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.

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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.

Seto dreams of things far more pleasant than the slashes across his body, the pain of scales being ripped and the teeth that had gouged at his neck before he had been able to rip open his adoptive father's neck open, enough to get away.

No. Not a father. Never a father. His pod leader.

But that was far away, replaced instead with something warmer. A tail twines around his, while a smaller dragonet bumps at his side and exhales a stream of bubbles happily. How long...how long has it been since Seto has smiled, really? He can't quite remember the tug of the facial muscles as he does it...but he does it anyway, because there, not so far from him and his baby brother are two familiar dragons. One with scales of white with light blue accents, an off-color for their breed. Her body was more slender too. Then...another. Larger, broader, with scales like the deepest trenches, an abyssal blue with deep purplish accenting.

Those dragons were home. Those scales meant family., and sometimes, when he was all alone, he ached for that. Dragons were communal creatures, after all. Seto had become something unusual, due to his treatment. He only kept close with his brother, but how he missed his family.

His tail swings back and forth to propel him forward, wings catching at the water and careening him even more quickly towards them. Yes. He was so close, if he could just...!!

There's a loud splash as he jerks awake, a growl emanating from his throat as he tries to figure out what's going on, where is he, why does half of him feel--

--fuck.

While he was unconscious, Seto had been submerged. And without realizing, his body had done what it does in the water, until his tail and hindquarters curled uncomfortably towards him, the former draped just outside the tub. His upper body was not fully transformed, but there's flecks of scales along his abdomen and flanks, as well as his arms.

"Stupid," he hisses, before trying to assert control over his form. It was harder, the way his lower body was scrunched in this ridiculous pool that was far too small for his body...but he manages to flip over, use what control he has to spread the transformation, until his body was...well, it wasn't normal, but the size of him fit in the tub better when he let the scales climb further up, let his ears grow into fins, and allowed his horns to breach through his hair. Fangs filled his mouth, and that was fine, he was used to that.

The tradeoff was that his legs became more slender, his tail still bulky, but smaller.

It's exhausting.

And he made a lot of noise and splashing and yeah, the floor is absolutely soaked. Too bad, human. This is your fault.

Yuugi had been lying face-down on his bed when the splashing started, and he couldn't help it: he groaned in a tone that betrayed just how much his muscles a c h e d.

First, he carried this man home.

Then, he took care of his wounds in his bathtub.

With strength he did not have, he arranged his body in the tub and filled it as far as it could go. Thankfully it was a Japanese-style bathroom, so he was used to water getting everywhere.

Then he had to take the food out of his bag and convert it into a fried rice mixture so it wouldn't go bad.

Fish fried rice with shrimp wasn't terrible, and he'd only just finished cooking and letting the food start to cool when... that.

That. Happened.

At least the guy was awake...

With a loud groan, Yuugi filled a large bowl with food, grabbed a spoon, and pulled himself together to poke his head into the bathroom.

"Are you... okay...?"

"I'm fine."

It's not said so much as growled unappreciatively, before Seto crawls out of the bathtub on all fours like some kind of horror-movie creature and tries to shake the water off of his face and...fuck, what the hell--

"I hate this," he adds grouchily as he flattens back the fur atop his head, revealing his eyebrows for probably the first time since the human had seen him. And yep. Yeah. the scowl goes all the way up. "Why would you put me in water, knowing damn well what happens?!"

Now he has to wait for all these scales to fuck off before he can stop concentrating on maintaining his form's size. It's a great deal of work! The human wouldn't understand at all! How could he? Why would a human ever understand the struggles of a dragon's forced humanization problems--

Snnnhffff.

What...what is that smell? It wasn't unlike what he'd eat day to day, but...there was something strange about it. And being more animal than person, of course he sniffed very obviously at the bowl Yuugi had walked in with.

....Well, that was something you didn't see every day.

A dragon awkwardly sitting in his tub with half- human features and...

...

Sniffing the rice in his bowl. Yup. That was a Thing that was happening.

"I thought it would help," Yuugi muttered, "I just didn't want to dump you into the sea or something!"

Should he...

Hold out the bowl? To give him a better angle to sniff?

"If you'd only listen, you'd know that 'dumping me in the sea' would have been perfectly acceptable," Seto says sharply, but all the same, his attention is on the bowl as he settles on his knees, palms flat on the tiled floor.

Well...no matter what it smelled like, he wouldn't ask for it. He wouldn't give away that it smelled very nice, especially after Seto had expended a great deal of energy fighting his leader and was now wasting more trying to keep his form in line while his scales dried. Nope. He is in complete control of himself. He will not betray--

--his stomach growls loudly, and immediately, his lip curls and he lets out an annoyed snarl.

"Disregard."

"No, I don't think I will," Yuugi laughed. "After all, I brought this here for you."

Would he even eat it if it was just handed to him, though? Yuugi probably should show him it's safe, right?

By taking a little bite.

Chewing.

And swallowing.

"See? It's safe. I wouldn't give you anything that I wouldn't eat myself. You're a guest, after all."

"Tch. A guest? More like a stranger you picked up off the beach. I'm not your guest. You brought me here against my will."

As much as he protests, his ear-fins flick up while the human takes a bite of the food. He can smell the fish mixed in with the...well, whatever the hell else was in there.

(want)

He doesn't want to try it.

"Go eat that somewhere else," he mutters, as if to show that no, he would not be eating human food under pain of death.

Yuugi watched him for a moment.

...

He set down the bowl.

Took a few steps back.

And closed the door behind him as he backed out of the bathroom.

...

Would he eat it if he didn't look at him? Was he shy? Prideful? Yes????

What would it take to get this guy to care for himself???

Well GOOD! That is exactly what Seto wanted--to be left alone! Not necessarily with the bowl, but he's not the kind of dragon that wants to be ogled or treated like some kind of pet. Consequently, that means he's not going to eat from the bowl.

Instead, he curls up near the tiny, useless water pool and curls his substantially smaller tail around him as he glares into the bowl of white...things, mixed with fish and shrimp.

He does that for a very long time, and he looks appropriately angry about it! It's frustrating, because he is starving, but he doesn't want charity when its wasted on someone fully able to hunt for himself, that and the more he dries off, the more uncomfortable in his skin he feels, because he doesn't enjoy this form.

He has to leave.

He has to find a way out.

He has to eat what's in the bowl and then--NO! No, he's not going to eat what's in the bowl, no matter how...incredibly good it smells. What is that in there anyway?! It's nothing he's ever seen before, and it looks as if the fish was somehow prepared. Not simply sliced, but altered somehow.

Fuck's sake, can a dragon not think without their stomach interrupting loudly?!

...The human had tried it before leaving, so he knew it wasn't poisoned. At least, not unless the human had done so and then immediately left to give himself the antidote, but that seemed far smarter than a human could be.

THUMP!

His thick tail slaps against the floor in annoyance. THIS IS STUPID. He's...he's just going to do this already! Besides, if he dies from this, it'd be better than having his pod actually figure out where he was. Win-win.

Seto reaches forward after what is probably ten minutes of hemming and hawing, sliding the bowl closer to himself and pinching a fingerful of the soft white grains between his claws, before sampling it with a frown.

...!?

It's not...bad? The flavor is good, although the little white grains were alien on his tongue. They were suffused with the flavor of the fish and shrimp, which were somewhat more pliant than he'd have expected. Raw fish was tougher to deal with, and there were bones to contend with. Not that it mattered, he was used to swallowing fish whole, but this was...novel, to put it as kindly as possible.

It might have taken Seto ten minutes to come around to trying the food, but it takes him less than two to empty the bowl once he's started.

Weeelp, that's a thump.

You know what? Yuugi was going to wait a few minutes before he checked on his. Uh.

Patient?

Houseguest?

Patient. Definitely patient.

He could start cooking food of his own even, which might even have a scent that travels through the cracked open door of the bathroom, since he gave the mer what could have been his dinner.

Burgers it was.

He had two meat patties that he seasoned and was gonna grill for his sanity, okay. Taking care of a dragon was hard work.

It's not necessary for Yuugi to check on Seto, as it turns out. Eventually, he exits the bathroom of his own accord, standing unsteadily on two legs. If his tail wasn't out, he would surely have fallen over by now, but he ought to walk like a human, if he's taking a human form.

"Have you any garments? Humans don't like to be solely in their own sc...skin, do they?"

He almost says scales. But humans do not have scales.

When Yuugi turns to look, he'll find that the dragon's holding the bowl before him. He's eaten the entirety of the contents, and there's a tiny grain of rice at the corner of his lips.

Yep, that's a naked man with a tail in his living room. Who walked into his kitchen.

Yep.

Definitely a Thing.

"I should have something that'll fit. Give me just a sec."

Burger 1 done... just put that on the plate aaaaaand, yep. Okay.

"A friend of mine is about your height, so I can proooobably fenagle it..."

Dammit Otogi, this was the only time he was grateful that you just left your bag of overnight shit at his place for days at a time.

"Okay. Wait there and I'll get it for you."

And Yuugi darted down the hall and into his bedroom to fish out one of those silky two piece sets that Otogi just would leave over.

Seto has absolutely no concept of modesty. It didn't bother him, why should it bother the human.

He offers a simple hn in acknowledgment, then moves to the kitchen area to set the bowl down...somewhere. While the human searches for something that he could wear, the dragon steps closer to his plate, frowning slightly. So this was what he'd done, huh? Somehow, he'd applied heat to the dish he'd offered Seto, in order to change the quality of the meat.

A heat that emanated from a specific area of this room, which drew Seto closer, his curiosity getting his better as he leans in and sniffs the pan, perhaps just a bit too close. If he's not careful, he'll singe the tips of his bangs, he's so close.

The urge to lick at the surface and get a taste of what had once been in the pan is almost overwhelming.

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