PG-13 for drug abuse & implied sex. Follows
We Die Young (which follows
Happens in Threes).
Summary: Kaiba gets discharged from the hospital.
You leave the hospital one morning when you’re sure everyone will be at school. The official story is still fatigue and exhaustion, and since you feel like you’ve been hit by a semi, it’s not exactly a lie anymore. You just want to go - somewhere, anywhere - where you can curl up under a blanket and sleep for a fucking week.
Yoshiko is waiting for you by her car, wearing a far-too thin suit for the cold.
“Well,” she says. “You’ve made a mess of things.”
You don’t answer, just get into the passenger side of the car instead.
“Mokuba-kun’s at school,” she adds.
“Huh.” It doesn’t surprise you, not really. Mokuba’s always been desperate to make everything the way it used to be. Even though you know it can never be like that. Not anymore.
Then because you might be a real, honest-to-god parent soon, you ask, “Yoshiko?”
“Yes?” She’s in the process of starting the car, but something in your tone makes her stop and look at you.
So you blurt it out before you lose all your courage, “I want to go to detox.”
She just stares at you. Says nothing. The silence is unbearable, and you want a hit already, even though the last of the hospital morphine is blurring pleasantly in your system.
“May I ask,” she says, in that tone she gets when she’s furious and trying not to show it, “what brought on this rather sudden…change of heart?”
Change of heart. That’s a nice way to put it. A way Yugi would put it. You’ve always told her just where she can stick the dry-out programs she finds, the needle exchange programs, the narcotics anonymous clubs.
“Do I need a reason?”
She’s been your social worker since you turned fourteen, and maybe she can’t see through your act, but she knows when you’re feeding her a line.
You’ve raged against her, and she’s pushed back, and somewhere along the way you began to respect her, and
You bow your head. Scrub your face with your hands. “I think I got a girl pregnant.”
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