could put down their necks later in the evening were frugal portions of instant noodles or some handfuls of supermarket snack-foods. Seto stomached a pair of eggs that he boiled over the fire in a mess tin with a little rice, whilst Katsuya noisily slurped on noodles.

There was light chatter and even some laughter, but an oppressive tension weighed down upon them and many an apprehensive glance fell upon Katsuya and Seto out of the corners of worried eyes. Mokuba and Yuugi escaped the uneasiness, having put themselves to bed before Katsuya and Seto had returned from the house. Seto felt sick to his stomach that Mokuba was resorting to a method of avoidance but was at a complete loss how to handle it. He gazed as Katsuya sat close to his little sister. They were nattering away quietly, perfectly at ease. As Seto understood, they did not live together and relished the occasions when they were able to see one another, which was not too often on accounts of the bad air between the mother and father.

Seto frowned as he watched Katsuya talk to Shizuka. He knew how to make her smile and laugh and was probably perfectly adept at consoling her in the times of sadness and callow desperation girls went through at that age. Katsuya was a poor excuse for a human by Seto's standards and was barely able to support himself financially, but he was clearly an expert at the business of being an elder sibling. Perhaps, later on, he could ask how best to deal with the situation with Mokuba.

He was suddenly struck with the eye-gravel of exhaustion and yawned into the glow of the fire. He stood, wiggled a few clicks out of his backbone before turning away to get into his and Katsuya's tent.

'It's only 9 o' clock, Kaiba-kun,' came Shizuka's little voice. Seto looked back to see all remaining faces turned to him. He paused.

'I'm tired,' he said, briskly. He thought of leaving it at that, a perfectly adequate explanation, but felt a little sugar wouldn't go amiss in light of Katsuya's passionate conjectures regarding his machine-like conduct. 'I'll – I guess I'll see you all in the morning. Good night.'

He gritted his teeth as he ducked into the tent. What a horridly clunky thing to say, and so unlike him! The etiquette of social acquaintanceship versus that of the business world troubled him. It was so fake and yet seemed to make people happy. Perhaps people enjoyed the effort it took to feign respect. What a deformed, sadistic variety of pleasure.

He wriggled into some loose-fitting jog-pants but did not bother with a muscle-tee that night. He sank into his airbed, which he had finally got round to inflating shortly after returning from the supermarket and huffed before closing his eyes and trying to welcome slumber.

It was not long after midnight when Katsuya finally scrambled into the tent, yawning and shuffling around for his night clothes. In his attempts to disentangle some pyjama bottoms from his rucksack, he accidentally let go of them and elbowed Seto in the side of his gut which made him give an audible grunt, quite unbecoming of his usual, stoic poise. Katsuya winced.

'Sorry, I slipped,' he whispered hurriedly, concerned that Seto might think he'd done it on purpose.

'Whatever,' breathed Seto, rolling over to give a hard glare, but its effect was lost upon his sleepy expression and puffy, tired eyes. His black eye looked even worse in the dim light. Katsuya stared as he got into his pyjamas.

'Haven't you slept at all yet?'

'A little bit. I was sort of awake before you came in.' He struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, grimacing in pain then flopping back again. 'My ribs fucking hurt,' he groused.

'So does my neck,' Katsuya hissed, a little too acidic. Seto looked at him.

'You nearly drowned me,' he said in his dangerous, dead-pan tone.

'And you strangled me!'

Seto huffed. 'I'm too tired for this again,' he complained. 'I am fully aware that I acted disproportionally, and I am sorry for it.'

His 'apology' was stony and without feeling, but Katsuya realised that it was the best he would get for the time being. Lingering on what had happened made him uneasy and if he had his way he would have the memory erased.

'Why did you blow up so bad? I've punched you before and you never flew off the handle like that.' He watched Seto intently. 'You normally just punch back, then get on with things.'

Seto was silent for a very long time. Katsuya thought that perhaps he was ignoring the matter out of stubbornness, or had fallen back to sleep, but eventually he spoke.

'I was... embarrassed.'

Katsuya frowned, quite confused. 'Of what?'

'Being seen like that.' He was picking at his sleeping bag with anxious fingers. 'Not being in control – I wasn't awake, and everybody saw me.'

Something dawned on Katsuya and he began to remember the sight of Seto, lying there with most of his skin exposed. He was covered in ugly scars. In the mayhem of the resuscitation, no one would have focused on Seto's skin of all things. Katsuya let his eye wander over Seto's body as he lay on his airbed. He had bands of scars around his upper arms and forearms. He saw the legendary scar left behind from the assassination attempt upon Seto from the previous year, a puckered, pink kiss in the centre of his stomach.

'I suppose,' he began with great caution, 'not many people have seen those?'

Seto became conscious of Katsuya's eyes and drew his sleeping bag up around his shoulders, hiding his blemishes.

'Very few,' he whispered.

There was a long, awkward silence.

'How do you feel now that we've all seen them?'

'Absolutely humiliated.' He spoke with a defeated tone of dejection, as though his secret was one that would lead to a great scandal, and now he was preparing for a Roman demise now that the cat was out of the bag.

'Why?'

Seto looked at Katsuya with a perplexed expression. 'Why? Because they are a weakness. They show that I have once been very weak, and the fact that they are permanent means I will always have some form of weakness lingering about me.'

Katsuya snorted. 'Load of shit,' he chuckled. He watched Seto, expecting a reaction but nothing happened, so he settled into a pensive reverie, sensing that he somehow managed to vaguely upset Seto.

'They're not a sign of weakness,' Katsuya said after a while. 'As a matter of fact, they're a sign of strength.'

'And how did you come to a stupid conclusion like that?'

'Well... they show that you have faced a great danger and have survived it. You came away and carried on with life. That is strength.'

Seto was struck off-guard by this bizarre wisdom and wondered if Katsuya was speaking from his own experiences.

'They are battle scars.'

Seto pondered on that. He liked the sound of 'battle scars', even though the majority of his scars we gained in a very uneven manner through way of abuse. But his belly scar was, now that he thought about it, somewhat of a battle scar.

'I suppose you could say that,' he said distantly.

Again, the long silence.

'How did you get the ones on your arms?'

At that Seto decided he'd had enough, and rolled over to face the opposite side of the tent, away from Katsuya, pulling his sleeping bag closely over himself. Katsuya did not speak again and settled into his own sleeping bag. They both feigned sleep for what could have been ten minutes or an hour, until Seto gently fell away into a genuine slumber, beginning to regret speaking about his worries concerning his exposed scars.

Seto awoke with a cold jolt of panic. Something was touching his arm, but as soon as he had woken it quickly withdrew. He feared a spider or rodent or snake, but he heard close, steady breathing behind his back. It was Katsuya.

'What are you doing?' he said, alarmed, turning to look at Katsuya who had shimmied closer so that their sleeping bags were nearly touching.

'Nothing,' he answered, clearly embarrassed at being caught out. 'I just wanted to know what they feel like – I didn't expect you to wake up.'

'Stoppit!' he spat, quite distressed. 'Don't touch me!'

'Why?'

Seto stared, astonished. 'What do you mean why? Because I said so! I don't like –'

His words failed and his breath got lost as Katsuya's hand shot out and wrapped around the back of his neck, gently squeezing.

'You probably can't remember the last time you let someone touch you.' Katsuya said, letting go of Seto's nape, then jabbing a finger into his ribs. 'I suppose you're too paranoid.'

Seto said nothing. The hand on the back of his neck had completely immobilised him and gave him strange rushes under his skin. The jab in the ribs was simply annoying. He said nothing for a long time and instead listened to Katsuya's soft breathing, until he finally whispered, 'No.'

Once more Katsuya's hand darted out and this time he firmly gripped the side of Seto's waist. Seto gasped, shocked. He had never realised this was such a sensitive and responsive part of his body, not quite ticklish but uncomfortable in a bizarrely pleasant way. He felt calluses on Katsuya's fingers, which did not move for the longest time. When the rush of the unfamiliar hand had left Seto, Katsuya, as if by telepathy, knew he was safe to begin moving his hand. He explored the ripples of Seto's ribs, before smoothly sliding his hand across a wider expanse of skin where the tips of his curious fingers located the furrowed mutilation in the centre of Seto's stomach.

Seto's lungs quickly filled. He felt naked in the daylight at the touch of this hand. Katsuya pressed, as if trying to find a latch to unlock Seto from his husk. Seto winced, before rolling over to look at Katsuya eye to eye. He exhaled, and his taut muscles wilted.

Author's Note: That took so long, and I'm so sorry! It sat there half completed for weeks. I am bad. Looks like this is going to be one chapter longer than I originally anticipated, there was so much more that I had intended to put into this chapter, but I had to be so slow and delicate with what I was trying to achieve. Someone like Seto won't give over very easily!

I hope it wasn't too slow, I don't want this physical area to be rushed, whether or not it will lead to anything at all. Human nature is unpredictable, even for well-set characters such as Jou and Seto, the best you can do is deconstruct them and with observations from reality and your own experiences try to create something plausible! Personally I am of the firm belief that Seto is extremely sexually repressed and very ill-experienced (perhaps still a virgin) and is far more likely to be uke than Jou, who is confident with his masculinity I think and compared to Seto had a much more normal upbringing with much more ordinary integration into 'society' and its etiquette (hey, joining a gang, being a bully, looking at tits and making weird friends is a lot more normal than taking over a multi-billion dollar company from your abusive step-father in your mid-to-late teens and basically having control over a whole city because you're that fucking rich).

Anyway, enough banter. I won't make any promises about the next chapter this time, on top of a billion things I have going on in my life at the moment I am also experiencing internet issues (this is the first time I've been online for about two weeks). You'll get it when it's done!