kittensinboxes | Dear Friend, Across The River [Rivalshipping Mer AU]

Dear Friend, Across The River [Rivalshipping Mer AU]

It was odd to crave after the sky, when you held no claim to such, was it not?

It didn't stop Seto from yearning for it, however. The glow of the moon entranced him and pulled him to the surface quite often, reflecting off of his markings as he broke past the waves. He was careful, always, to break the water's surface at night, where none could see him.

After all, who would be out at midnight to catch sight of a sea dragon, reclined upon a rocky outcropping to gaze into the entrancing light of the moon, puller of tides, silent deity that called to this one child in particular. Mokuba was probably right to warn him from this behavior. Their pod had strict rules regarding fraternization between humans and dragons, which all boiled down to "don't". As the strongest in the pod, Seto was expected to challenge its current leader, and this behavior put his stake under question.

He had no such interest, however. He knows what others think of him, expect of him, and he has no interest in fulfilling their expectations or guesses for what he might get up to. Wasn't it enough to be under the claw of said pod leader, forced to obey by hook or by crook?

The man spent an immense amount of time trying to quash the look of rebellion in Seto's eyes, expecting that it would lead to a coup. After all, he had no children of his own, and the royal line would thus perish with him. Seto didn't care either way: the royal blood was thin and weak. In need of replacement. Maybe one day it would come about that he'd assert himself. After all, the rakes along his flanks still stung something awful. He'd love to pay Gozaburo back for the favor someday.

For now, he tilts his head up to the sky, long slender neck held in a loose curve of repose as he hummed contentedly with the waves, his markings gently glowing in indeterminate patterns.

As his scales dried in the air, the snout drew in, shifting back into something more akin to a human, but for the finlike ears, the glowing scales beneath his eyes. Because his hindquarters were submerged, his lower half remained fully draconic, the thick, bulky tail ready to propel him if needed.

His song is hums and trills directed at the moon, a tribute to the beautiful sky. It's midnight, beautiful midnight with its placid sky, dark as the depths. He's glad to know he's alone, at least.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Seto Kaiba was not alone.

Not that either of them knew it at the time, as his soon-to-be companion was wandering down the street, dressed up in a purple button-down and black slacks, wild hair pulled back in a low ponytail.

He...

He got stood up on a date again.

It was inevitable, really; it was a date set up by his friends, and it was clear the poor girl wasn't too enthused to be going out with a twenty-something nerd who didn't have the "owns a multibillion dollar company" kind of nerd cred.

No, instead he ran the family game and card shop after his grandfather passed away last June.

Not long after graduation with a potential job lined up...

Then Sugoroku Mutou took ill, dying soon after.

He didn't regret it.

He felt the twinge of regret sometimes, tweaking his original game idea and playing in card tournaments, but really... he had a good life. He had friends, he had a roof over his head, he had a mother who loved him...

Life was good.

(There's something missing, though...)

It was good. So, so good.

And yet.

He found himself wandering to the beach whenever he had a spare moment to himself to look up into the stars. The waves were so peaceful, with boats bobbing like bath toys on the water.

There were no boats tonight.

No boats, no people.

He was well and truly alone.

Alone except for...

...

"What...?"

A song. Someone was singing; what a lovely tone! What a beautiful voice! It did not have words, but did it need to? All it did was draw him closer, closer, closer, towards the sound as he stared out onto the water to...

Get closer.

Something was on the water.

No.

Someone.

It had to be someone, right?

(You need to stop walking. You're too close to the edge of the pier!)

He wanted to get closer...

To see better.

To hear better...

Another step.

Then another.

Seto carries on, not worried at all that he might be heard. If anyone caught sight, then who else would really believe them, honestly? Bah. And he could swim faster than any human, or drown them for interfering.

He was the product of his leader's teachings, for certain. A man who thought he could replace Seto's biological parents, while deriding him for being cut from such a pathetic cloth. After all, had not his parents been slain by humans, then left their own bones to bleach on the sand after beaching themselves upon impending death?

The song wavers, turning into something less pleasant for a few long moments. Something that sounded dangerous.

And then...he smells the human, turning his face towards them--because his neck wasn't as long as usual right at the moment, too dry, too dry--just in time to see the idiot walk off the edge of the pier.

"Wh--!!"

Seto immediately dives under the water, his insides twisting in alarm while the water washes over his body, and the changes melt away to leave him whole. He's as he's meant to be, with iridescent white scales reflecting a barely-noticeable blue, striped with his glowing markings. His broad tail swung from side to side, propelling him forward towards the human.

Idiot! Now look what you've done! I'll have to kill you for certain! he thinks to himself. I'm not afraid to. You're dangerous!

He thinks this as he draws closer and closer.

Edited 2025-05-14 04:16 (UTC)

Yuugi didn't even realize he was moving closer to the edge before the ground swallowed him whole.

Waves, powerful waves gripped his body and pulled him under, even as he flailed his arms with a loud scream as he tried to swim to the surface.

Nobody was here.

Nobody was here!

He was alone and he couldn't climb over to the edge of the pier, not with the way his hands slipped on the edge and sent him careening back under the waves.

The song was all but forgotten in favor of splashing, gurgling, chasing air that he knew would leave his lungs, the fight for survival taking over most higher brain function as he tried to, helplessly, stay afloat despite not even knowing how to swim.

Oh, he tried learning, of course. Swimming was a central part of the Japanese physical education system.

Too bad he always failed swim classes and would even get humiliated while wearing childrens' floaties as he paddled across the pool or had Jonouchi carry him on his back.

Shit.

Shit, why wasn't he more careful?! He could have, should have...

And there was nobody who would save him. If he didn't do something, he'd end up dead and alone in the ocean with only the fish for company.

He was going to kill him. He was going to drown him. The humn was in his domain, trespassing where he didn't belong! Seto knew what was right. He couldn't endanger the pod!

And yet, when he finally reached the human, his talons didn't pierce, and he didn't bite. One powerful, webbed forepaw presses against the man's chest, and his lips curl back to reveal pointed teeth, but he can't bring himself to do anything else.

This man...this fool who walked into the water chasing a forbidden tune...he looked incredibly helpless. Was there even anything to be scared of? Or...was this creature to be pitied?

He hesitates, pulling his foreleg away, then backpedaling and glaring at the human with severe blue eyes. Surely...he could let the depths do what they do. He wouldn't be blamed, would he?

(Why did it matter if he was?)

He had to be dreaming.

That was what this was, right...? Yuugi was drowning, and that was how he was seeing this... this beautiful creature before him.

That was why, despite his distress, he...

Smiled.

Reached his hand out, as though to touch.

To...

Feel.

To say hello...?

He should have bitten sooner. But as soon as the human's fingers press against his snout, Seto's eyes widen and he backpedals further, snorting out a line of irate bubbles as his face and neck scales glow brightly, the ones on his neck betraying movement as the larger plates shift. Like gills. Because they are.

What is your problem?!

Then, as if to quash the momentary cowardice, he snaps at the human's fingers, one pointed fang barely grazing against the very tip and likely cutting like a precision tool. It's less to injure, more to frighten.

His scales flash again, in a different pattern.

Don't touch me.

Oh, they were...

They were scared.

Poor thing... he was so pretty, but so nervous. That was why he jerked back, right? He wasn't used to human touch.

Gods, even in his oxygen-deprived daydreams, he got rejected. By dragons.

...

Dragons.

Daydreams wouldn't hurt though, would it...?

Give Yuugi a second as he processes what he's seeing.

Idiot. Absolute idiot.

Seto considers turning to leave the human to drown right then and there. It'd save him the trouble of wondering whether he should bite his stupid head off, with his ridiculous, vibrant hair. Is the human poisonous? Is that why he looks that way?

Why aren't you swimming?

He asks it reflexively, with his glowing scales, never mind whether the guy could understand or not. He's used to speaking this way underwater!

Why wasn't he swimming. That was a funny joke, really.

A joke that could only be told in an oxygen-less feverdream.

Yuugi flailed his arms and kicked his feet clumsily, as though to show that he uh...

Couldn't swim.

Because he was dying. He had to be dying.

Or dead.

Because how else would a dragon be asking him about his swimming ability right now?

Fuck, though he was starting to get lightheaded...

Good.

He's dying. Seto will watch, to be sure.

Except...what is this feeling? He's not weak, or the sympathetic type. He wasn't raised that way. Ever since he was a dragonet, he'd been raised out of such weak mannerisms. Disallowed so much that his edges hardened as sure as his scales. He was an ice-hearted hunter, the fastest and strongest of the youngbloods in the pod.

So then...what is this feeling?

He growls, the sound bubbling up from his curled lips. Gozaburo would call it weakness. The weakness of his line. But somehow...Seto could bear to watch this idiot drown. He looks ready to pass out, and it's only once the human's eyes slip shut and he starts to slip into unconsciousness that the dragon, regretting every single decision in his life that led up to this moment, snags the human by the shirt and propels himself to shore, growling and bellyaching the entire time.

The human will live to see another day. Seto unfortunately made sure of it, though he won't linger too long to figure that out.

He does linger for a while though, waiting to see if the human would clear his lungs of water and manage to survive. In that short time, as his scales dry, his form begins to melt back into a poor facsimile of a human, albeit with finlike ears and slit-pupiled eyes with glowing markings on each cheek. Soaked brown hair frames his features, severe as they are with that scowl he's wearing.

He can't see himself. He doesn't know, or care, what he looks like. But if he did, he'd probably be fine with it. His dragon strength carries over in this sinuous half-human form with not a stitch of fat out of place. Sea dragons were not blubbery, like selkies, a distant, very distant relation of the water tribes. Instead they tended towards stocky power.

Seto was even an exception to that, with his lithe form, humanoid or otherwise. Not that this human would ever know.

Dreaming.

Fuck, Yuugi had to be dreaming. This dream was shit though, since it included him spitting up water and hacking up a lung from everything that was inside him.

If this was real...

...

Then...

He almost drowned.

He almost drowned and the most beautiful man he'd ever seen was just a stone's throw away, hair framing his face with stormy eyes and a severe expression.

His ears weren't human, nor were those markings on his cheeks.

He was lithe, like a professional swimmer, like a model out of his daydreams. He was...

"Beautiful..."

He was beautiful.

And Yuugi Mutou, in that moment, was entranced.

For the second time that day, Seto recoils as if struck.

"Beautiful?" he scoffs, his lower half still wet and therefore draconic. "Ridiculous."

And before the human could sort out that he'd spoken, he's gone again, his thick tail the last thing that can be seen, slapping at the water's surface as he dives and swims off. Better to be forgotten, moreso if faced with such a delirious man.

As he swims off, all he could hear is his sins whispering in his ears, until they're shouts, painful and loud:

Should've killed him should've killed killed KILLEDTHE HUMAN KILL KILL KILL--

That.

That was.

Okay, so. So, that... that happened, right? Like right now.

A gorgeous man jumped into the water after Yuugi said the most embarrassing thing imaginable and he just. Kind of.

That happened.

That man had no ass, but not because he was Hank Hill, but because he was a fucking dragon.

...

Yuugi was. He was... alive, right?

Yup. Yup. That pinch definitely hurt, so he was. Uhhhhh.

...

Holy shit that was real.

After about five minutes of staring at the ocean in stupefied silence...

Only one sound escaped Yuugi Mutou's lips:

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

Seto could swear he heard the sounds of screaming, but he doesn't turn towards them. Instead, he keeps powering back out to sea, letting the water glide off his scales. His wings flap under the water, propelling him even more quickly as his tail steers him through like a powered rudder.

If Gozaburo finds out, then he'll have to stake his claim on the pod that very moment or be killed. He's certain of it. Or the man would use it to manipulate him further, which Seto had told himself he'd never allow again.

If Mokuba finds out, well...it's not as if he wants his brother to find out he's following in his parents' talonprints with the bad choices.

---

After a week or so...Seto finds that he's gotten this all down to a much cleaner art. He stays away from the shore--mostly--during the day, but visits during the evening and keeps his head down as much as possible. His scales are far lighter than his brethren, after all, and he needed to be careful about being seen.

So far, he hasn't really seen the human again, which, you know. Good! That meant he'd either died after all, or learned his lesson about visiting the channels and beaches around here.

This particular day...Seto's feeling far more tired than usual, settled on a nearly submerged sandbar at one of the local beaches and resting. Here, his pod wouldn't find him. They rarely came so close to shore. He could convalesce after his brawl with the pod's leader which had ended in bruises, rakes, and at least a couple torn scales that bled freely into the water.

The lapping of the waves as the tide slowly goes out is comforting. The water still stung against his wounds, but not nearly so much as it had earlier. Now it's like a gentle, coaxing massage. It's like having his brother nearby, pressing close to him and twining their tails to comfort.

He didn't intend to fall asleep on the sandbar, he only wished to rest his eyes for 5 minutes or so. But, as Gozaburo had pointed out time and again, he was that caliber of failure, wasn't he?

The kind of failure that let the water dry from his scales as the sandbar seemed to rise from the sea. From head to tail-tip he was left to bask in the air, eventually leaving him as a naked human covered in scratches, looking dead to the world.

Oops.

Yuugi hadn't gone to the pier since then.

Truth be told, part of him hoped it was a weird dream: the almost drowning, the being tossed back on shore, the man with a fucking dragon's tail...

Look, he had to have been seeing things.

There was no other explanation for it.

After all, if mer...people were real, wouldn't people have discovered them by now? Beyond the crackpots and bigfoot enthusiasts. Someone would have leaked something all over the internet...

Okay. So he had a weird dream and hit himself on the head. He definitely didn't believe he saw something and wanted to see them again.

That was definitely why he was going to the pier with fish snacks from a street vendor secured in plastic and in his bag.

He was--

Going to see a grown ass man, butt naked and covered in bleeding cuts lying there on the shore.

"Oh, shit...!"

The moon was high as he practically slid across the sand, landing on his knees (ow) at the man's side.

Gently, he reached out to turn him over.

"Are you all right?!"

The instant he felt hands on him, Seto tensed and lifted his head, letting out an inhuman snort as he sought the source of the touch--

--and immediately swiped at the human with his talons, which were less dangerous than usual while he was in human form.

"Don't touch me!" he snarls, before trying to get on all fours and realizing how incredibly off-balanced he was compared to the usual--he expected to be a dragon, not a humanoid monstrosity! Even once he's recognized the human, he doesn't relax, but there's a glimmer of recognition in his eyes nonethless.

If he puts any stock into his state of dress, he certainly doesn't mention it. Dragons don't wear clothing--at best, they wear accessories, and he hasn't got anything but a string of pearls hanging loosely around one arm, barely staying in place on such a wiry limb.

Oh

That was

That was--

"I'm not going to hurt you!" He insisted, even as his mind ran a mile a minute and he tried to rationalize this as something beyond the fact that this man had a fucking dragon tail at one point--

--unless he was drunk, and it didn't happen.

But...it had to have. It was so real! And now--

"Please! Don't move around too much-- do you want your wounds to get worse?!"

"I don't need your pity--these wounds are from a battle won!" Seto responds sharply, before looking back at the shoreline, which had receded considerably. "You...why are you even here? Have you been looking for me? Do you realize how dangerous that is?"

It's like trying to lecture his brother! Honestly, what's this guy's problem?

"I'm a sea dragon! Do you know what a dragon is?!"

Clearly the human knows what a bleeding dragon is, but Seto does not realize his wounds are staining the sand beneath him.

"A battle wo-- that's not the point!"

He was a dragon. This guy was a dragon. He was not a crazy guy screaming in the middle of the night because Yuugi saw his dragon form.

What was this guy's problem?! He was cute, but--

"What's you being a dragon got anything to do with the fact that you're wounded?! They're deep! If you don't get them looked at they're going to get worse!"

It was like arguing with a child! A weird, proud, headstrong child!

"I didn't follow you, I just like coming here!"

"Right, because I've seen you here so often," Seto shoots back coldly, before once again attempting to get to his feet. Uh. Feet and hands. Tch. He's not used to this...

"If you want to be of any use, then help me to the water. Better there than on this...this land."

He doubts severely that this spicy human will be doing anything like that, when he thinks he knows so well how Seto should be caring for his own wounds. He'll probably insist on something far stupider, wouldn't he?

"I stopped coming because I thought I'd gone crazy!" Yuugi shot right back.

"And don't--don't go back in the water, don't wounds get infected?! You'll make them fester!"

Ah yes.

Because magical dragon men know all about infections and germ theory.

"Do you suppose an orca will die of infection from the water it lives in? Do you suppose my scales are so weak? Don't be ridiculous! I'll...be fine..."

Seto looks at the sand below him, at the blood that's soaked through substantially. His head is spinning, caught in a riptide that blurs his vision.

Had Gozaburo truly gotten his better after all? Was he really that injured, that a human would be of any use to him, even with his stupid line of thought in which Seto's wounds would fester in the sea that swirled around him at all times?

"Just shut up, won't you? I'm not...weak."

"I didn't say you were..."

Yuugi took a step closer, hands out, ready to catch the man if he fell.

"And you are not an orca, and you're definitely not a dragon right now. You're a person."

Another step. Then another.

"I live pretty close by. I can patch you up and give you something to eat. At least so you can stay out of sight from other humans while you heal up. I even have a bathtub you can sit in..."

He was close enough to touch, ready to pull him close to get him home...

"I will never stop being a dragon."

Seto looks up, his gaze flinty. He doesn't want to go with this man. He doesn't want to risk his brother's safety in the pod, if they were to find out that he was fraternizing, then...

"Stupid," he mutters, but before he can expound upon that, the blood loss overcomes him, and he loses consciousness once more.

Now there's no argument to be had, is there? Only the matter at hand, which begs the question of whether Yuugi Mutou can carry an injured, unconscious, unclothed six foot man to wherever he needs to without help or needing to explain to someone why the hell he was with an injured, unconscious, unclothed six foot man.

Well, he certainly has been in weirder spots before.

Yuugi was friends with guys who couldn't say no to challenges. He carried grown ass men through less.

"Okay..."

First things first...clothes.

Get his belt off and take off his jacket, and... there. It at least covered his modesty. It wasn't going to prevent questions, but he could take some backstreets to prevent prying eyes...

Right?

Right.

"Here we go...oooof, you're heavier than you look."

When Kaiba awakes, he'll find himself in a strange room filled with tile as he sits in lukewarm water.

Definitely not sea water.

His cuts are cleaned, though, and seem to have been treated outside the water before he was submerged.

Everything has the vaguest smell of coconut and pineapple and the lights are dimmed, as though to simulate nighttime.

Yuugi is nowhere to be seen.

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