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“What is this?”
Kisara peered over her laptop screen. In this moment she looked every inch a high school teacher – hair up, a highlighter tucked behind one ear and a pen cap between her lips. Her eyes were wide and blinking; he’d obviously just disturbed a train of thought.
“What’s what… Oh,” she saw what he was staring at and grinned sheepishly, removing the highlighter and pen and sitting up a little straighter on the bar stool. “A... present?”
Kaiba looked from her to the little green thing nestled in a bed of dirt contained in a plain, practical ceramic pot. The dirt looked a little damp, darker in the area immediately around the thing’s base.
His eyes darted back to her, and he took a sip of his coffee without tasting it. He really was drinking too much of the stuff these days. “Did Tanaka put you up to this?”
Back in the days of KaibaCorperation, his office had been spare and practical, but he’d always kept a few potted plants around. It had been less about decor and more about being a direct snub to Gozaburo’s memory, as the man never had anything green or living anywhere near him and made a point to keep it that way. Kaiba always suspected it was because his adoptive father was highly allergic to most of the nature world and therefore spent as little time outside as possible. The most he could seem to tolerate was being out on a tarmac or some military base out in the desert, as far from anything growing as he could get.
Ruefully, Kaiba remembered the open windows of the small playroom in the orphanage where they had had their fated chess match, how there had been a pot of flowers on the sill placed there by one of their caretakers. He didn’t remember any swelling or redness diminishing any part of the old man’s steely expression, but he now suspected that one of the reasons that Seto, a mere ten year old, had been able to beat the military mogul had been because of seasonal allergies.
So, once the bastard was dead and gone, Kaiba added the plants to his office and around the manor and hired experts to care for them as a way to make sure his father’s ghost was as miserable as possible.
If the occasional watering Kaiba contributed eased some of the tension in his shoulders by just a hair, and the feeling of a waxy leaf rubbed between index finger and thumb brought a small smile to Mokuba's otherwise sullen expression as he looked out the window at the city beyond, then all the better.
But, of course, that was years ago – the plants were gone with everything else. And while he liked his gardener enough to keep him on as a permanent employee, he hadn’t thought to have anything in the house in quite some time.
Kisara shook her head. “No, I picked it up when I was running errands yesterday.” She reached out and touched one of the smooth, fat stems that almost resembled the tentacles of a small squid. “It’s an aloe plant. Supposedly they are meant to promote healing.” She withdrew her hand and smiled shyly at him, and his knees went weak. Why? Why did she do this to him? “I… though it appropriate, I guess. But if you aren’t a fan I can take it back home with me.”
Kaiba felt a tiny muscle in his forehead twitch. An aloe plant. Used by none other than the ancient Egyptians because they found they could make salves to use on their skin to help heal burns and blemishes. He was pretty sure he’d read somewhere that Cleopatra herself used the juice from aloe leaves every day as part of her skincare routine. Because he just… knew that. For no reason at all.
Certainly not because he’d obsessively researched the ancient world when his cocaine-addled brain sought proof that all the prophecy bullshit was just that.
“No, ah-” Kaiba cleared his throat, suddenly too overwhelmed with emotion to think clearly. Say ‘thank you,’ asshole. “It’s just… we should maybe put it somewhere where it can get a little more light, don’t you think?”
He did not look at her, but he did not have to; he could feel her at his elbow, warm and electric, as he scooped up the small pot and carried it down to the living room only to place it in the center of the coffee table, directly into a patch of sunlight. He stepped back, but neither moved, as if both were expecting it to do… something.
Kaiba found himself smirking down at Kisara as a familiar thought wormed its way into his buzzing head. “First one to kill it has to cook dinner for a week straight.”
Kisara’s sudden shriek of laughter ignited something in his chest, and Kaiba found himself smiling even wider.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Kisara asked, looking up at him incredulously. “You always cook. I thought you preferred it that way.”
“Exactly,” he replied coolly. “I am also hardly ever here. So you are more likely to kill it, and therefore lose the challenge.”
She put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, her chin nearly brushing his chest. “You still lose either way, pal. I can’t cook for shit.”
Kaiba’s eye lit up. So. His suspicions were correct. “Then be sure not to over water it so as not to subject your poor, overworked boss to your terrible kitchen experiments.”
Kisara brow rose. “So you’re telling me that if you come home and find the plant dead, then you will be sure to be home for dinner every single night for a whole week just to suffer through my cooking?”
Kaiba nodded triumphantly. She stared at him, searching his face with her eyes that saw everything. Then after a moment she scoffed, waving him away with a roll of her eyes as she turned back to the kitchen. “Whatever. You’re ridiculous.”
Kaiba couldn’t stop the words from coming, they were leaving his mouth before he could hear them in his head. Once they were on his tongue it was as if he were possessed; there was nothing he could do. “You love it.”
Idiot idiot idiot! What was wrong with him? Using that word? Like that? He froze, but tried did his best to school his expression to impassivity as she turned to look at him over her shoulder. A small smile ghosted her soft pink lips, and the reminder that he was not as in control of this situation as he’d like to believe landed like a punch in the gut.
“Weren’t you going to make some more coffee?”