Chapter Text
Seto is dreaming again.
Every night the past three weeks, consistently, the same dream.
Rather, not quite the same. The details vary. He's had this dream set in the streets of Domino City as it was when he was a teenager, he's had it set among the attractions at the most current version of Kaiba Land, in the hallways of the soon-to-open Duel Academia — and, to his chagrin, across the sands of Egypt in a time he tries his best not to acknowledge.
Still, in terms of the actual content, the actions, the feelings, the dream is the exact same each time.
He's running.
It's hard to say if he's chasing something or escaping something, because the dream always starts with him already running, and every time, he's alone. Completely and utterly, more alone than he's ever been. He knows it the way knowledge comes unprompted in a dream; nobody is by his side, and nobody will come to save him.
It's not something that would trouble him were he awake. In fact, he seeks solitude often, and does his best to reject tawdry notions of friendship, or more. But in this dream, the deep-seated knowledge of this uniquely solitary state strikes fear into him — fear, a stranger to him when he can help it, and a tool when he can't, but in this dream, just fear.
His heart pounds.
His breath shortens and shallows.
He finds himself sweating and cold, unable to do anything but run, feet slamming against pavement or concrete or linoleum tile or sand.
As he runs, the place he's running through becomes less and less familiar to him. The more lost he gets, the deeper the fear claws its way into him. The more afraid he is, the less he can focus on anything else.
Lost, alone, afraid — at the peak of that terror, he falls.
And, each time, he finds himself not hitting the ground as one would expect, but falling from a great height, all of the breath knocked out of him in one go, so no sound could escape him even if he tried.
But even silenced, someone hears him, hears the cry of his heart — or, if not his heart, then his soul, because a voice that sounds like his own but isn't his own, speaking a language he shouldn't understand but does, rings out through the cold air that surrounds him on all sides.
And moon-silver claws the length of his torso wrap around him like the gentle arms of a lover, sharp enough to pass through his clothes and leave razor-red lines on his skin. He's carried tenderly for a moment, flesh opening with the softness of a song, blood blossoming dark against silver-white. Before he's cut too deep, the claws release him, and he falls just a little further, hitting the ground safely.
Finally still, able to catch his breath but heart still throwing itself against his ribcage, Seto realises that the person who plucked him from the air and saved him is a girl.
Hair like moonlight.
Eyes like lakes.
Lips bitten and bloodied.
An unearthly thing that doesn't belong in the real world. She's naked, and the pale hand she reaches out towards him ends in long, shining nails, which dig into one of the cuts on his face or body —
It's this pain, and the realisation that it hasn't hurt until this point, that jerks him awake.
The dreams aren't even the worst part, though. If it was just that, just a little sleep deprivation from recurring nightmares, he could shake it off like nothing. That paralysing fear in the dream is something he can temper and control in the waking world.
The worst part isn't any kind of fear, or the interruption to his schedule, or even frustration at the repetition — the worst part is that upon waking up from these dreams, no matter what, every single time, Seto finds himself, even before his eyes open, terribly, deeply aroused: his cock painfully hard and pressing against his underwear; his cunt wetter than it had ever gotten even before he prescribed himself testosterone, let alone after. Which might have been fine - a healthy sex drive is natural for someone his age - if it weren't for the fact that what he's been dreaming about is a girl.
Years, he's spent, coming to terms with being exclusively attracted to men, and now what? Is he supposed to just become bisexual, all because some man who lived thousands of years ago and who happened to look a bit like Seto had wanted to fuck a dragon but - Seto assumed - couldn't get it up unless it was a conventionally attractive human woman? If it were so easy, and he could just find a woman he was into, marry her, and live the kind of straightforward loveless hetero life that society at large expected from a ruthless, cutthroat CEO, he would have done so years ago.
(The intensely dysphoria-inducing aspect of the arousal is practically fine in comparison. He's accustomed to dysphoria, and has plenty of experience combating it.)
So the worst part is being into it, even just physiologically. The challenging part, the part he truly hates, is the stupid magical bullshit. The part where even now, years after it all finished, the world keeps doing everything it can to try and force him to accept some past life from ancient Egypt. As if that's responsible for his success, rather than his own efforts. As if all of his clawing and scraping meant nothing, because he's simply destined for the strength that he alone knows how hard he worked for.
He won't accept it. He can't accept it. And he won't let himself get off in the wake of any of this.
He lies flat on his back and stares at the ceiling.
His cock throbs.
Ugh. Fine. Maybe just once. But he's sticking to his usual preferences when it comes to what he's picturing.