Shadow: A two-or-three-shot for Salky. Have a merry Christmas, and I hope life starts looking up for you soon.

Notes: Shonen-ai, boy x boy, prideshipping, Yami x Kaiba. If you don't like, don't read it. I use – exceedingly bad, rather loosely translated ancient Egyptian in this, so if you, by any chance, happen to be a native speaker of ancient Egyptian, please don't call me out on it? I admit it's terrible, but the point of the fic isn't perfect skills in that language. It's meant to be unintelligible to the majority of us.

Lords of Misrule

Kaiba snuck in through the front doors of home, snow clinging to his black boots, leaving damp patches in his wake behind him. The December wind, and his lack of a coat, had him shivering, even though it had only been about five metres or so from his car to the front door.

"Onii-sama!" It was a cheerful call that echoed from the second landing down to the mansion foyer, a black-haired bundle of energy taking the grand stairs down two steps at a time in his enthusiasm to rush and fling his arms around his brother's waist –

Only for Mokuba to stop short, arms still comically outstretched, grey-blue eyes staring with some confusion at the figure clutched in Seto's arms.

"Nii-sama?" Mokuba couldn't help but look up at the slightly cornered expression that now adorned his brother's face, bewildered by this strange affair. "Why have you brought Yugi home? I thought he was flying to America to visit Anzu for Christmas?" Another glance to the spiky-haired youth held by Kaiba, the teen's form covered by the CEO's traditional white trenchcoat. "Why's he wearing your coat?"

Kaiba didn't reply, seemingly thinking of some way to answer his sibling's questions.

Mokuba continued on, heedless of the other's silence, having noted the distinctly bare looking arm that remained uncovered by white cloth. "Is he naked under there?"

At that, a dusting of faint pink touched the very tips of Kaiba's cheekbones, the forward question kick-starting the brunet's usual glib tongue, prompting long legs into movement towards the main lounge in the Kaiba manor. "Mokuba, quiet down for a few moments."

Mokuba ignored the plea, gleefully noticing his brother's response to his earlier query and relishing the further darkening of Seto's skin when he asked with some degree of relish: "He is, isn't he?" The pre-teen was practically bouncing as he followed his elder. "What happened – did you catch him changing or something and feel the urge to commit kidnap?"

"Mokuba -"

"I think kidnapping's against the law, you know, but if you do your scary-eyes-glower-thing at the jury you could probably get off merely by shit-scaring those putting you on trial out of court -"

"Mokuba."

"But if push comes to shove I really think we could get you the insanity plea -"

"Mokuba!"

Mokuba – finally – shut his mouth, standing by silently as his brother lay their new houseguest down on the longest couch in the lounge.

Kaiba took great pains to ensure his visitor's modesty was preserved, multicoloured hair fanning around the sleeping youth's face on a cushion the brunet tucked beneath the other's head. Long, dark lashes lay shut throughout the process, only the gentle rise and fall of the teen's chest marking him as still being in the living world.

Then, and only then, did Kaiba turn around to face his brother. "Mokuba…"

The black-haired boy ignored the CEO, sharp grey eyes studying the face of the one lying before them. The features so familiar, and yet different in a thousand and one tiny ways that spelled a new truth. "…That's not Yugi."

Kaiba nodded, once.

"Yugi's family?"

"Of a sort."

"Then…the Spirit…?"

Another nod.

"How?"

And then it came out. Haltingly, as though Kaiba didn't believe it himself (and he didn't, not fully), Kaiba recounted of how, under duress from his little brother, he had picked Mouto Yugi up from his home, the Kame Game Shop, alongside the babbling dog Jounouchi, and driven the two to the airport – one to catch a flight to the United States to stay with his girlfriend over the holiday season, the other to say goodbye to said person catching said flight. How the two idiots had chattered endlessly and Kaiba had stood (im)patiently by, waiting until the midget's flight was called and he could drive the baka inu home before heading home himself. And then, the flight being called, and more goobye-ing and hugging and all-around sappiness as Kaiba's eye twitched, the brunet turning around to be spared the sight of the sickeningly sweet mush and – horror of all horrors – being taken by surprise and stumbling over Mouto Yugi's bag –

It was all Yugi's fault. Everything – somehow – was Yugi's fault, the midget the root cause of all Kaiba's current problems.

It would have been fine if Kaiba had simply fallen, really it would've been. His ego would've taken quite a battering and he would've been utterly ferocious for the rest of the day, scathing and ill-tempered, but it would have been fine, because he could've gotten over that. Really.

…Kaiba didn't 'simply fall'. Instead, Mouto Yugi – Mouto bloody Yugi – saw him stumble and decided in that split-second to do his 'good deed' of the day and try to catch him, stepping into the brunet's trajectory and being smacked into, hands flailing and Kaiba feeling the thick chain around the other's neck touch his arm before his hand smacked into something cold and metal and –

There had been a flash of blinding light sometime about when Kaiba had hit the floor. There had been a flash of blinding light, a deep-seated, internal complaint of 'ow' as Kaiba's side hit the floor, and a heavy weight of something in the brunet's arms that was so, so, so not-Yugi Kaiba idly wondered for a few milliseconds whether he'd hit his head as well on the way down.

And then Yugi, from some way away, also sprawled on the ground with eyes at goggle-size in sheer stupefaction. "Oh…oh…oh."

Jounouchi, from overhead: "Whoa…"

Kaiba Seto had been lying on the floor, in the middle of an exceedingly busy airport, clutching a very naked Spirit of the Millennium Puzzle to his chest.

To say they had attracted some attention…

"But how did you end up with him?" Mokuba asked, still curious.

More of the tale was told. How Kaiba had quickly divested himself of his trenchcoat and covered the comatose Spirit up, how he'd set his bodyguard on the gaping onlookers and dragged Yugi and Jounouchi off to a private room (made available to them by blatant bribery of the airport officials) to discuss just what the hell had happened. Only, when there, to be shortly reminded that Yugi needed to catch his flight, and that the midget had no idea what he was going to do with the Spirit – 'Yami', Yugi called him – whilst he was away. Yugi couldn't take him with him, Mouto-jii-chan was already in the States, visiting Professor Hawkins, Jounouchi didn't have the means, and everyone else –

Somehow, Kaiba had ended up with Yami in his care, a promise to be called as soon as Yugi reached America, and a Jounouchi who would not just shut up all the way home.

"Oh," said Mokuba once his brother had finished recounting the tale, now staring in fascination at the one fast asleep on the couch, "wow."

Yami slept on the couch for two days straight without waking. Mokuba worried endlessly about it, Kaiba preoccupied with having a rather heated discussion down the phone line with the Spirit's poor Other Half. Hanging up in sheer disgust at Yugi's inability to provide any conclusive answers Kaiba did his best to stop his little brother from outright panicking, promising they'd call in the doctor should Yami not wake after three days, all the time avoiding such terms as 'magic' and 'Egypt' like the plague.

They'd switched Yami's covering from a trenchcoat to two blankets, Kaiba putting a pair of pyjamas on the Spirit at the same time. Yami had remained like a malleable doll throughout the entire ordeal, but it had still been deeply embarrassing for Kaiba. The brunet could've ordered a servant do the duty instead, but even the very idea of that had felt…worse somehow, violating the other's privacy far more than was necessary.

Then, late at night on the second day, long after Mokuba had disappeared to bed and Kaiba sat on a couch opposite his houseguest, typing away on his laptop, Yami woke up.

Kaiba wasn't sure what had alerted him to the other's consciousness first, only becoming aware sometime of a low, vague prickling at the forefront of his mind that caused him to look up from his work, blue eyes caught by the shifting of blankets in the lamplight in front of him. Shifting blankets, a stirring form, long and languorous, stiff muscles uncoiling as a tousled head lifted itself from the cushions, a hand with skin just a shade darker than Yugi's pushing golden bangs away from slowly opening eyes as the other sat up.

Kaiba found himself staring at those drowsy eyes, crimson orbs lit with low embers, catching the light of the room's lamp and drowning it in seas of soft cerise.

Yami, already a little more awake, sitting properly upright now with the blankets pooled around his waist, stared back at him, clearly astonished.

Words rose between them, questions, answers, thoughts, and then fluttered away. They continued to stare.

Yami finally opened his mouth, no doubt to ask where he was, what he was doing there but –

"Taw? Kaiba, maa? Pen da'at net'ten?"

The spell broke, but Kaiba was still staring, now in confusion. "…I didn't understand a word of what you just said."

Yami looked just as bewildered as he did.

Mokuba was elated when he came downstairs the following morning to find Yami awake and breakfasting at the kitchen table, but was completely nonplussed as to the reason behind his brother and his guest's sour expressions.

"What's wrong?" Mokuba asked Seto, as the brunet drank his usual dosage of black coffee.

Kaiba broodingly went back to reading the business section of the newspaper, only nodding a vague head in the direction of their visitor. "Ask him."

Mokuba obligingly went to do so, taking a seat beside the Spirit and trying to restrain his amusement that, although the teen (physically) had to be at least five years older than him, Yami was wearing a set of his clothes. They were a tight fit but they fitted him all the same, giving the youth room to move as he morosely poked at some toast on the plate before him.

"Yami?" Crimson eyes looked up at him, Mokuba admiring their strange shade for a moment before pressing on with his query. "Is anything troubling you?"

Yami only shook his head helplessly.

Mokuba frowned. "Yami?"

"Mokuba…khenmas…ia, neb dew." The words were exotic, oddly guttural in some places before slinking away softly elsewhere. They were also incomprehensible to Mokuba.

Confusion. "What?"

Yami put his head in his hands, and went back to poking at his toast, looking even more downtrodden than before.

Kaiba looked up from his newspaper, his own face decidedly grim. "Mokuba, he can't speak a word of Japanese."

The boy was stunned, glancing between his brother and Yami. "None at all?"

"None at all," Seto affirmed. "I tried going through some vocabulary with him last night when he first woke, but between a mixture of his sulking and confusion, and our general mix of frustration and general incomprehension we got nowhere."

"That's…not good."

"You're telling me? He spent a good five minutes ranting something at me when I first offered him some of your clothes to try on this morning whilst I ordered him some new, and I have absolutely no idea what the general point of it all was." Kaiba set a brief scowl Yami's way, which the other could not have not seen, and yet ignored all the same. "He's giving me a migraine."

Mokuba went back to looking at Yami, trying to imagine what the poor Spirit was feeling. The youth had always been proud, charismatic and eloquent; it shone through in all his duels, in his sharpness and in his wit. To take words away from such a person…it didn't seem fair somehow, and yet it had happened. If Yami spoke, no-one could understand him, the once-king stripped of all his naturally beautiful articulation, slanting eyes narrowed and face set firmly in a sulky pout.

The boy turned back to his brother. "When does Yugi get home?"

"January the tenth." It was December the nineteenth.

That was…twenty-two days. Twenty-two days with a guest who they couldn't understand, who couldn't understand them. This was…well, it was going to be interesting, if nothing else…

December the twenty-first, and Yami had been with them for two days. The clothes Kaiba had ordered for the Spirit had arrived, Yami thanking the other with a quick smile when the brunet had showed him the pile on the bed of the room given to him. With obvious relief the youth had changed out of the strange fashions Mokuba favoured that he'd been forced to wear, sliding on the black jeans and jumper Kaiba had chosen for him and looking a lot more at ease as he padded around the Kaiba mansion.

Yami tried to avoid conversation, if he could, frustration coming to him too easily when he couldn't express his meaning, shining in his eyes. He'd picked up the Japanese for 'yes', 'no', 'toilet' and 'food' easily enough, as well as very, very basic phrases but…everything else was currently quite beyond him, especially as his avoidance of others cut him off from any potential vocabulary he might be able to pick up.

From somewhere he'd dug up a notebook, wandering along the corridors with it doodling as he went, having nothing better to do. (He couldn't understand what was on television, and all the books were in modern languages. Mokuba would willingly sit and play video-games with him all day, but it was hard to explain the rules and even harder to try and follow the Japanese on-screen instruction and so Yami kept losing, miserably, his ego taking a terrific beating.) It was with that notebook he wandered into the lounge where Kaiba was sitting, still typing at his laptop, the brunet having taken the holiday period off at his brother's (never-ending) insistence, sitting in a place where he could be easily found by said brother should Mokuba want him.

The brunet was hogging the couch with the best light from the windows. Yami, preoccupied with his doodling, tried sitting on the arm of the couch for a time, but discovered the position uncomfortable. Abstractedly, he tossed a partial command the other way, wanting to shift onto the main cushions.

"Kaiba, sa'as khesi-taw."

The brunet ignored him.

"Kaiba?" Yami looked up from his book, catching the blue gaze that flickered his way. Accented or not, Kaiba still recognised his name. "Sa'as." Yami made a flicking motion with his hands, a clear gesture for the other to move along a little bit and give him room.

Kaiba, being deliberately awkward, smirked, seeing the potential to rile the insufferable other. "Sorry, what was that?"

Yami scowled at the sight of the smirk, repeating the flicking motion, now with both hands. "Sa'as." His tone was a lot firmer, more of an outright command.

"Still don't understand you…"

"Kaiba!" Yami's temper was so easy to provoke lately, and Kaiba delighted in his small revenge, petty as it was.

"Still no…"

Yami, mouth set in a straight, grim line, pointed very firmly at Kaiba, and then very deliberately at the cushion at the opposite end of the couch, where the CEO's feet were resting. 'Move', said the action, very plainly.

Kaiba's eyes gleamed, smug when his companion's eyes began to glitter with unholy murder. He took quiet pride in his ability to vex anyone, and to be able to wind up the usually unshakeable Spirit of the Puzzle… "Try again…?"

Yami let out what sounded like a muffled scream, flinging his notebook at Kaiba's head and stalking from the room. He made sure to slam the door on the way out.