Work Text:
"Where did I put that damn pen?" Kaiba huffed to no one in particular. The activity had started gradually, almost imperceptibly. If he hadn't known better, and regularly engaged in various means of mental stimulation, he might have sworn he was starting to lose his mind prematurely. Small events, like the pen, had begun to occur more frequently, the only consolation being that these issues seemed to revolve solely around his own office.
He pushed himself back from his desk and the bearings of the brown leather chair squeaked. His fingers drummed on the mahogany as he considered the last time he played a round of chess to clear his mind. Glancing over, he eyed the polished rosewood pieces sitting resolutely stoic for having been abandoned the last couple of weeks. It wasn't the only casualty. He sighed.
No, there was nothing wrong with his mind that he couldn’t fix, and there was nothing wrong with his office at all. Such beliefs were childish. Superstitious. Ancient.
However, since the problem did seem to occur most often in his office, he had been avoiding it as of late. Logically, it better suited his crunched schedule to lean into what did work rather than concern himself with what didn't. His abrupt departure from his office to another on the opposite wing had begun to attract attention, and he grew weary of squatting in random workspaces in his own building. When prompted, Mokuba had even started telling people who asked that this was his version of a midlife crisis. If he was to get any real work accomplished, it seemed like it was time to get into a pissing contest with a ghost.
No. No no no no. There were no such things as ghosts. Such absurdities were best left for the campfire tales shared amongst bumbling idiots trying to cause their compatriots incontinence in the night. No, ghosts were not real and they certainly did not live in his office. However, he admitted, they did live in his house.
Kaiba slammed his palms down on the flat wooden surface of his desk with a decisive thump and hefted himself out of his seat. Everything seemed to be more or less in order besides his missing pen. Gathering up his paperwork into his briefcase, he clicked the attaché clasps shut and rummaged through his pockets to find his office key on his way out the door. Standing in the doorway with his back to the room, he turned off the light, and caught wind of a faint shuffling sound. Suspicious, he flicked the light back on. Every chess piece that had been neatly arranged on the other side of the room mere seconds ago, was now standing at attention, one by one, balanced across the thin beveled edges of his monitors in descending size order. He locked the door with an audible click, and set a course for home.
"Just because I technically used to be a ghost, doesn't mean I know anything about them," Atem shrugged off. His bedhead hair was tied up in a sloppy ponytail, the result of a late night out becoming a long day in. He milled about the kitchen in basketball shorts and a sleeveless tee crumpled from sleep, cereal bowl and spoon his present day crook and flail. The afternoon sun crested lazily over the kitchen island and reflected off of the triad of hanging pendant lights. Kaiba sat in one of the hightop bar stools on the opposite side of the counter sipping his drink.
"Also, I want you know," Atem continued, crunching noisily through a bowl of Boo Berry, "—rude," he punctuated by jabbing his spoon in Kaiba's direction, "Why exactly does the great Seto Kaiba have a sudden interest in ghosts?"
Kaiba stared pointedly into his coffee and gave it a stir, hoping the attuned question could be bypassed in silence. Instead, Atem took another bite, loudly chomping, "Holograms aren't cutting it anymore? Now you're getting into paranormal research? You already brought me back, so what is it that..." he paused, raising a hand to his mouth in a gesture of exaggerated exasperation, "Seto Kaiba, are you cheating on me?"
The marble countertop never stood a chance as Kaiba's black coffee spewed across its surface in a cloud of surprise. "I – what?!" he spat, wiping his mouth with a napkin, and attempting to regain his composure in spite of his face having just turned a deep shade of crimson, "Don't be ridiculous."
Atem doubled over laughing and cajoled further, "Caught in the act, eh? I always knew you would leave me for a younger, hotter ghost," he said, handing Kaiba a dish towel for his freshly soiled shirt and shaking his head in a berating manner, "you CEOs are all alike."
“I won’t even justify that with a response.”
“Except that you just did.”
"You know I can't just blot out black coffee from a white shirt," Kaiba grumbled, "I have to change now, thanks to you."
"Oh," Atem commented, placing down his bowl and walking behind Kaiba's seat at the kitchen island, "Then I guess I had better help you with that." Atem wrapped his arms around Kaiba's shoulders and started undoing the top buttons as his devilish smirk collided with an icy stare.
Logically, it was obvious that an office was just another interchangeable workspace. Four walls and a floor. Someplace quiet enough to think and concentrate on the task at hand. Except, he admitted to himself, this one happened to contain more than a smidgen of dark sentimental value embedded in its walls. It was here where he completed his first solid vision prototype. It was here where he spent month after month desperately assembling the tech necessary to bring back Atem. And prior to all of that, This Place was his tainted trophy in the battle against his adoptive father, which culminated in his Network-esque plunge from the executive suite of the KaibaCorp building and into the annals of history. Somehow, Kaiba thought, his own history in particular never seemed to stay in the past. It was time to get to work.
At first glance, security footage revealed nothing of note besides potential ghost footage that might net him a pretty penny in the “ghost-hunting” community, if any of them actually had two cents or two brain cells amongst themselves to rub together. No electrical outages had been reported by the energy company during this time period.
He opened the desk drawer and pulled out a screwdriver. Reaching up towards the duct system that snaked above his desk, he unscrewed the ventilation panel and set it down. Patting blindly in the vent over his head, he found and removed the Velcro strip holding the power outage detector he had installed in the shaft. He plugged the USB into his computer and downloaded the data. With a few clicks, the program displayed a graph plotting out the incidents of sudden drops in the electrical grid that were demarcated over time. He pulled keycard records of who was swiping into and out of his office for those times and dates. The data was correlated with outages occurring shortly after certain swipes took place - meaning someone in particular was in his office.
"Gotcha," he whispered, while trimming the datetime stamps of the footage to display 60 seconds clips after the correlated swipes. Opening up the first video revealed footage of...himself. And the second. And the third. Something was off.
He referenced that against the ID numbers. No surprise there. Himself, his secretary, and janitorial staff. Of these, the only ones that aligned perfectly with activity were those when his own ID had been used to unlock the office. So this was personal.
Suddenly, the hair on his arms stood up. The temperature of the room dropped drastically. A soft clinking sound drew his attention as the bulbs on his galileo thermometer started bobbing to the surface faster than he had ever previously observed. The lights began to flicker and the room felt like a meat locker. All of the energy was being drained from the room. The lights went out and the backup battery on his PC began beeping until that too lost power and the audible indicator let out a dying squeal.
“DAMMIT,” he shouted and went to flick the light switch repeatedly before collapsing against the wall in exasperation, his face buried in the crook of his arm. After about a minute, the power finally returned. He warily lifted his head and looked back at his desk. Everything seemed to be back to normal. It was no longer cold, and his PC lit up and began rebooting.
He started to walk back to his desk to sit down and wait for the computer to finish initializing when his shoe sent something skittering across the floor. The movement stopped under his desk just within the dark space beneath. He got down on his knees to reach under the desk as there was a gap of only a few inches for him to slide his hand in and pull out whatever it was that he accidentally kicked. Reaching under, he felt something cold and wet and jerked his hand back. It was covered in blood. His heart skipped.
No. It wasn’t blood. He slicked it between his fingers tentatively. It was ink. He reached back under and pulled out his missing pen from the other day. It had been mangled and torn open at jagged angles. As he knelt on the floor, his gaze traced back to where the pen had originated and caught something moving from the corner of his eye. A drop of ink dripped to the floor. Looking up from where he knelt on the ground was the chrome, polished mirror hanging just above that part of the wall decorated on all sides by small rounded bulbs. In red ink scrawled across the mirror’s surface was handwriting that read, “You're the only one who really knew me at all.”
He had always believed that somehow with the ones you love, no matter how long you have, there never seemed to be enough time. And perhaps the flip side was also true. Sometimes the dead just refused to stay buried.
It had been a month since his abrupt departure to America for a surprise audit of KaibaCorp proceedings. After all, it had been quite a while since he had checked in directly. It was overdue. He certainly wasn’t avoiding anything. And he didn’t like being accused of evading Atem’s calls either. Nothing was wrong, so why would he raise alarm over nothing?
Upon return, his office was just as he had left it, minus the mess created before his prior departure. He mentally thanked his maintenance staff for their diligence.
Perhaps with a month away, whatever obnoxious activity that was starting to impede him had finally resolved. Take away the target and the intruder goes elsewhere. No harm, no foul.
He had just begun to unpack some of the signed documents collected from his overseas trip when he heard a ruckus coming from his secretary’s desk. It had to be pretty loud for him to hear it within his office, as this space was generally pretty soundproof, Kaiba mused.
“No, I can’t let you do that!” she protested. His eyebrow quirked up in surprise just as the door slammed open and Atem strode into the office carrying a picnic basket, and followed by his quite flustered secretary.
"I think I've been more than patient already," Atem chastised, staring Kaiba down with his arms crossed and the basket hanging between.
“I am very sorry Kaiba-sama, he insisted even though you said you weren’t taking any visitors…” she cried. Ah, yes, time to face the music.
“It’s fine,” he murmured and waved her off. She shut the door behind her as Atem stared at him with a defiant and irritated smirk.
“Welcome back to Japan, Shacho! How was your Tour D’America?” Atem boisterously derided, spreading his arms wide and plunking the picnic basket down on the edge of his desk.
“It was fine,” Kaiba murmured, shuffling paperwork and avoiding eye contact.
“Oh, is that all you have to say for yourself? After whisking yourself away for a month and refusing to answer any of my questions?”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, then eyeing the picnic basket added, “What is this?”
“A peace offering,” he replied while busily unloading a series of full containers from the basket, “Everytime you answer a question satisfactorily, you get to try something new that I learned to cook while you were out galavanting around. Or else I guess I’ll be sitting here eating by myself.”
“Oh,” he perked up, as Atem opened the basket and pulled out a can of whipped cream from inside.
Just then, the lights began to flicker. Kaiba froze.
Atem looked up curiously at the fixtures, “Electrical problem?”
“Why don’t we finish this at home,” Kaiba came rushing around the desk and tried to usher Atem towards the door.
“What?! You can’t be serious,” he pushed away Kaiba’s hand, “After hiding this whole month, you still want me to leave?? What is up with you?!”
“It’s not that…” he started, and stopped when he twisted the doorknob and it didn’t turn. His attention whipped around to the door just when the lights cut.
“Tanaka!” Kaiba called out, “Tanaka! Open the door this instant!” There was no response.
“Seto, what is happening? What’s wrong?” Atem asked, unsure as he fished in his pocket for his lighter.
“Shit!” he tried several more times to open the door and then kicked it in frustration.
“Seto, calm down, what’s going on?” Atem popped the lighter open and flicked it on.
Kaiba looked at the concern in his partner’s eyes flickering in the light of the small flame just as a shadowed hand, blacker than the darkness, reached out towards Atem from behind.
Adrenaline surging, Kaiba reached Atem milliseconds before the hand and yanked him out of the way. Heart racing, he snarled through gritted teeth, “Leave him alone! You’re going to have to go through me first!” before grabbing the whipped cream can off the desk and brandishing it as a weapon.
Atem, hands shaking, slipped his cell phone from his other pocket, but the display would not turn on.
“It’s no use, it drains all of the power,” Kaiba muttered.
“Is this why you asked me…I’m sorry I didn't take you seriously…I didn't know…”
“Obviously,” he snapped, scanning the room.
A single dim bulb relit just over the hanging mirror.
In the same red ink as before, the mirror now read “IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU.”
Kaiba, shaking in anger, launched the whipped cream can at the mirror, shattering it as the shards rained down to the floor.
Atem grasped Kaiba’s arm tightly, and whispered, “Do you know what he wants?”
“I don't care who it is or what it wants, I just want it GONE.”
They stood back to back scanning the room and racking their brains for a plan, Atem still brandishing the lighter.
“How do we fight something we can’t see?” Kaiba gritted through his teeth. Atem shivered at the sudden drop in temperature.
The single bulb began to flicker to the right of the mirror as the window in the corner of the room began to slowly slide open.
Kaiba’s back was to the window.
“Seto…”
“What? What is it?”
“The window it just–”
A cold wind began to blow, whipping up papers that were scattered on the desk.
“Was it windy when you came in?”
“No.”
The wind blew harder in their direction, the papers, now forming a small tornado, began to blow out of the window.
“That’s it! We have to get out of here,” Kaiba declared, turning his attention back to the door and ramming his shoulder against it in an attempt to get it to budge. It held solid.
“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” Atem started, his hair tangling around his face.
“Well then, do you have any ideas?” Kaiba barked, frustrated as he slammed into the door once more.
“I don’t know. How does one fight a ghost?”
“Who says this is a ghost? Next you’re going to tell me to start chucking salt over my shoulder.”
“Are you seriously going to deny what’s happening right…Wait! That’s it!” Atem exclaimed and rushed over to the picnic basket. He began rummaging through it and produced a small bottle which he unscrewed.
“Come stand next to me,” he said, pulling Kaiba away from the door by the hand.
“Ok, but what are you doing?” he asked as Atem shook the contents of the bottle around them onto the floor.
“Salt!” he proclaimed, getting down on his knees to smooth out the lines of the circle.
“Yes, of course, clear as mud,” Kaiba remarked as the wind died down, “Wait did that just–”
“A salt circle is for protection,” Atem smirked. The wind just outside of the circle picked up further and heavier objects were now beginning to be pushed around. One of the tupperwares of food was knocked off the desk and crashed to the floor.
Kaiba sighed, “Well, it's an improvement, but now what do we do? Stand here and wait for the ghost police?”
As he was speaking, a dark form began to pool just outside of the circle. Its black, abyssal shape seemed to defy dimensions as it grew taller and taller and branched out into the shape of an abnormally large man. Featureless and dark, as though it actively repelled light itself. They both recoiled and Kaiba took a step back, but Atem caught him before he stepped outside of the circle.
“Mahad!!” Atem shouted, “Mahad, can you hear me? Help us!” Kaiba grimaced but remained silent.
The inky black arms of the creature rose up above their heads when suddenly a bright light came flying in through the open window and shot clear through the shoulder of the shadow figure. It recoiled, as though injured.
The glow hovered in the room. The wind howled relentlessly and pushed heavier furniture as the glow once again pierced through the figure. The light fixtures in the room pulsated on and off – providing and rescinding light. The figure swelled up, growing larger and attempted to grab the glow as it darted into higher corners, trying to avoid being caught. Over and over it pierced the creature and the light bulbs in the room repeatedly grew blindingly bright and then dimmed, until one by one they began to explode, sending shards of glass hurtling outward. The room became pitch black except for Atem’s lighter.
“Where did it go?” Atem whispered, clutching Kaiba, as they both scanned the darkness.
Suddenly, the glow appeared above an inky black spot and the two opposing forces immediately hurtled towards each other, the glow becoming enveloped by the darkness. Atem gasped. The wind died down and the room became silent. Kaiba tightened his grip on Atem’s shoulder.
A brilliant light spilled out of the thick, gelatinous soup in all directions as a loud vacuum sound filled the room and burst. The room flooded with light in spite of the actual fixtures having already broken. The light gradually accumulated into the shape of another familiar man, but this one appeared to wear a headdress and swooping robes. He turned to the two of them and displayed the small cage of light he was holding with a dark ball bouncing around inside of it. He bowed.
“Thank you,” Atem intoned, and the figure moved to the office door and opened it, disappearing as he crossed the threshold.
“How’s your shoulder?” Atem asked from his pillow cocoon on the couch, bundled up in a large blanket. Kaiba winced while throwing another log on the fire.
“Sore, but I’ll live,” he hesitated before coming to sit beside Atem and asked sheepishly, “How are you?”
In response, Atem immediately unfurled part of the blanket and carefully wrapped Kaiba in it as well.
“Well I can’t say it was the evening I was envisioning when I set out today,” Atem smiled darkly, and maneuvered to entangle his limbs around Kaiba’s, “But I am certainly glad that the problem is gone for good now.”
“So am I,” Kaiba nuzzled into Atem’s hair and stared wistfully into the fire before breaking the silence, “I’m sorry we didn’t get to eat what you made. And that I broke your whipped cream. Why did you bring that anyway? Had you made pastries?”
“Oh, well uhhh,” Atem flushed and stuttered as he turned away to avoid Kaiba noticing his sudden descent into red.
“Oh so THAT was your genius plan then?” Kaiba laughed.
“Well if all else failed I was going to…distract you,” Atem shifted uncomfortably, “and pull the answer out of you.”
“So how did that go?” Kaiba smirked.
“Gee, I can’t say that it really went according to plan,” Atem shot him a look, “But I’m happy everything is cleared up now.” He looked up and threaded his fingers through Kaiba’s hair, gently tugging him closer, “But you definitely owe me dinner,” Atem smirked.
“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too,” Kaiba’s face softened into a smile as he leaned in, sealing it with a kiss.