Backing smoothly out, Seto hit the concealed dashboard button that began rolling up the garage door. A grin blossomed on his face as his muscles relaxed into heightened readiness. The Sprint accelerated up the ramp as the metal rattled up, this was a game Seto knew well, though it wasn't usually played with this car. He slid through the widening gap with an inch or so clearance, then stabbed at the button again to reverse the door.

When they reached the end of the short driveway however, Seto slowed to a reasonable traffic speed. "We're ahead of most of the traffic. Should be about 20 minutes or so."

"...Yeah?" Tristan's voice was torqued a little tighter than usual, considering that he was halfway between a heart attack and an adrenaline rush the size of a small country. Don't freak...don't freak...

The brunet was pasted to his seat and failing at not looking shaken, but trying anyway. He had, after all, been contemplating the roof peeled off like the lid of a corned beef can. He dropped his head to rub at his neck - an unconscious childhood gesture that soothed him - and glanced at Seto from the corner of one eye.

Seto noticed the odd tone in Tristan's voice and shot him a sidelong look, not really understanding what could be troubling him. Dismissing it with the trust that Tristan would tell him if he needed anything, Seto thumbed on the radio.

Tristan breathed out, missing Seto's glance in his direction, just glad that his reaction went apparently unnoticed. He dropped his hand and relaxed against the headrest, feeling unusually silly. Seto's respect seemed to mean quite a lot - well it always had, but since when did it matter if he let the other guy see him scared?

To his credit, Tristan did not palm his forehead in exasperation at himself. But he did shut the mental commentary up by the fortunate rising volume of the radio, which filled the silence. When Seto was preoccupied by the car, Tristan took the opportunity to alternately watch the traffic flowing around them and watch Seto drive. And so they arrived at the house gates, almost exactly twenty minutes before the evening rush.

"Ever get lost in there?" Tristan asked, ducking forward to peer up at the expansive building through the windshield.

Raising an eyebrow with a sardonic smile, Seto tipped his head to look at Tristan a moment. "If I said yes would you still respect me in the morning?" Shifting his attention back to the drive, Seto pulled a variation on his earlier maneuver, swinging through the still opening gates at high velocity with scant inches to spare on either side.

He killed mometum on the curve of the circular drive, passing the palatial front doors to slide to a stop in front of the wide garage. Getting out while the car was idling, he unlocked and opened the door on the right. The lights were flicked on so Seto could drive the car right onto the revealed lift. The other side of the garage was the Sprint's usual resting place, and the back was deep enough to hold a veritable treasure of tools and parts, neatly labeled and categorized for the most part.

Getting back into the car Seto said, "Into the house first for something to drink, then we'll come out here so you can look as long as you want."

Seto was mildly puzzled to find himself hoping Tristan would be looking for a long time.

"Why wouldn't I? I live in a shoebox. I would get lost in this place," Tristan admitted as he echoed Seto's smile - though his was amused rather than sardonic.

Then again with the beating time. God, what the hell was it with this guy? Tristan had visited Seto's home on a few occasions, but not usually in the passenger seat. And not in the Sprint. And Seto didn't usually play peek-a-boo with the gates and the garage doors and fuck knows what--

Okay. Breathe. And quit being such a girl.

Tristan watched through the windshield as Seto unlocked the garage door, and by the time he'd come back, things were back to normal. Relatively.

"Sounds good," was all Tristan said, but when the doors were opened and the engine was quiet, he stood up and said over the roof with an innocent - and therefore teasing - smile, "You know you oughta sell tickets for this ride. You had me convinced we were trading paint with that garage door back at the building."

Blinking, Seto ran his mind back to... ah. "I did at first, a time or two," he admitted with a chuckle. "Now, it's just a habit, I suppose." Seto cocked his head, suddenly thinking. Tristan was doing it again, making him notice his assumptions. "It used to be a challenge." With a small laugh, he stretched and headed for the door. "Sorry. Are you coming in or do you want me to bring something out for you?"

'Used to'? The phrase made Tristan wonder how often and how long ago Seto did it. And what it must have been like those first times, when he left paint on the ironwork or squealed the rubber seals of the garage door against the roof. Contemplating that scene, even for a brief second or two, made him grin, and he shrugged loosely at Seto's query, closing his door and walking around the tail of the Mustang. "If it's the same to you, I'll come with you."

Nodding, Seto led them the short distance to the side door of the house rather than around to the front. This took them through the kitchen and into the living room where Seto had a modest bar setup. Most of the bottles were displayed in a three-shelf alcove of ebony, a nice contrast to the dark mahogany of the rest of the room's panneling.

The spirits seemed to have been chosen for the color and shape of their bottles as much as the contents, though none of them were cheap and most of them were trendy.

Walking behind the counter, Seto reached for a distinctive bottle, hesitated, then with a small smile took it down anyway. "C & C alright?" he asked. At Tristan's nod, he pulled two glasses out from underenath the bar and deftly poured the drinks, sliding chunks of ice in afterward. Not very correct, but that never concerned him and Tristan had never complained

Holding his glass in one hand, Seto nudged the other in Tristan's direction. As the fiery-sweet liquid swam past his taste buds, Seto found something in him unwinding- something he hadn't realized had been tense ever since Tristan's question.

Taking another long swallow, Seto kept his eyes on the glass afterward. "Have you ever been to Vancouver?" he asked.

"That's in Canada, right?" Tristan asked in a sheepish tone. He reached out and picked up the glass he was offered, dark contents sliding down with a sweetness that left a familiar alcoholic burn in the back of his throat.

He settled down after that, understanding from experience that Seto not looking at him equaled Seto preoccupied, or Seto avoiding something. It meant that he needed to listen.

Despite himself, a small smile tugged the corners of Seto's mouth upwards. "I'll take that as a no. It's a nice city. I was there about two, two-and-a-half years ago overseeing a merger. That's when I first saw the Sprint." His voice turned soft, almost dreamy with nostalgia. "It was a Thursday. Late, sunset almost over. I left the office and... right there in front of the building.

I waited almost an hour until she finally came back to the car."

Lost in memory, Seto forgot to make the story as coherent as it should have been. "I tried to buy it right there. Finally, we went back to the hotel and over dinner she finally said she'd sell him to me for ten thousand dollars if I'd sleep with her."

Seto gave a snort of derision. "Ten thousand. I'd offered five times that, just to start." His gaze turned dark an brooding. "Looking back, she was probably planning a rape charge."

Seto tossed back the rest of the drink, the sweetness contrasting satisfyingly with the bitter memory. "I left. I knew I could find her . Next day I found a message waiting for me, from a man claiming to own the Sprint. I called him and he was there in twenty minutes. At least he had the title with his name on it. Turned out to be her brother."

With steady hands, Seto turned to pour himself another drink, still keeping all his attention on what was in front of him. "Amusingly enough," he said with heavy irony, "he ended up offering the same deal. Ten thousand and sex."

Swirling the liquid in the glass, Seto let the pressure of silence build. "I told them both they were crazy, there were other Sprints out there. But there weren't, not for me. That car was mine," he said, fierce possessiveness in his voice.

"The next day, which was supposed to be my last in town, they met me in the lobby. Told me they were willing to sell for half a million. Went back to their place." Seto seemed to remember he had an audience then, because he sighed deeply and not-quite-looked at Tristan. "You have to understand I wouldn't normally have been so... careless. I have no excuse for my lack of caution."

Another long swallow and Seto's voice steadied again. "Most people think being drugged and kidnapped doesn't really happen. It does." Setting the glass down on the polished wood of the bar, Seto rested his arms along the edge and leaned his weight there. "They had some mad idea of getting ransom, or possibly blackmail, I don't know.

I didn't stick around long enough to find out. By the time I'd gotten to the police and troops went to investigate, they were both dead. Suicide. Don't know if insanity ran in their family and don't really care."

With each word that dropped, Seto felt freer. He hadn't really analyzed the impulse to tell Tristan the whole story, as he never had with anyone before.

If he would have been more of an introspective person, Seto probably wouldn't have said anything at all. He hated his role in this tale, the pathetic, naieve victim- and would have expected Tristan's scorn, or at least the loss of his respect. But even with that, even if it cost him something priceless he couldn't define, the act of finally admitting the truth was like shining light into a nightmare room, finally cleansing an infected wound.

"I wasn't cheated of revenge this time, though. Two days later, I bought the Sprint. From their estate." He looked directly at Tristan for the first time in his tale. Each of the next four words was pronounced very carefully and deliberately, the emphasis heavy. "For ten thousand dollars." Then he picked up his glass, lifted it in a mocking toast and drained it. Looked defiantly away, pulling uncaring arrogance around himself like a cloak.

Tristan had leaned his cheek on his palm when Seto first began to speak. His posture changed as the minutes wore on, reacting to the other man's unconscious tension. It spoke eloquently through the fingertips that moved on the glass of spiked soda, and eventually Tristan's own position came to reflect his companion's, until both elbows and forearms were flat on the counter, big hands wrapped around the cool, sweating glass, fingers laced together and slowly leaving white fingermarks on his knuckles that bloomed red when he finally peeled his palms away.

He could have said any number of things. But the first one sounded trite and the second one sounded obvious - and probably one he'd heard several times. Putting them away, Tristan leaned a little more across the sleek bartop and pushed his right hand through the air between them to hook Seto's chin very lightly and encourage the sharp, stubborn features back in his direction.

Whatever he'd been expecting, the light touch wasn't it. He started once, a jump of muscles accompanied by a quick, indrawn breath but allowed his head to turn along the path of that gentle pressure. Kaiba met Tristan's eye squarely, his jaw still clenched.

That was the only movement however. Kaiba was motionless, an unearthly waiting, deep and endless stillness against the terrible vulnerability beneath.

Tristan whistled low, the words coming hard now that Seto had those blue eyes focused totally on him again. Well, that's what he wanted, wasn't it? It was...just...hard to be glib. "So you know better now. And you got the Sprint after all. Just--wanna act a little less like you're expecting me to chew on you? I probably would have done the same thing."

Tristan let his hand drop slowly, thumb almost caressing the other man's jaw as it fell. He tucked his hands safely away, arms crossed under his chest, still leaning a little forward into Seto's space. He closed his eyes, head canted to one side, and shrugged with a half-smile. "Probably would have caved at the first offer."

Like a man granted a reprieve from death, he was sharply aware of every sense. Feeling the solidness of the man before him, the undeniable reality of Tristan here, knowing, accepting and still here.

Since Tristan's eyes were closed, Seto allowed himself to study the honest, open face. He shivered at the tactile memory of the thumb along his skin and unconsciously leaned a few inches closer, feeling... something shivering through his veins.

Probably the alcohol. Seto was feeling it a bit now, though just enough to soften the edge he walked along every day.

There was much he would have liked to say. A wealth of emotion waiting for words. But...

"Thank you," was all he allowed himself.

When the other man opened his eyes again, Tristan found that Seto had shifted further into his space. Or had Tristan done it himself? That was always a possibility. It was disconcerting, even though the other man wasn't *that* much closer to him, the air simmered with unexpected warmth.

It was probably just his own heat. Tristan tended to do that. He had no real way of knowing what Seto's intentions or interests were, and had no drive to ruin what was a perfectly good relationship thus far. But the blue eyes were as intense and magnetic as always, and he decided on a whim not to break the fragile contact. Letting the space between them dissolve into silence, hands safely kept out of reach...he simply...watched.

Seto could feel time as something almost tangible between them. The silence took on its own power against which he stood helpless and slightly bewildered. And helpless was a feeling he (craved) hated so with a breath and a blink he pulled back. With deliberate care, he poured another drink then, seeing Tristan's was still mostly full, put the bottle away. "Shall we go to the garage?" he asked,with a wave of his hand.

It was so easy to get lost. The tentative curl of anticipation followed the tightening stomach as Tristan looked steadily into the other's gaze, and so when the tentative offer - so tentative as to be nearly nonexistent - was rebuffed, it took the man a moment or two of disorientation before he understood. The most he could do about it was give it a philosophical shrug and laugh quietly at himself as he dropped his chin, breathing out on the soft sound until it was nothing more than an abbreviated exhale.

Silly.

"Yeah, I'm coming!" Eagerly, Tristan snatched his drink from the countertop and waited for the other to lead the way.

Swinging around the end of the bar, Seto passed perhaps closer to Tristan than was necessary, a sort of experiment. Yes, definately *something* brushing along his nerve endings at the other man's proximity. Then it was back through the kitchen and out to the brightly lit garage, where Seto trailed his fingers along the smooth frame on his way to the lift in the back.

Tristan was careful to get his drink out of the way when he noticed Seto closing in on him, and his gaze followed the older man with surprise. Followed by amusement. Inwardly shaking his head, Tristan fell in behind him and pretended not to notice the hand passing along the Sprint's pristine paint job yet again. If he continued to make note of it, he'd start to think it was strange - and the car had a new, very odd connection to Seto in Tristan's mind already.

As it was, he could sympathize. Or empathize. One or the other. The smooth curve of a gas tank or a finished fender proved irresistable to touch.

Putting his hand on the button that would activate the lift, Seto looked over to make sure Tristan was clear before he thumbed it on, watching the Sprint rise to just past head height. He grinned as Tristan's eyes followed it into the air and settled back to lean against the built-in counter, allowing Tristan to look on his own. For now.

---

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