#Anzu and Atem working out together prompt
Photo
Annnd done. ♥
My contribution for the Revo month event happening in our dedicated Discord!
So glad I get to draw the OTP once again, haha.
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It’s great to see you back Bastet. I think you are an incredible writer and I find joy every time you post. I’m super nervous as this is the first ask I’ve ever done but if you are still doing the writing prompts for the Puzzleshipping Drabbles I’d love to see number 38.
You are way too kind and this made me smile so much <3 I'm glad you sent this ask and thank you so much for your lovely words and amazing prompt choice.
I went for an AU setting with this one because I just thought it would be funnier. ^.^
Enjoy <3
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Yugi took a breath as he walked through the crowd to join his friends. He hated places like this.
Small and busy spaces were not his thing. He’d agreed to go out and join his friends that night to see this band for one reason, and his name was Atem.
Atem was the newest addition to their small group of friends, and he was amazing. He fit into their group so well and Yugi wasn’t surprised that he’d found Atem taking up space in his heart too.
Because Atem was gorgeous. Not only that, but he was the kindest person Yugi had ever met. He was so considerate, and on the few occasions they’d spoken one on one, Yugi had found himself falling hard.
His looks, his personality…everything about Atem was Yugi's type.
He spotted his friends outside the venue, thankfully they’d decided to wait for him before heading inside. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to find them otherwise.
Taking another deep breath, he pushed away the nausea he was starting to feel and tried to calm his nerves. Now was not the time for a panic attack.
Anzu spotted him and waved, he returned the gesture eagerly and picked up his pace.
All of a sudden he felt light headed. His anxiety all but forgotten as he shook his head, trying to dismiss the feeling but failing dramatically. The sudden movement only served to increase the dizziness he felt.
The people closest to them had noticed how strange he was acting and that only made him feel worse. He felt awful. His hands started to shake and his legs felt unable to hold him.
His friends were walking toward him, Atem at the front reaching out a hand to him.
Oh god, was he about to pass out? No. This couldn’t be happening.
His vision was going black at the edges, and he frowned when he realised Atem was speaking to him. He couldn’t quite hear him though.
“What?” He asked, his voice seemed so far away from him though and he was panicking.
Atem was closer to him now, standing right in front of him as he continued to speak, his hands on his arms, but Yugi couldn’t really make sense of the words he was hearing.
He shook his head, Atem looked so concerned, but he wanted to be fine. He’d looked forward to spending time with him, he couldn’t let his anxiety ruin things.
He was about to try and voice those concerns when he realised his eyes were closing and his legs had stopped holding him up. He fell into the silence of unconsciousness.
…
The first thing he realised when he came to was that he was warm. Really warm. He kept his eyes closed for a moment, trying to work out what had happened and also giving his head a chance to stop throbbing.
“Is he okay?”
A voice so welcome to his ears cut through the silence and Yugi realised he wasn’t alone. He could hear something beeping steadily nearby, and then the smell of cleanliness hit him.
He put two and two together and suddenly didn’t want to open his eyes. He knew who that voice belonged to, and he knew where he was and he knew why he was there and he just wanted the ground to swallow him up.
He wondered how long he could pretend to be asleep.
Something warm against his hand interrupted his thoughts. He kept his eyes closed as he felt a hand close around his own, fingers slipping gently between his and a thumb stroking slowly over the back of his hand.
He’d only heard one voice in the room with him, and that had belonged to Atem but surely he wouldn’t be holding Yugi's hand.
They weren’t even friends really. They spoke, and occasionally they went places with their wider group of friends but they weren’t… not that Yugi didn’t want to be his friend. Well, actually he wanted to be more than friends with Atem but he just couldn’t bring himself to take a step forward.
He couldn’t believe he’d ended up in hospital with Atem by his side. Why did Atem come with him anyway? Why wasn't Anzu sitting by his side?
“Yugi?” Atems voice was quiet and so full of concern that it made his chest ache.
He’d have to own up sooner or later. He couldn’t pretend to be asleep forever just so he could hold Atems hand for longer.
He slowly opened his eyes, as he adjusted to the light of the room he saw Atem leaning over him, his face not too far from his own and eyes fixed on him. A smile slowly spread across Atems face and Yugi was surprised the monitor he was attached to wasn’t picking up his increased heart rate.
“Hi.” Atem said happily. “How are you feeling?”
Yugi wasn’t sure what he expected Atem to say, but that wasn’t it. He knew Atem was kind, but he’d never realised just how softly he could speak, how caring his eyes could be.
“I’ve been better.” He said.
Atem laughed quietly and nodded, the hand on his squeezed gently.
“I’m glad you’re at least looking better.” Atem said.
“What did I do?” He asked although he already knew the answer. Hopefully playing dumb would help his sanity.
“You fainted…” Atem smiled at him. “Straight into my arms.”
Yugi groaned and looked away but a soft laugh from Atem drew his attention right back to those gorgeous eyes.
“You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.” Atem said quietly, an amused smirk on his face.
Yugi felt his cheeks heat up and pulled his hand out of Atems, covering his face and trying to hide. He didn’t know what to say, because he did want Atems attention. He wanted to spend time with him and be the object of his affections, his focus but…
Gentle hands gripped his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face slowly.
“Yugi.” Atem laughed, taking both of Yugi's hands in his and holding them. “I was joking. I really am glad you’re okay now. I was worried.”
Atem was worried? About him?
“Um… I’m fine.” He said, giving Atem a small smile.
“I hope you don’t mind but I called your grandpa, he’s on his way.” Atem told him, his thumbs moving slowly over the backs of Yugi's hands. “The others are on their way too, they’d only let one of us in the ambulance with you and…well you seemed so comfy in my arms I didn’t want to leave you.”
Yugi was worried the monitor might catch fire trying to keep up with his racing heart. Hearing Atem speak to him in such a soft way couldn’t be good for his health. He was surprised he hadn’t passed out a second time.
“Thank you.” He said awkwardly.
Atem smiled and then looked down at their hands before pulling his hands away from Yugis and standing up straight.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…” Atem said, looking to the floor.
“No, it’s great.” Yugi said. “Um, fine, I mean it’s…yeah.”
Nice one.
Atem looked back at him and raised an eyebrow, a shy smile on his face as he stepped closer, leaning over Yugi's bed again and taking his hand properly.
“Really.” Atem said. “I was worried about you. When I thought about holding you I always pictured you being much more…awake.”
Yugi's brain took a moment to process what Atem had just said, then a few moments longer to pick apart what that actually meant. He was probably grinning like a fool but he didn’t care.
“Same here.” He said quietly.
Atem gave him a smile that could have stopped his heart as he squeezed Yugi's hand.
“Well, I’ll stay with you for as long as you like, and then we can talk more about…us once you’re feeling better?” Atem said softly.
“Perfect.” Yugi smiled, squeezing Atems hand gently.
#puzzleshipping#atem#fanfic#fanfiction#yugi muto#yugi mutou#ygo dm#yami yugi#writer asks#fun asks#fluffy and sweet
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WEEK OF REVO. DAY 4: PARENTING STYLES
For the @week-of-revo @week-of-revo
I´m afraid than maybe i didn´t understand correctly the prompt but we all have fantasies about daddy Atem. You can´t trick me.
"Dad, please!" exclaimed the teenager irritably.
"No," replied Atem as he finished adjusting his tie in front the hall mirror. His daughter watched him through the reflection with an annoyed expression.
"It's just for this occasion" She continued squeezing her hands together in a pleading gesture.
"Your mother's performance is in a few hours, you can't miss the premiere by going out with your friends" He replied, surprised by his daughter's insistence.
"But daddy..." Tried once more the girl.
"Mana, I said no!" he sentenced in a firm, authoritative voice. The girl growled indignantly at the scolding and looked away; small tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
As he drive towards the theatre, Atem sighed, glancing sideways at the girl's annoyed expression. His youngest son watched them in confusion from the back seat.
Neither he nor his friends had had a normal adolescence, he recalled. With his life filled with shadows duels and kingdom-destroying psychopaths, for Atem the possibility of a normal life had seemed strange. When, at the end of the ceremonial duel, fate had given him the chance to stay with his friends, he had found it hard to believe.
During Anzu's studies abroad, the distance between them only made their mutual feelings grow, and it wasn't long before they were confirmed; it still seemed incredible to Atem to know that he had formed a life with the woman he had loved, in secret, since the awakening of his spirit.
Atem had loved his children madly from the first moment. With the distant memory of his late father and the almost non-existent memory of his mother, he had been terrified of becoming a father. Only Anzu's unconditional love and the enormous support of his friends had helped. In the end, it had all been worth it once Mana, his daughter, had been born.
Although his children were unaware of his past as a ruler, they were aware of they pharaonic heritage: his daughter's Egyptian features and huge blue eyes had given her the name of the one whom Atem loved like a sister.
A few years later, Hizashi had become part of the family; his name was Anzu's way of reminding him of his divine past as a child of the sun god. Atem loved his wife and children deeply, though he sometimes wished they hadn't inherited her wife´s stubbornness.
"Mana," Atem said, shortly after turning off the car outside the theatre. "What have your mother and I taught you about keeping your promises?"
His daughter looked at him in a clear gesture of annoyed confusion. He watched her with a serious but calm face.
"You must keep your promise!" replied Hizashi from his seat. Mana rolled her eyes at her brother's interruption, Atem smiled patiently at his son and leaned back to stroke his tousled tri-coloured hair affectionately.
"Your mother has worked very hard for this performance," Atem continued, returning his attention to the girl.
"You saw yourself how hard she worked; how tired she was at the end of the day and how happy it made her when you said you would be here for the premiere" Mana averted her gaze, a small embarrassed blush flooding her cheeks.
"Your mother and I need you to understand how important it is to keep your promises; no matter if they are made to other people or to yourself" he explained as he paternally placed a hand on his daughter's head.
"Tomorrow you can go with your friends but tonight, your mum and I need you here, sharing memories with us. Understood?" whispered Atem with a smile; slowly his daughter sighed and returned the gesture shyly.
"Understood," she said, before getting out of the car. Mana took her brother's hand and together walked towards the theatre door.
Atem followed a few steps behind, smiling proudly. Suddenly the feeling of a hand patting his shoulder made him stop in confusion.
"Well done Temmy," someone whispered in his ear, the sensation disappeared and with it the voice he knew. Hearing his daughter call out to him, Atem quickened his pace to the entrance of the theatre, hiding a smile and aware that his family from the past was watching him with attention and pride.
At the entrance Anzu greeted him with open arms; he kissed her sweetly on the lips, both ignoring the awkward gestures of their children.
"Are you alright? she asked, cupping his face with both hands and smiling curiously at the almost euphoric expression on his face. He smiled, leaning back until their foreheads were touching.
"Better than ever," he replied.
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Prompt 3 Dump
This was when pyros prompt was gunna be A LOT longer, and it was a chance to throw in some barbedshipping - it didn't stick, clearly, as Bakura being hurt was not very in character - but here ya go.
“And you haven’t heard anything?” Anzu asks. “For a week?”
Yuugi shakes his head. “Nothing about any crime spikes on the news either.”
Anzu turns to Ryou who does the same.
“Huh,” Anzu sighs. “I always took him for the kind of guy to lash out.”
“He’s is the type to lash out, that’s what worries me,” Yuugi hugs himself as he leans against the Game Shop counter. “If he’s not taking it out on someone-or-thing else, then what’s he doing to himself?”
“Nothing,” Malik’s across the store, looking through card packs. “Yuugi, he’s not doing anything to himself. He wouldn't do anything to himself.”
“I dunno, I can’t believe that,” Yuugi says, facing down at the glass. It’s hard to look at himself right now, but there’s nowhere else to turn. “He’s hurt himself bef- just look at Ryou.”
“Don’t,” Ryou mutters, shrinking more. HIs left hand tucks under his thigh.
“...he’s been liberal about it before.”
“Yeah, but before there were ends that justified the means, now he has no means and no end.” He pauses. “Also,” he taps his head, “Him Malik wants to add, Bakura’s been really curbing that stuff since you started dating.”
“But they broke up, that’s the problem.” Anzu’s hand flicks the air before tucking her hair back.
Malik stops browsing- the body’s brow furrows, then raises at the understanding, as he says, slightly rapier, “that… would impact the severity of things, wouldn’t it….”
“It’s my fault,”Ryou sighs as he wrings his laced hands together. “I could’ve thought that plan through better.”
“Y’know, it’s not, but you could have,” Yuugi’s tone is clipped. He whips his head towards Ryou, who’s turned away from them both. “Three years with Kudaragi’s number - what the hell?”
“I didn’t think - I had no way of knowing that Kudaragi would--”
“Yes you do! You told me that night Bakura was a better person than he used to be! Why can Bakura change but Kudaragi can’t?!”
“Because Bakura’s not--”
“Are you guys kidding?” Anzu scoffs. “You’re gunna lecture each other about your own bad ideas when you’ve both been handling him with kid gloves?”
Both the young men went quiet.
“This was just wrong,” she says, “you both tried to manipulate him, you both lied for your own sakes. How do you expect him to have never figured out that Ryou planned for this?”
“Well, he’d’ve been flattered if he didn’t find out Yuugi asked me to do it--”
“You’re doing it again!” Anzu’s eyes are wide, exasperated. “You’re making excuses for not actually talking to him because you’re afraid of being the bad guy about it. That’s what this is. No one wanted to do the dirty work so you both threw it onto someone else.” Anzu’s hand flicks Ryou’s way. “Him, I would expect this from,” It turns towards the other end of the counter, “but you?”
“Truth always comes out and manipulating people into doing what you want always backfires,” Malik puts his card packs on the counter, a bill underneath that.“That’s from the guy who brainwashed multiple people and the woman who boarded a bomb-planted ferris wheel to date a ghost.”
What comes after that -- Yuugi thinks it’s something about not needing change -- doesn’t quite reach his ears. He thinks back to that day, the black-out that he now knows was Atem. And the reports of the bomber and Anzu’s face, clear as day, on the news the morning after…
“That was on purpose?” Yuugi asks - and then reels back, the pieces clicking into place, a puzzle that didn’t really need solving, but if Anzu being in trouble triggered out Atem...
Anzu - everyone, actually - has the good grace to look horrified. If not simply embarrassed.
The odd man out of this was - not the same Malik, the one with wilder eyes and hair and who leaned onto the counter with eyes that struck Yuugi as engaged rather that stricken dumb.
Malik, the other Malik, casts a long, slow glance at his girlfriend. “You never told your best fucking friend?” He stares through the continued silence.
Anzu moves little, her expression set in stone as her hand idly scratches behind her ear. “It never came up.”
“There was a three month fight over the precedent of that stunt,” The Other Malik’s hand fists, going to his mouth where he bites a knuckle, enthralled. “You went here to vent - you didn’t tell him-”
“I said I wouldn’t do it again and it wasn’t the time!” Anzu’s squeak is stressed.
“Well, there ya go!” The hand’s out of Malik’s mouth, waving across the store. “Wha’d we just say about the truth coming out?!”
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[Save Point]
Summary: Every morning, Kaiba wakes up, puts his slippers on, opens the windows, and goes downstairs. And every time, he finds someone different in his kitchen.
Word Count: 8,200
Rating: T
“Is there anything special about today?” he said, grabbing the glass and handing it to her. “Anything we have planned?”
“Not really,” Anzu said, and his heart crunched with more force than the vase. “Why do you ask? You wanna play hooky from work?”
He stared at her, helping herself to water from his refrigerator, at ease with his presence. Her shoulders were beautiful, broad and tanned. Every movement rippled with strength. She seemed inexhaustible, impervious to death. She was going to live forever. On that ephemeral point alone, that split-second twist of light in the air, he loved her. No better than an ancient king, poisoning himself on dreams of immortality.
“Today is Atem’s birthday,” he said.
“Oh,” she sighed. Her gaze drifted downwards to the floor, her eyes glassing, fixing on nothing. Her expression folded inwards like a flower at dusk. “Yeah. I miss him too.”
In the resounding quiet she mistook his shudder of unease for a speechless grief.
“Why don’t we call Yuugi and invite him out to lunch? I’m sure he’d want to be with us today. It would be nice to just spend some time together and remember, don’t you think - Seto?”
He was already leaving, slippers slapping against the tile with every step. The dream had changed when he went back to bed and woke up again - would it change again? Maybe. Confusion clogged his thoughts. Where was he? Where was Atem?
A/N: Written for the Dark Pride of Dimensions Drabble Night Challenge, filling the prompts “Atem’s birthday” and “habits.” Contains some violetship, trustship, azureship, rivalship, and the ultimate OTP, Seto/self-love, but rest assured prideship is the endgame. have fun >:3
#fanfiction#prideshipping#intern memo#this is not under any circumstances a 'dunk on other ships' fic so like rest easy#likes nice reblogs nicer comments nicest <3
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Summary:
Yuugi has had a trying birthday week, and when Atem isn’t able to get together a birthday present, Yuugi asks him to ask Jounouchi out for them instead.
Atem is not particularly well suited for this task. Especially when Jounouchi is so easily distracted by girls, and pudding, and video games.
Also on ffnet.
Hey, guys~ I decided to write something for @ygotplusweek. It’s feathershipping, which is a little out of my comfort zone, but in a fun way I hope ;) Also some Anzu/Rebecca, a few other teased ships, and some of Mai & Jounouchi being uncomfortably physical friends, lol.
And there is a birthday party, and it is a get-together fic of sorts, but I’m afraid it doesn’t match any of the prompts too well. Mea culpa.
Thank you for your interest~
#feathershipping#my writing#feathership#Atem#Mutou Yuugi#Jounouchi Katsuya#save me from this card game hell
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AU Drabbles
So I have a bunch of, more or less random, 100-word snippets from various works that I figured I’d go ahead and post rather than letting them sit on my hard drive, No, they don’t necessarily all work as independent drabbles, but if you’re interested in me expanding on some of them, drop me an ask.
Post-DSOD Revolution/Puzzle/Encourageshipping Reincarnation AU
It was only the first day of the semester, but already there was one girl that stood out among all the others in English 101. Her name was Anzu Mazaki, newly arrived from Japan, apparently, to study dance in New York. She was smart, funny, and looked like she could break a man’s bones with her legs alone. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. (Mana would laugh herself silly when she found out.) He tried to talk to her after class. “Hi!”
Anzu looked up and it was like she had seen a ghost.
He waved nervously. “I’m Atem.”
“Can I buy you a drink?” Atem asked.
Anzu jumped in her seat and stared at him. It wasn’t like they were strangers; they had a class together. But Anzu looked startled and blushed, and Atem felt his own face getting red. Apparently, he hadn’t come off as smooth as he hoped.
“You’re Anzu Mazaki, right? I’m Atem, we have a class together?” he prompted, just in case he was wrong and she didn’t recognize him after all, but Anzu was nodding.
“I know you,” she said. “I just… hadn’t expected to see you. It’s… nice, to see you again.”
There was a nightmare Atem kept having where he was bathed in gold. Blinding light, too bright to see, a hot yellow flame that felt like it was burning him to ashes, and he couldn’t even scream. That was how it always started.
In the dream, he wandered impossible hallways, the inner workings of a tomb where the doors led to traps and the stairs led nowhere. He ran, though there was nothing to run from and nowhere to go. The walls had cracks and the doors, all of them, had eyes, staring at a pyramid-shaped pit in his soul.
Atem slipped his phone into his pocket, ignoring the text message that had distracted him. “Sorry about that,” he told Anzu. “My parents can be kind of overprotective.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “They want to know how you’re doing, right? My parents are the same. I have to call them right on schedule or they get worried. Never mind the time difference between America and Japan.” She leaned back on the bench. “What are your parents like?”
Atem rolled his eyes, but smiled. “Proud as hell that I got into University. Not as pleased that it’s in New York.”
“I grew up in a small town,” he continued. “Very different than the big city. They watch too many crime shows, though.”
Anzu laughed. “I could say the same thing! I told them I can take care of myself, though. I’ve seen worse things.”
“You have?”
Anzu made a face like she regretted what she’d just said. There was a hesitant pause before she continued. “I just mean, I took some self-defense courses in high school. And I’ve dealt with creeps. I lost a job once because I knocked out a guy who tried to grope me.”
Atem laughed incredulously.
#yugioh#revolutionshipping#drabbles#atem#anzu mazaki#it's my blog and I'll do what I want#I'll go ahead and do a separate post for each AU#Anzu losing her job because of knocking out a creep is canon and I love her#I'm sorry Yugi doesn't actually appear in any of these#Atem's attempts to deny a blatant crush by casting Yugi as his romantic rival is kind of hilarious
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Puzzle Peaches Q&A
Hey guys! Thank you for your interest in Puzzle Peaches, you’ll find the answers to the questions sent to us below the cut!
SV = Sally Vinter (Celepom) | AB = Auroblaze
Will the option to buy ever like go away? Is there a time limit?
SV: Nope! It’s up indefinitely, and it shouldn’t go down. If it does I’ll find some other way to sell it, even if I have to take orders directly through my PayPal.
Will there ever be Physical Copies?
SV: Probably not. I don’t have the money to make that kind of investment in physical merchandise (And then there’s shipping on top of that). Were I ever to do it, it would definitely be MUCH more expensive than a digital copy.
You should have charged more for this?
SV: Maybe
AB: PERHAPS
What kind of “Explicit” material is contained within just so we have more of an idea/warning?
SV: I don't think anything in here is too explicit, but your mileage may vary. SPECIFICALLY there is...
AB: Nudity (excluding...male & female genitals)
SV: The most explicit act in it is Oral (male on female). There's also references to orgasms, bondage, and several innuendos (intended as jokes). Like I said, I don't find anything within to be so explicit to warrant an 18+ rating, but if any of the aforementioned content bothers you, you are warned and should perhaps refrain from a purchase.
Are all the comics the same universe or is it just a series of different comics with no real connection outside of ships and characters?
SV: Same universe! You could easily put these in chronological order, but I didn't want to do that
AB: In the end we picked the prompts that related more to each other in a way
Did you both decide to make Yugi bisexual or is that one of your individual headcanons? I've never seen it before so I'm curious.
AB: Out of SPITE XDDD
SV: LOL NO. It's honestly how I view him since coming back to the fandom. He’s Bi in everything I write.
AB: It makes sense to me, after reading and watching the series XD (I mean, shipping-wise, that is)
SV: Yeah, as a multi-shipper him being Bi just makes the most sense to me. But I don't headcanon EVERYONE as Bi. Like, Atem I HC as Demi, actually
AB: Oh YES
SV: Buuut, while it never comes up in Puzzle Peaches, I HC Anzu as Bi too
What made you guys wanna do the book?
AB: It was mainly Sally's idea at first,I joined through fanart and inking help X'D
SV: Hey now, if Auro hadn't been so passionate this thing wouldn't have been NEARLY as long or as beautiful as it is. It started out as one story (Lingering Shadows), then two and some doodles, and then it just became this amazing thing
AB: So basically, passion was all behind this XD Got something like 40 pages of prompts saved, these cover...half? Less? THERE WAS A LOT XD
SV: I HAD TO CUT IT OFF AT SOME POINT OR IT NEVER WOULD HAVE FINISHED
How did you work on this together when you two aren’t in the same time zones?
SV: Nevermind different timezones, we're halfway around the world from each other.
AB: So...so far away... x'D But since this started in summer I managed to get in touch during the nights Which are your days, and vice-versa XD And we just spamming each other with WIP or complete pages to see for when one or the other woke up
SV: So many wonderful early morning presents
HEY ARTIST PERSON and other artist person, Care to share a little overview on how you went about compiling your shared ideas into a cohesive single release?
SV: Incoherent Yelling.
AB: May I also add, it started with butts as well.
SV: IT DID?!
AB: The canoodle doodle was the first thing I shared with you X'DDD
SV: RIGHT! HOLY SHIT! So it started with me drawing Lingering Shadows, you drew "Canoodle Doodle" I declared "THIS IS CANON" and then you made the other omakes and then you started making Love IN AMERICA after I talked about it.
AB: YUH-HUH XD
SV: And you didn't want to post explicit material, so I offered to combine it with mine And then it just. Kept. Snowballing. As for the formatting, I tried to put the stories in an order that made the most sense Narratively, as opposed to just Chronologically. Auro helped me figure out where to slot ones I wasn’t sure about and helped with the narrative coherence.
Did you give each other deadlines?
SV: Sort of
AB: kiiiinda XD We hoped to release it by December, then January...February ended up being the more realistic XD
SV: Auro is such a champion and speed demon at getting all this artwork done with such high quality SO FAST, It took me a bit longer to get my stuff done
AB: I HAD FREE TIME! There wasn’t much rush for this after all, job and life came first! YOU HAD WORK, IM NO SPEED DEMON XDDD
SV: True…(But, no, you are)
AB: It also took you Longer because you did those amazing colors and literally everything else in this book *COUGH COUGH*
SV: Shh, take my compliment
AB: *incoherent grumbling noises* >:'''''
How long did this take to Make?
AB: UuuUUUH...did we start this in....July?XD
SV: August. So 6 months. Time flies when you're having fun?
AB: I kept losing track while working on it for real; "hey Auro you know how long we’ve been working on this?" "Uuuh two weeks?" "Two months" "WHAT"
SV: Again, it probably would have taken longer (and never finished) if I hadn't put my foot down in December and been like ENOUGH! NO MORE!!
AB: I so still want to do the other prompts and you can’t stop me, NEVER
SV: No, I certainly can't stop you XD
Are you planning on doing something similar in the future?
SV: Well, we both love making comics so I believe I can say with certainty that we'll both continue drawing them
AB: Oh yesss
Do you think you'll ever do another collab like this together?
AB: Maybe in different ways, but I'd absolutely love to collaborate again!!! :D
SV: We've already discussed it, and I would love to collab again too, so it's definitely possible 8D
THANK YOU FOR READING!!
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Prideshipping for the ship meme (Are you surprised?)
I apologize for thewait! Thank you for your patience! Though to be honest, this exercise is morefor my own sake in building ideas and adding detail to these ships, and ifother people happen to get something out of it, that’s only a bonus. (At somepoint I’ll be answering for Heartshipping too.)
And of course theseare only my interpretations/opinions.
There are two waysPride can be approached: either Seto makes visits to the Netherworld, or Atemthrough some means exists in the modern world. I’ll try to acknowledge thedifferences where appropriate in my answers.
I think Seto makingroutine trips to the Netherworld would be an alright choice for the couple.It’s intriguing how Seto is both so independent as a person and yet so co-dependenton Atem, but I think a long distance relationship would work out well for thetwo. Seto needs space but would understand he has someone who loves, desires,and supports him even as they’re physically apart. Likewise, I think Atem wouldbe satisfied in what they share. I characterize Atem as more calm and at peacepost-canon and I think he’s both loving and independent, and he’d cherish howdeeply Seto feels for him and how they’ve both followed each other from thestart.
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What they watch during movie dates and what kind ofsnacks they get from concessions.
Again, I don’tthink Seto watches much television or movies. But for some reason, I imagineAtem might really dig documentaries. It’s not just about absorbing informationhe hasn’t yet learned of the modern world. Rather I think he may actually enjoythe act of learning itself, given it’s in an entertaining package. I think he’dlike watching other genres of film too, though more casually. It would takesome time for him to develop his own tastes with it, since he wouldn’t be astired with clichés and tropes as most people.
Seto might bringdownloaded media to Atem in the Netherworld, and they’d sit on the palacerooftop over a candled city and under the deep starry sky, leaning into eachother as a floating panel of light plays the movie. Seto might become bored andbegin making plans for his work, but he’s still sitting there and Atem is restingagainst him and their warmth pools together, and when the film is over Atemasks him to maybe bring some new movies for next time. “Maybe one with moreaction so you don’t get bored.” (Atem noticed.)
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Which one gets in to a fightwith the other’s parents.
If we’re in themodern world, neither one has a living parent. In the Netherworld, there’s allkinds of possibilities to play with here.
If Atem’s fatherwas present in the Netherworld, I think Atem would be close to him. He soclearly carried affection for his father’s memory in the series’ final arc. ButSeto would keep his distance from Aknamkanon.Aside from Seto’s sharply asocial nature, I think he’d feel like he wasencroaching and he’d also feel out of place within that father/son bond.
I consider Atem andYugi to have a brotherly affection for each other, and based on the ending toDSoD, it seems Seto’s warmed a small bit to Yugi. (I’m a sucker for Rivalshipbromance regardless.) I imagine Mokuba would figure out his brother is gay andinvolved with Atem before Seto actually comes out to him, and Mokuba would besupportive.
There’s somethingvery complex going on between Mokuba and Seto and Atem in DSoD (it’s awhirlpool of love, hate, fear, and hope) and there aren’t immediate answershere and the water would need to smooth. Mokuba and Seto already had a complexrelationship; Atem and Seto already had a complex relationship. I can’t reallydistill it so simply. But I think they’d come to an understanding. I think apart of Seto might be ashamed, while Mokuba dearly wants his brother to findsome patch of happiness even if Mokuba carries a splotch of resentment. (Ithink the fandom takes it for granted that even in the anime it’s impliedMokuba and Seto have a strain on their relationship—that doesn’t change thefact they love each other deeply.) I think Mokuba might have mixed feelingstowards Atem initially, even if he keeps them to himself, but there’d be timeto heal and bond.
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What kind of street performance they’d put on to raisemoney if they were stranded somewhere.
Aren’t they bothfamous? They’d sell autographs!
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How they’d be as parents if theyhad-a-kid/someone-forced-a-kid-on-them.
I’ve made it clearI interpret Seto as being keenly uncomfortable at the prospect of fatherhood,due to his history, his Gozaburo-complex, and the issues in his mental health.I see Atem as a character going either way. If his lover doesn’t want children,he’d be happy with not having children. If his lover does want children, he’dbe happy with having children. He could see himself being a good father and hedoesn’t mind children, but children aren’t a goal for him. Having children issomething he’s open to but not actively interested in, is my take on the character.
I’ve brought up thesad circumstance before of how Seto’d be forced into fatherhood, but also howhe’d prove to be a far better father than he had feared. He’d be quiet, softer,a bit distant. He’d have times where he’d lose his temper and have to suddenlyleave the room to calm down, but he would care achingly for that child. He’drub the child’s head gently, help them with their homework, carry them to bedwhen they’ve fallen asleep in the car.
I think Atem wouldprove to be a damn solid parent actually, warm and encouraging yet firm. Thisis in the realm of the mortal world, but maybe he’d take the child out fishingor bring them to museums. Atem might prompt the child to make a drawing forPapa Seto or he’d build colorful Play-Doh sculptures with them. He’d emboldenthem to make friends and put themselves out there. And he’d also be the one totell them to be kind to others, to be fair and use judgement, and scold themwhen they’ve done wrong.
Atem plays theactive firm parent, and Seto the quiet soft parent, but the child is well lovedand the three form a cozy family together.
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Who would cause the most trouble during a camping tripand how.
I would say thecouple isn’t exactly the type to go out camping but then I did just read theaskee’s fic, The Newly Revised Book of the Dead, wherein Atem and Seto spend a decentamount of the story essentially camping. They both strike me as practicalorganized people (maybe not in the emotions department, but in work andhobbies), so I think they’d be able to tackle camping just fine. Though Atemwould enjoy the adventure more than Seto would.
In reality, I thinkthe two would take walks along the river’s edge, watching the beads of lightbob and shimmer on the water and seeing the birds skim the air. They maybriefly hold hands a few times.
Atem might try toconvince Seto to go horseback riding. As a joke, he’d tell Seto the horse’sname is Gingersnap and insist, “You have to say her name if you want to gainher trust.” And Seto would ask, “Why is a horse in Ancient Egypt namedGingersnap?”
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What they would give each other as both a serious giftand a troll gift.
Seto is so cluelessabout gifts, so he’d ask up front what Atem wants for his birthday orChristmas. Atem is a bit more brave with gift-giving, making guesses and givingthings purely for surprise. If in the modern world, he might give Setohardcover books or a framed photograph of the wild ocean or maybe a handsomewatch. And Atem might teasingly buy goofy Duel Monsters memorabilia for theirhome, like a Blue Eyes White Dragon bottle-opener or a stuffed Kuriboh. MaybeAtem leaves the stuffed Kuriboh in Seto’s home office for him to discover, andwhile initially Seto is indifferent, overtime the toy becomes somethingprecious to him and he keeps it nestled beside his pen set.
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Who moves in with them as an unfortunate third wheelroommate.
In the Netherworld,Seto himself is kind of a third wheel to the palace, isn’t he? I feel like he’dact stiff with Set, Mahaad, Mana, all of them. It’d take a while to warm tothem at all.
If Atem and Setoare together in the modern world, Atem’s friends may spend the occasional nightin their home. Yugi and Anzu would be very polite guests, while Jonouchi andHonda would visit Atem but they’d tend not to stay the night.
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How they feel about handholding and sudden kisses in theear-cheek vicinity.
I characterize bothAtem and Seto as private in tenderness and also not touchy-feely to begin with.PDA does not happen with them, and even in private they don’t cling to each other.But they’ll lean into each other when they read and they’ll cuddle in bedtogether, and it’s sweet and warm, and it’s enough to know what they mean toeach other.
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Who’s always snapping photos and who’s pack-rattingclutter.
I don’t thinkeither is taking many photographs. Nor is Seto into collecting small materialgoods. I’ve already mentioned Atem buys silly Duel Monsters merchandise half asa joke, half because he honestly finds it charming. I feel like he might taketo collecting certain knickknacks too, items he finds fascinating or cool.
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Who hogs the bathroom in the morning and who causestoothpaste related drama.
Seto and Atem areboth pampered rich kids, and neither of them cleans toilets. In theNetherworld… how do bathrooms work? Do they have magically running water? Orwill Seto be making a fuss about how barbaric and unhygienic it is, at leastfor the first few visits until he gets over it up?
Atem might be the typeto leave the bathroom door cracked when he uses it and this mildly annoys Seto,and Seto will shut the door if he passes it.
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What their matching costumes were for that one party.
Seto is an assholewho refuses to dress in a costume. This one is kind of stumping me actually,because I don’t think Atem would really care much about dressing up as a pair.They can be the boring killjoys of the party together: that’s their matchingoutfit.
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If I think they’d get married and why or why not.
The answer to thisquestion is very dependent on which version of Prideshipping we go with.
If Atem exists inthe modern world, I don’t think marriage is on either character’s mind. I don’tthink either one is particularly romantically-minded nor do they feel the needto announce their bond in paperwork. What the case might be is one day theyrealize they’re fifty-years-old and have been together for over thirty years,so why not? But the ceremony would be small and short and more just to have iton the record. If anything, it’d be their friends and family who are moreexcited by the news and the ceremony. Maybe Atem would go along with theexcitement and have some elegant decorations strung around the room and foodplatters set out for their sake.
On the other hand,I think the two would marry with more passion, more personal investment, ifSeto was making visits to Atem in the Netherworld. The two have times of beingseparated physically: they want something to signify they’re always together inheart—they want a symbol of it. There’s something possessive here too, likeleaving a mark on each other. The ceremony would be small and quiet, as Setoand Atem are both private people in their tenderness, but it’d be warm andmeaningful.
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Who has over a thousand unread emails in their inbox orfive hundred icons on their computer desktop and how the other reacts to thisgross mismanagement.
Seto is a CEO of amammoth corporation, so I think it’s fair to wager he has a lot of crap on hiscomputer. Atem doesn’t care; Atem only even recognizes like three of thoseicons.
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What their hidden artistic talents are and howappreciative the other is of these talents.
Again, I think Setosketches blueprints for things he doesn’t intend to build, maybe fantasticalthings that can’t be built, as a way of clearing his heart on harder days.Maybe Atem watches him sketch, and he’s watching in silence for a while, and thenhe comments softly, “You’re very good at drawing.”
Maybe one day Atemasks if Seto would try drawing this thing or that. Maybe Seto does draw it forhim.
I imagine Atem as amore athletic type, someone who likes swimming and horseback riding andfishing. I feel like he might try painting or drawing but not have much talentfor it. “You’re much better,” he’d tell Seto.
But Atem is good atswiftly solving problems and thinking on his feet, conjuring creative solutions.It’s a talent Seto has always admired in him.
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What they consider each other’s most attractive qualityand/or their favourite thing about the other.
Atem is like a point of brilliant clarity for Seto, and yet he’salso a symbol of so many spiraling things: the past, hatred, failure, connection,death, passion, and most intensely–most brightly–he represents hope. Atemawoke Seto from his numbness, inspired Seto and gave him the tools he needed tosave himself from despair. Even now, Atem harbors a kind of radiantconfidence and calmness that braces Seto and grants him brightness.
For Atem, Seto validated his existence as his own being, notYugi but a whole other person, a deeply valued rival. What Atem admires in Setonow is his passion, how he refuses to give up the battle until he finds ananswer, how strongly his spirit fights. Seto chased Atem from the start and henever gave up.
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Prompt: Atem making a gigantic sand castle with the gang.
“You want me to do what now?”
“Help us build a sand castle!”
“Build... a sand castle.” Atemu raised an eyebrow, looking over at Yugi and Anzu, from where he sat on his towel.
Yugi happily nodded, holding up a blue, plastic bucket he had taken with them to the beach. “Yeah, we’re gonna build a castle, and you should join in! You haven’t done much except sit and watch everyone since we got here today.”
Atemu sighed, getting up off the towel, walking over to them. “I don’t even know what to do, Aibou.”
“It’s easy.” Anzu smiled. “We get wet and dry sand, and start packing it together, into making walls and towers.”
“Hey! Why not make a sand palace! Like the stuff in ancient Egypt!” Jounouchi spoke up as he approached them, soaking wet. He stopped, and shook himself, earning a squeal from Anzu and a shout of annoyance from the two star heads. “I mean, that’d be more fittin’ for ya, right ‘Tem?”
“I suppose so.” Atemu shrugged, before sitting down. “So, what, we just fill up the bucket and dump it?”
“Sorta.” Yugi replied. “We get the sand wet first, and use it to help pack and get the drier sand into a better shape. It’s not hard. You saw how I used Metamorphfortress in duels before, yeah? It’s kinda like that! Except not alive, and not punching someone out.”
“I guess.”Jounouchi grabbed the other bucket they had, saying he was gonna get water for it and to grab Honda, who was still swimming in the ocean, while the others cleared a space to start building.
Atemu watched as Yugi and Anzu tried to smooth out some of the sand, helping them out, while Jounouchi and Honda returned with the bucket.
The five of them got to work on trying to build a sand palace, but it wasn’t exactly an easy task, considering that they weren’t very good at it. After a good half hour or so of trying, they came out with large, sorta-tower shaped lumps, and attempted walls. “This looks like shit.” Atemu spoke up, earning laughs from the others.
“Yeah, it’s not the best.” Honda chuckled. “But it still looks pretty decent!”
“I think we did a good job, let’s take a picture of it.” Yugi smiled, moving to grab the camera he brought. “It shows we made an attempt! And I know this will be something we can laugh about later.”
“We’re laughin’ about it now.” Jounouchi grinned before he took the empty water bucket, putting it on his head. “Well, at the very least, I want to be the king of the sand palace.”
Atemu snickered a bit. “Oh? You’re the king?” He grinned, ignoring Yugi taking pictures, with Anzu taking a few when Yugi wanted in.
“Yes! And as king, I think we should go get burgers after this, cause we forgot food!”
The other four didn’t have any problems with that, and after a few more pictures, they packed up and left the beach, where the sand palace stayed until the tide came in.
#yugioh#atem#atemu#yugi mutou#anzu mazaki#jounouchi katsuya#hiroto honda#john's drabbles#microraptorglider
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To Immortalize in Full
...and gain something new along the way
You know how I kept saying I was going to make one of those kiss prompts actually shippy? This is the shippy one. Shhhh. I know.
That said, I've crossed over Yu-Gi-Oh! and Hikago, and now Yu-Gi-Oh! and DNAngel. All that's left is squishing all three together some day into some sort of unholy angsfest of moving on from your now-absent mind-spirit-buddy. Person. Thing. This prompt was Yuugi-Daisuke: perplex. Noooot sure if it really came out to much perplexing so much as 'this person reminds me of me for some reason' for most of it, but hey, prompts are just there to light the spark.
The Mutou Yuugi that first stepped foot in Domino High never planned to go to college. He’d hoped to survive school without too much bullying, make friends besides Anzu, and eventually take over Grandpa’s shop where he could be surrounded by the latest games of all types to his heart’s content. But the Mutou Yuugi who entered high school was not the Mutou Yuugi that left it, and several years with a spirit sharing his body and confronting an array of powerful, morally questionable people and an ancient Egyptian evil kind of put him at a different mental state than when he’d entered high school. The world was a lot bigger than his little game shop and there was a lot he would love to know more about. Plus he had friends now who were all making their own way in the world. Yuugi had had to decide what to make of himself.
So, contrary to where he thought he’d be, he’d decided to go on in schooling. Learning more about Atem’s country and times was helping fill the gap he’d left. And learning about game design was right up Yuugi’s alley. In fact, Kaiba had even made subtle, backhanded remarks that insinuated that he wouldn’t mind having Yuugi’s brain coming up with games for his company once Yuugi was out of school.
So there he was. In college and in over his head whenever he had classes that didn’t immediately relate to his obsessions. Yuugi still couldn’t really believe he was there. He could have just gone into pro Dueling like Jonouchi had. But as much as he loved Duel Monsters and always would, Duel Monsters had been a little too painful to play for a long while after Atem had left. Back around again to why college had ended up in his future.
Yuugi sighed. Game design, he was finding, required just as much knowledge about art and computers as it did crafting unique gameplay elements and storylines. Neither of which were his forte. Painting a figure for a tabletop game did not transfer over into sketching a character. And that was why Yuugi was at that moment sitting in the art building and hoping he could catch a professor or someone from one of the lower level art classes to get some tips, or at least some book recommendations. He didn’t think his professor would be very thrilled with Yuugi’s current doodle designs. They looked more like balloon figure caricatures than a serious design for the video game concept he was piecing together for his class final.
Somehow Yuugi hadn’t expected a whole art building to be so...quiet. Or empty. He’d passed six classrooms and what looked like the entrance to a dark room, but there hadn’t been a single person. Maybe they were in a computer lab? Or one of the reserve-able workrooms upstairs? Or maybe there just weren’t any art classes taking place at ten thirty in the morning.
Yuugi wandered up a staircase and down a hallway. Whoever built the art building had an interesting idea on how architecture worked. In that there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to where the halls and rooms were in relation to each other and different floors. It would be an easy place to get lost in.
At the end of that hallway before it took a sharp left, there was a room with the door ajar and the light on inside. Yuugi clutched his sketchbooks tighter; finally, there was someone else in the building after all.
The room’s occupant was painting, headphones over his ears with spiky red hair jutting out around them. There was a large canvas propped on an easel in front of him and a few more finished works scattered around the room. The current painting was still in a sketchy framework phase, rough shapes and colors blocking out segments of the canvas. In the paintings around the room, there were clear interconnected color schemes of purple and black and blue and red, with the occasional jarring yellow. The second thing Yuugi noticed was that every painting had wings—feathers, winged figures, or just silhouettes worked into an abstract design. Looking at them felt a bit like intruding for some reason. Yuugi tore his eyes away.
“Excuse me!” he said, raising his voice a little to try to get the painter’s attention. He edged further into the room. “Hello?” The painter set down a brush, turned to grab a tube of paint. “Hi,” Yuugi said with a wave. The painter jolted as he caught Yuugi from the corner of his eye, accidentally sending a paintbrush spinning across the room. It left a streak along an already stained floor.
The artist clutched at his chest with one hand, the other lifting one headphone away from his ear. “How long have you been there?!”
“Um. Just now actually,” Yuugi said.
“Oh.” The headphones slid off completely. The artist rubbed a hand against his face leaving a small streak of indigo just under his left eye. “Hi? Did you need something?”
Yuugi opened his mouth, then closed it, painfully aware that he’d just interrupted a private painting session for completely selfish reasons. Still, this was the only person he’d found so far... “You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a professor around? Or if there’s anyone who tutors for drawing?”
“It’s kind of quiet today, isn’t it?” The painter glanced at his mixed paint and the canvas before shrugging and wandering closer. “The professors are all out today because there’s an art exhibit opening up in town with some work from an alumni featured in it. A lot of people have class assignments related to it too.” Yuugi vaguely remembered something being mentioned about an art exhibit. He’d been a bit too caught up with thinking up puzzle mechanisms for the game he was designing to pay attention that day. “As for tutoring,” the painter said, “I don’t think there’s anything formal like that here. You can always ask a professor or a classmate for pointers though.”
“Ah.” Yuugi deflated a bit. “I don’t know much about art,” he said. “I’m a game design major, not an art major.”
“Okay.” The painter nodded. “You know what, I’ve got a bit of time. How about you show me what level you are at and we can go from there?”
Yuugi glanced at the unfinished painting. “That’s okay! I can come back another day to talk to a professor!”
The painter smiled, and he looked too young to be in college the way it softened his face—not that Yuugi was one to judge; people thought he was still a middle school student on a regular basis. “I’m not working on an assignment. This is just for...for fun. I have time.”
“Thank you then.” With some lingering hesitation, he handed over his sketchbook. “I’m Yuugi, by the way.”
“Daisuke,” the painter replied, already flipping through the couple of pages Yuugi had filled with sketches. His eyes lingered on the little things Yuugi had drawn in the corners; duel monsters and doodles of his friends. On one page he’d written out hieroglyphics that Atem had recognized at some point or another and Yuugi’d sought out again in the immediate aftermath of his passing on. It was uncomfortably soul baring to have someone seeing some of the things in there.
“I’m not much of an artist,” Yuugi said while Daisuke looked at a doodle of Jonouchi with a hoard of Duel Monsters cards.
“Actually,” Daisuke said, not looking up from the page, “this isn't so bad. You have your own style developing here.”
“Yeah, but it's all just doodles. And they all look the same.” He hadn’t noticed until he was looking at examples of character design in his class, but all Yuugi’s doodle people had the same ‘U’ shape head and proportional chibi bodies with hair to distinguish them from each other.
Daisuke looked up with a hint of a smile curling at his lips. “I was worried it was going to be stick figures or something from how nervous you looked. You just need to practice more and play around with shapes.”
Play with shapes. Practice was a given, but Yuugi wasn’t sure how to really go about the actual playing around bit. “...anything you can recommend? Books or...?” Examples would be great.
Looking thoughtful, Daisuke nodded slowly. “Actually, yeah. Here....” He pulled a pen from seemingly nowhere, turning to a blank page in Yuugi’s sketchbook and jotting down a list. “These are some useful titles for character design, and these are helpful for things like anatomy. Even cartoon styles can benefit from that. You need to know what you're doing before you exaggerate it anyway...”
Yuugi’s eyes went wide as Daisuke kept adding to it. “So much...”
The pen paused, finishing a character with a slow slide of the nib. “Ah, this isn't all that helpful is it? You were probably looking for more of a hands on approach...”
“No, it helps!” Yuugi shook his head. When Daisuke held out the sketchbook, Yuugi took it from him. He ran a finger along the list, plenty of books to get examples from, much as he felt intimidated by the amount of things he didn’t know that they could provide. “I’m a little overwhelmed with everything. Somehow I just wasn't expecting to need to draw for game design....”
“Well... when you think about it, in most game design it's a team effort, so you'd have people who focus on character design and people doing coding and someone else working on story and dialogue.... So you don't have to be great at it, but it doesn't hurt to know how to do it either.”
“Huh. Good point. I'm more used to coming up with plots and puzzles.”
Daisuke grinned. “I have a friend who is in the design course too and he's the exact opposite. He's great at the art end but is having trouble with the whole game aspect.”
Yuugi couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to go into games if they didn’t know much about them. “Well what kind of games does he like?”
“I don't think he ever really played games until a year ago. I'm not sure even he knows what he likes. Having fun is hard for him.”
“Why on earth is he in game design then?” Yuugi asked, but then he thought of Kaiba who made games but only seemed to enjoy them if he was winning. There were reasons to do everything he supposed.
Daisuke smiled ruefully. “It's about as far from what he was doing before as he's comfortable going. He had a degree in criminal law before. And art history too I suppose.”
“Huh.” Whoever this friend was must lead an interesting life.
“Yup.” Daisuke shrugged before nodding at the sketchbook. “Here, try sketching some random shapes and once you've done that, make faces from them. That will help get some diversity. Try to figure out what the rest of them might look like and go from there.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Daisuke turned back to his painting and after a moment, Yuugi sat a ways away and started sketching. They worked in silence, just the soft sounds of pencils and Daisuke’s paintbrush filling the space. It was surprisingly both relaxing and focusing to have someone working nearby; it was a motivator to keep working.
Yuugi couldn’t say how much time passed, but after a whole he had two pages full of sketches. They were still pretty simple, but trying to use different random shapes had helped.
Daisuke, noticing the pause, glanced over. “See? You’re getting the hang of it.”
Yuugi rubbed the back of his head. “Thanks. Sorry again for bothering you.”
“It's not a bother.” Daisuke grinned. There was another bit of paint next to his nose, purple like one of the figures slowly taking shape on the canvas. “I needed a break anyway. If you need any help later, I'm usually in this room...”
“I’ll keep that in mind!” Yuugi had other classes to get to now, and books to find from the campus library, but it was reassuring to know that he had someone willing to help. He waved to Daisuke and left the artist to his winged paintings.
*
Daisuke hadn’t been joking about being in the room a lot. Every time Yuugi had sought him out over the next few weeks to ask about techniques or opinions on how Yuugi’s designs were coming, he was always in the art room. The painting was almost done now, filling in from its rough figures to be something that reminded Yuugi of a yin yang, but with winged people instead of black and white images. It was a color-clashing purple and yellow piece, but there were other colors subtly worked in so that it balanced out somehow. Yuugi was sure Daisuke could have explained the color theory he was working into it, but Daisuke didn’t seem to like talking about his paintings. The one time Yuugi brought them up, he’d found the conversation deflected around to the sketches of Duel Monsters he had left in the margins of his notes. So Yuugi hadn’t asked again, even if he was curious about how if he stepped back and viewed it from a distance it almost looked like two more people overlaid the angels on the canvas.
Yuugi was content to let Daisuke keep his secrets. He was just glad to have a new friend and help on his project. Daisuke was easy to get along with and easy to work next to; Yuugi found himself visiting Daisuke’s painting room a lot more than he planned just for the atmosphere and quiet company.
It was sometime during the third week of this that Yuugi walked in to find someone else sharing Daisuke’s work space. The stranger had a notebook in his lap, bent over it with Daisuke’s head bent alongside his as the stranger wrote in the margins. They both looked up when Yuugi walked through the door. Daisuke smiled and welcomed him. The stranger lifted one eyebrow before staring at Yuugi like he was a museum exhibit. Yuugi paused in the doorway.
“Hey!” Daisuke said, sitting up and giving a wave. None of his painting things were out for once. The painting he had been working on had been set aside, perhaps finally complete. “Yuugi, this is Satoshi, the friend I told you about that was in game design like you. Satoshi, this is Yuugi.”
“The person you’ve been teaching to draw,” Satoshi said. He had a flat tone of voice that at first reminded Yuugi a bit of Kaiba, but there wasn’t any of Kaiba’s defensive hostility in Satoshi’s voice or body language. He looked curious if anything.
“Giving tips,” Daisuke corrected. “He already has a style.”
“Teaching,” Satoshi said. “Teaching art is giving tips and things to practice and watching students improve through their own efforts.”
Daisuke rolled his eyes good naturedly. “Satoshi’s been working on a game of his own, but he’s having a little trouble with character dialog. Think you could help?”
“I can try?” Yuugi said. But this was something that he was good at. Tabletop RPGs and text games had given him a lot of practice in this sort of thing. As he walked over, he thought he heard Satoshi whisper to Daisuke, “You always run into interesting people.”
Yuugi chose to ignore that and whatever connotations were behind it. He could give Satoshi the benefit of the doubt. And it was fun to help someone else with characters and plot for a bit instead of prodding at his ever changing character designs.
And that, Yuugi thought, was how he made friends with Satoshi and cemented himself in Daisuke’s friend group without realizing it.
*
Yuugi held up his latest sketches to his laptop camera. “What do you think?”
“Looks good!” Anzu said, smiling. Her hair was long enough to tie back right now, a bit flyaway at the moment since she had just got back from her morning run. Behind her Yuugi could see the early morning sunlight streaming through her apartment window. Here in Japan it was already well into its decent. Yuugi felt a little wistful of the past where they didn’t have to work around twelve hour time difference. “You’ve got a lot of details now. They remind me a little bit of us actually. All of our friends.”
“That’s what I’m basing it off of a bit,” Yuugi admitted. “The characters aren’t too close to us, but...” He couldn’t deny that he’d drawn on his friends for inspiration. “I wanted to write something similar to what we went through. Not so close that anyone who looks at it can figure it out, but for those of us who knew Atem...”
“Yuugi...” She looked at him with the same expression she’d had when they gave up trying to date, a bit sad, a bit worried, but mostly supportive friendship.
“I’m making something he’d like,” Yuugi said. He smiled because focusing on the good things pushed back the times he felt sad. “But enough about my game, how did your audition go?”
Anzu gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was doing by changing the topic, but she launched into an explanation on how she’d managed to get a minor stage role as a backup dancer and how there was another audition coming up in a few weeks and that show was compatible with this one so she was going to try out for that. It sounded busy and stressful, but Yuugi couldn’t help smiling genuinely at the pride and determination in Anzu’s tone as she spoke. She was following her dreams and that made him happy.
“I saw Jonouchi and Mai when they were in town for a bit,” Anzu said toward the end of the conversation. “Did he send you the picture we took?”
“The one with the port in the background?” Yuugi nodded. Jonouchi and Mai were both pro Duelers now, and that lifestyle took them all around the world. It could be fun to see where he was at any given time.
“Yeah! They were heading out to semifinals of a tournament—not hosted by Kaiba this time, can’t remember who. He’ll probably call sometime soon.”
“I look forward to it.” Yuugi missed Jonouchi but he was glad all of his friends were finding what they loved in the world.
“Good luck with your game, Yuugi,” Anzu said waving at the camera.
“Have fun dancing,” he said back.
Like always, it was a bittersweet feeling to end the call.
*
Daisuke had started a new painting. This one wasn’t purple or yellow, but it did already show signs of wings. Yuugi sat off to the side and worked on making tiny pixel sprites for his character designs. While he wasn’t expected to actually make a functioning game yet, he couldn’t help starting it in his spare time. Making a plan and design and building it up in concept was enough to make him want to make it real. Today Daisuke wasn’t painting, though, but sketching, off in a separate corner. The soft scratch of pencil lead along paper was almost meditative alongside the sound of Yuugi’s tablet.
Yuugi was so caught up in making a tiny coat for a tiny pixel character based off Kaiba that he almost didn’t notice that the sounds of Daisuke’s pencil had stopped. He glanced up and found Daisuke looking at his character sketches again. “Hm?” he hummed in question.
Daisuke twitched, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t rather than just looking at sketches he’d seen dozens of times. “You know, I don’t think you even said what your game was about?” he said. “You’ve talked about the characters and what they’re like, but...”
Yuugi set aside his laptop and tablet. “It’s a puzzle game,” Yuugi said, picking up his sketches. He pointed out characters as they become relevant. “The main character is a high school student that solves an ancient puzzle and ends up sharing a body with a millennia old spirit.” Beside him, Daisuke blinked rapidly, but leaned in to look at the drawings with new interest. “There’s the protagonist, and then there’s the protagonist when he’s possessed,” Yuugi said, pointing to the slightly different designs. Showing the shift in pixel avatar has been harder than drawing the design had been. The character didn’t resemble Yuugi or Atem much, but Yuugi knew what he represented and that was enough. “Whenever the main character is possessed, his abilities to solve puzzles goes up because the ghost was obsessed with solving them before he died. The protagonist doesn’t realize he’s being possessed at first, but as the story goes on and you solve more puzzles, other characters create challenges. If you can complete the challenges right, you can make friends, and making friends opens more opportunities.” Like making friends had given Yuugi more from life. He smoothed a finger along the possessed version of his character.
“That sounds pretty cool,” Daisuke said slowly. “Does the protagonist ever realize he’s being possessed?”
“Yeah.” Yuugi smiled. “As you go on, you unlock bits about who the spirit is and at some point you become able to talk to him. He can become another friend, and you can unlock even harder puzzles where you have to work together to solve them. The end goal is actually to solve the puzzle of the spirit.”
“And if you solve it?”
“Then you have to decide whether to keep the spirit or to let him pass on to the afterlife.” Yuugi’s heart hurt thinking about it. It was a risk putting so much of himself into this, but it felt right to do it. If he made it, it would be just the sort of tribute to Atem’s memory that he’d appreciate.
“Oh.”
There was something sad in Daisuke’s voice and Yuugi glanced up. He’d never heard Daisuke sound sad before.
“That sounds like it would be a hard decision,” Daisuke said finally. “Because you made friends with him.”
“Yeah.” The echo of heartbreak he’d felt in that moment of decision was still there. To be selfish or to do the right thing? To feel whole or to let his other half rest at last?
Daisuke touched the sketch of the protagonist, something similar to Yuugi’s heartbreak in his eyes. Almost like he also knew what it felt like to make that kind of a decision. “What would you choose?” he asked. “If you were playing through the game?”
“I’d choose what I thought would make the spirit happiest,” Yuugi said immediately. “The protagonist has all the friends he’s made over the course of the game to fall back on, but the spirit was stuck in the puzzle alone for a long time, and could be stuck for who knows how long after the protagonist dies. If it was the only chance to let him move on and be at peace, I’d choose that than the possibility of condemning him to being alone and forgotten again.”
There was the sort of silence that comes after a confession, too close and personal, with all the blatant emotions out in the open. Yuugi didn’t take his words back though even though he felt like it could reveal too much. Daisuke swallowed thickly. “I can tell you’ve thought a lot about the choices,” he said finally.
“Yes,” Yuugi said. Because the choice had once haunted him like a second ghost until he’d come to peace with it.
“I don’t know if I could be that selfless in making the choice,” Daisuke admitted. “If I was the protagonist and cared about the spirit, I don’t think I’d want to let go.”
Yuugi’s smile was wry, barely the upward twist of his lips at the edges. “That’s how hard choices and love work; you might not choose what you want but you’ll do what will make everyone happiest in the long run.”
With one last touch to the sketch, Daisuke pulled back. “Sounds like you’re talking from experience.”
Yuugi shrugged. He closed the sketch book, suddenly not wanting to look at it. Or maybe not wanting Daisuke to look at it; Daisuke looked unsettled, like talking about the game had brought up things he didn’t want to think about. “That’s my game more or less though. I’m working on the puzzles already. I like that sort of thing, so it’s fun to come up with.”
“It sounds like it will be a cool game.” Daisuke gave him a quick, there and gone smile, moving back toward his work space. “If you ever do make it, I think I’d like to play it.”
The idea of someone playing a game Yuugi made, playing a game and enjoying it, made him feel warm inside. Like a little part of him would reach out to each and every person who played it, giving them a connection whether they knew it or not. And a little part of Atem that went into this game would live with them too. He wondered if that was part of what Kaiba liked about creating games; it was forging a connection without the difficulty of actually socializing.
“Thanks,” Yuugi said. He wrapped that warm feeling up inside to bring out whenever he got frustrated about the project. Then, curious, he asked, “What would you choose? Would you befriend the spirit knowing you had to choose?”
“I wonder,” Daisuke said, introspective. “I might be one of those people that never finishes the game, not wanting to make that choice at all.”
Fair enough. Yuugi couldn’t fault that he supposed. It would be a pity to leave anything unfinished though. He always has preferred to see things through to their ends.
*
They were in the usual room, Daisuke starting a new painting again, this one smaller and like none of the other paintings in the room. A scenic painting, Yuugi thought, instead of abstract or angelic portraits. Satoshi was there today as he sometimes was, poking away at his game concept. It was not the sort of game Yuugi would be attracted to playing, full of dark and introspective themes with a main character that is slowly losing trust in his own mind and judgment. Whatever it means to Satoshi though, he looks like each bit of progress is cathartic so Yuugi had the idea that it meant about as much to his as the game Yuugi was working on meant.
The door was propped open to let airflow in and Yuugi had music playing in the background as he ignored homework in favor of building up his game world pixel by pixel. He had far far more respect for Kaiba’s skills now than he ever thought he’d have. Granted, Kaiba had a team that probably did the tedious stuff like making textures for terrain and background images.
He had just about finished up the layout of the school when he heard a familiar voice.
“Yuugi!”
Yuugi’s head whipped up, seeing his best friend standing just outside the doorway. He couldn’t put his laptop down fast enough. “Jonouchi!” Yuugi tackled his friend. Jonouchi whirled him around in a hug, grinning from ear to ear. “What are you doing here?” Yuugi asked when the room stopped spinning. “I thought you were in the middle of a tournament?”
Jonouchi laughed. “I got a place in the finals so I have a bit of time off before the semifinals finish up! Figured I'd visit my best bud and see how college life was going. Your campus is a hell of a maze by the way.”
“You should have called!” Yuugi said, pulling back. His face hurt from grinning. It had been months since he last saw Jonouchi in person.
“That'd ruin the surprise,” Jonouchi said. He set Yuugi down. While Yuugi wasn’t nearly as short as he’d been in high school, he would always be much shorter than his best friend. Jonouchi got twice the growth spurt Yuugi had gotten.
“A friend of yours?” Daisuke asked, and Yuugi realized they had an audience.
“Ahaha, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his head, finally noticing that both Daisuke and Satoshi were staring intently. “This is my best friend, Jonouchi Katsuya. Jonouchi, this is Niwa Daisuke and Hiwatari Satoshi.”
“The guy who’s helping you with your drawing, right?” Jonouchi said, remembering their Skype conversations. “Nice ta meetcha. Hope you don’t mind me barging in.”
“It’s fine,” Daisuke said, since it was his study room after all. “We could probably use a study break.”
Jonouchi grinned before turning back to Yuugi. “So, being around all these books and drawing, how’s your Dueling? Getting rusty yet?”
Yuugi narrowed his eyes at the challenge. “Rusty? Never. How about I show you, Mr. Tournament Finalist?” He reached for his bag. Even now he had the habit of carrying his Duel Monster cards with him. “I challenge you to a Duel.”
“Duel?” Satoshi asked sharply.
“Duel Monsters,” Jonouchi said holding up his deck of cards. He snorted at Satoshi’s blank look. “What, did you think I was gonna whip out a knife? I don’t look like that much of a delinquent these days.”
“Nope, just scruffy as always,” Yuugi said. He cleared a space on the desk before shuffling his deck, intent on his friend and opponent. “Duel Monsters is a strategy based card game,” Yuugi explained to the others. “With a certain amount of luck too.”
Jonouchi snorted. “Luck, fate, whatever you wanna call it.” He exchanged a glance with Yuugi.
“Heart of the cards,” they said at the same time.
“Anyway,” Yuugi said, “Jonouchi plays it professionally. I used to enter tournaments but I haven’t played much in a while.”
“Yet you still hold the title for King of Games,” Jonouchi said.
Yuugi shrugged. It was a title he didn’t feel like he’d earned. After all, Atem had done most of the Dueling to get it. “Anyone’s free to seek me out and win it properly.”
“If they can beat you.”
Yuugi shrugged again. They set up their station and drew their hands. It had been a while since he last Dueled, longer still since he Dueled without Kaiba’s technology bringing it all to life. It felt a little bit like high school, playing games at lunch. The cards were warm and familiar in his hands, feeling almost alive as they sometimes did. Yuugi wasn’t calling on anything, didn’t have Atem’s power over the shadows, but the cards still had presences even if he wasn’t using them that way.
“Huh,” Satoshi said, looking at the cards in their hands like they were something particularly strange and intriguing.
“Two thousand life points?” Yuugi asked.
“Standard Duel’s four thousand,” Jonouchi said.
“Yeah, but it feels more like high school if we play it that way.”
“Works for me.”
It was funny how normal it felt to play a Duel against Jonouchi—or maybe it wasn’t strange at all considering how big a part in his life Dueling once held, but he hadn’t Dueled anyone since the last time everyone was able to meet up together, and that was almost half a year ago. Everything still felt right though. His cards rose to the challenge like they always did, chipping Jonouchi’s life points down bit by bit. Even having an audience was familiar. Daisuke and Satoshi weren’t Anzu or Honda, but the balance felt right.
Yuugi called on his Kuriboh to end the Duel, just like old times.
Jonouchi made a face as the last of his life points drained away thanks to one of the weakest cards in the game. “One more turn and I’d’ve had you with my dragon. You’re still as good at this as ever, Yuug. No wonder Kaiba’s always trying to drag you into Duels.”
Yuugi snickered. “Kaiba just wants to beat me once and for all. Or make me test all his Duel tech.” If Yuugi ever took him up on that job offer, he had a feeling he’d end up doing more Dueling and product testing against Kaiba’s over competitive ego than actual game design.
“Wait,” Satoshi said from the sidelines. He had followed the game with interest, though it had looked like he was analyzing what game attributes made it enjoyable rather than enjoying watching the game itself. “Kaiba as in Kaiba Seto, billionaire game maker Kaiba?”
“Yeah?” Yuugi said.
Jonouchi sat back in his chair and laughed at Satoshi’s consternation. “Yuugi won the title King of Games years ago. He’s still the reigning champion Duel Monsters player and Kaiba hates it because Yuugi won’t enter tournaments anymore so no one can win the title from him.”
“They should just accept some other tournament winner as the best player winner,” Yuugi muttered. “Kaiba’s won most of the ones since I left the Duel scene.”
“Yeah, but Kaiba’s never satisfied til he can beat you.” Jonouchi turned back to their audience. “Moneybags was a classmate of ours in high school. Real ass, but he’s gotten better now that he’s stopped pulling shit that can get people killed. Still dramatic as heck though. Betcha he’ll come into the arena for the final on a jet pack or something with the Kaiba Corp logo all huge on the back. Or have it shaped like the Blue Eyes.”
“He’s a friend,” Yuugi clarified. Jonouchi always made Kaiba sound like an enemy when he hadn’t been anything like an enemy in a long time. “He wants me to join his company after school, but if I did that I’d have to Duel him because he’d hold my paycheck.”
Jonouchi snorted. “Sounds like the sorta manipulative thing he’d do.”
Yuugi hummed. “I wouldn’t mind Dueling him sometime though. I just don’t want to Duel at his command.”
“Fair enough. Beat him once and he either won’t leave ya alone til you have a rematch or he pretends it never happened.”
“...This is the CEO of the largest gaming empire in Japan?” Satoshi asked, skeptical.
“In the world,” Jonouchi corrected.
“Charming.”
“Eh, he grows on you.” Jonouchi grinned, lopsided. “Kinda like some sort of fungus.”
Yuugi rolled his eyes. “Kaiba is Kaiba. He’s there when it matters and tries. He actually has a pretty good sense of humor.”
“Yeah, at my expense.”
Yuugi patted Jonouchi consolingly. Kaiba and Jonouchi would never really get along, and that was okay. Besides, he figured that by now their back and forth taunts were just the only way they knew how to interact. The words didn’t really hit anymore. Yuugi was pretty sure that Kaiba even found it fun. Not many people insulted him to his face anymore. Jonouchi was a bit too straightforward to notice that though.
“I suppose he is still a good connection to have if you’re going into this field,” Satoshi said in what was clearly meant to be a diplomatic tone. It still came across a bit skeptical.
“He is.” Yuugi grinned. “Though I kind of want to set up my own indie gaming thing out of Grandpa’s shop and see how he reacts.”
Daisuke shook his head. “Save that for when you can actually do everything yourself.”
“Or have a team.” For a brief moment, Yuugi pictured combining the strengths of his friends from high school into the project. They all had something they could have brought to the table—Anzu with music, Hiroto with coding, and Jonouchi with story development and puzzles. Even Bakura could have helped with the graphic side of things. But he dismissed it after that moment. This wasn’t high school anymore and they each had their own lives to work through.
“Or that,” Daisuke said.
They were all quiet for a moment, then Jonouchi held up his deck. “Anyone wanna learn how to Duel?”
And then Yuugi was digging out the extra cards he still couldn’t help carrying everywhere he went, and Daisuke and Satoshi were tentatively Dueling each other, Satoshi frequently looking at the cards like there was something he didn’t trust about them, but Dueling all the same.
It was nice.
Yuugi sat back and watched friends interact, new and old.
It was very nice.
*
Jonouchi only stayed a few days, but by the time he left he’d made friends with Yuugi’s friends, corrupted Yuugi’s sleep schedule with first a Duel, then a movie marathon, and told enough stories about the Dueling circuit that Yuugi wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved that he hadn’t gone into Dueling professionally. It sounded like a wild time.
Then he was off back to attend the finals. Yuugi promised to watch them. He intended to drag Daisuke into watching them with him too.
The quiet after he left was a bit like missing a limb. Yuugi found himself in the art building even more that week. Daisuke, in his comings and goings—though usually he was there before and after Yuugi arrived—didn’t comment on Yuugi’s extra time there. He just brought a few more snacks and had music playing to fill the silence when Yuugi didn’t feel like talking.
It was a nice reminder that new friends could fill the open spaces old ones left without really replacing them.
*
Lately Daisuke had been sketching. No paintings, no charcoal drawings or powdery pastels covering the worktable with colorful dust marks, just pencil and a sketchbook every time Yuugi was there. Yuugi leaned over one day to ask about any tips on drawing foreshortening and blinked at the lines on the page.
“Is that a sketch of me?”
Daisuke almost dropped the sketchbook. For a second, Yuugi thought he was going to slam the book shut. “Yes?”
It was Yuugi; spiky hair and dark clothing, a profile of him smiling to himself as he worked on his tablet. There were smaller more dynamic thumbnails in the corner—Yuugi walking, laughing, throwing down a card in Duel Monsters, dozing off on the worktable. In all of the sketches his distinctive hair shape stood out along with the outlines of his clothing. “So, was it the hair or the clothes that made me an interesting sketch subject?” he joked. Those were the two things that people always noticed first after all. Spiked, bright colored hair, chunky silver and gold jewelry, and a taste for leather and belts.
Daisuke surprised him by flipping back a few pages to show studies of Yuugi’s face—just his face. “Your eyes actually...” Daisuke mumbled. He flushed and Yuugi couldn’t help blushing a little too. The sketches of his face were...intimate for lack of a better word. His eyes were riveted on a sketch on the right, his penciled lips frozen in a melancholy smile and a far off look in the sketch’s eyes like he was looking at something only he could see. It had to be a moment he was thinking about Atem and he wasn’t sure what he felt about having that captured on paper.
“Oh,” was all he could say.
Daisuke flushed deeper. “If it bothers you, I can stop.”
Did it bother him? Maybe if it was someone he didn’t know, but Daisuke was a friend now. He could see Yuugi as he was in all his range of emotions. “No,” Yuugi said. “No, it’s fine.”
Daisuke’s shoulders relaxed, his hands no longer gripping the sketchbook so tightly. “Your eyes show what you’re feeling really clearly,” he said. “The other day I was watching you work and I couldn’t help...” He waved at the sketches. “I like how you look.”
Yuugi could count on one hand how many times people said they liked his appearance, and two of those times had been Anzu while they were dating. He opened his mouth to...to what? Compliment Daisuke back? Thank him? He shook his head. “I don’t mind you drawing me.”
“Ok. I’m glad.” Daisuke twirled the pencil in his hands like he needed to do something with his fingers. “I’m also glad you came here months ago. It’s nice to have someone else in here.”
“Considering you practically live here.”
“Yeah.”
Yuugi sat back, asking a question that had been bugging him for a while now. “You’re here pretty much whenever I’m here. And lately if I’m not at classes I’m here. Are you always here? Is this a free study or...?”
One shoulder lifted in a shrug as Daisuke couldn’t meet his eyes. “I only have one class right now. I kind of had to take a break. I’m only supposed to be here for my class project but it felt like the only place I could be for a while.”
“Oh.” Yuugi reached out. He didn’t think he was imagining Daisuke leaning into his touch, gravitating toward the hand on his shoulder. “Is everything ok?”
“It wasn’t, but I think it’s getting better.”
Yuugi waited to see if Daisuke would say more, but he didn’t. That was okay. There were some things that you couldn’t talk about with just anyone, and some things that just couldn’t be talked about at all.
“Painting helps,” Daisuke said. “Seeing friends helps too. You help.”
Yuugi squeezed his shoulder in support. “I hope I can keep helping.”
This time he was sure he wasn’t imagining Daisuke leaning into his touch. “Just keep coming around.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about me leaving anytime soon.”
*
“The cards aren’t normal,” Daisuke said one day as Yuugi was helping him form a deck of his own. He’d Duel him sometimes if Yuugi was really in the mood for Duel Monsters. Daisuke held up a Chimera card, spinning it between his fingers. “There’s something about them... They almost feel alive.”
“The game is based off of an ancient Egyptian game played with stone tablets with souls sealed inside,” Yuugi said. He drew a card, unsurprised to find the Dark Magician in his hand. “I know it sounds superstitious, but the cards have spirits still, the medium just changed.” Dark Magician was joined by the Dark Magician Girl, then Kuriboh. “If you call them, they can answer.” He waited for Daisuke to scoff or look skeptical. Instead, Daisuke was nodding slowly.
“I can see that. It explains the weird feeling they have... Is it the art itself that gives them souls? Can anybody make a card or is there something specific?”
Yuugi stared.
“What?” Daisuke shuffled through the cards, pulled out Harpy’s Brother and Shadow Spell. “Art has a spark of life. Sometimes more than that. Why not cards too?”
“Most people don’t believe it unless they’re Duelists,” Yuugi said, “and even the people who are and have lived through spirits manifesting still don’t always believe.” Kaiba didn’t for the longest time. He does now, though. His Blue Eyes are all the closer to him for it.
“I can feel them,” Daisuke said, tracing fingers along the image of the cards. “So can Satoshi. That’s why he keeps giving you weird looks by the way. He’s not sure what to make of it.”
“Huh.” Yuugi could feel his cards—specifically the ones in his deck, and sometimes a few others, but not all cards spoke to him, and he hadn’t been able to until after he’d had Atem and started Dueling. “If you can feel them, you could probably call them. Some of them are still connected to the Egyptian monsters, and some were created by Pegasus, the person who resurrected the game, but... So far as I can tell they’re all alive to some extent.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
Yuugi wanted to laugh, and not in a good way. The Egyptian God cards had definitely been dangerous. “It can be,” Yuugi said bluntly. “I’ve seen it kill people.” Daisuke stilled. “But I’ve also seen the cards save people, and these days you don’t see as much summoning.” Not since the millennium items were sealed away. “Even then, outside of the top circuit of Duelers it’s pretty unheard of seeing anything like this at all.”
Daisuke looked at the cards in his hands like he was seeing them all over again. “And kids play with these?”
Yuugi stifled a laugh. “Like I said, not many people can actually use them that way.” He rested his chin on one hand. “I wonder what one would answer you?”
“I don’t think I want to find out,” Daisuke said.
“This one’s mine.” Yuugi held up Kuriboh. “And sort of this one too...” Dark Magician joined it. It was more Atem’s card, but it had answered Yuugi’s call before too. Kuriboh just liked Yuugi in general.
“A winged fur ball and a purple sorcerer,” Daisuke said. “Yeah, I can see how they fit.”
“Was that supposed to be an insult?”
“Maybe.”
“Hey!”
Daisuke laughed.
He did finish putting together a deck eventually. He didn’t look quite as relaxed around the cards after that though.
*
“It’s not going to work,” Satoshi said to Daisuke as he added details to yet another winged painting. This one was made up of subtle shadows and glints of light, all purple and blue and black. The lightest points were the glint of gold in the winged man’s hands and the white of his smirk in the dark. “I know it’s different for you, but no matter how much you paint him—”
“I know,” Daisuke said, sharp. “I know it isn’t going to bring him back, but I can’t help it. It’s like it’s keeping him here.”
“There’s no him, only them now.” Satoshi sighed. “Have you thought any more on going back to regular classes?”
“It feels like too much still.” Daisuke set his brush down. “Do you think if I paint him enough, people will remember?”
“Perhaps.” Satoshi was quiet a moment. “I thought things were getting better.”
“They are.” The clink of Daisuke’s brush being rinsed clean, picked back up to start again. “But better isn’t completely over it yet.”
Satoshi sighed again and said something under his breath.
Yuugi took that as a cue that today was really not the best day to be there after all. He slid away wondering who Daisuke had lost to spend all his time painting him.
*
“Congratulations on your win!” Yuugi chirped over the laggy Skype call.
Jonouchi grinned at him, thousands of miles away, but still as close a friend as ever. “Thanks! Mai’s kinda pissed that I beat her out in the second to last round, but she’ll get over it.”
“It was a good Duel,” Yuugi said, having watched it very late—or early depending on your perception of time—in Daisuke’s dorm room with his friend drowsing off next to him and waking on and off whenever Yuugi got particularly excited. The thought had been nice even if it hadn’t quite worked out how they’d planned. “What now?”
“Eh, Mai and I’ll be headed back to New York to catch up with Anzu. Stay for a while there til the next tournament sign up starts. Maybe we’ll get a chance to visit Japan again too, if the timing works out.” Jonouchi was still beaming. It made Yuugi feel warm and happy to see him happy, glad to see him confident in his skills and excelling in life. It had been the right choice for him to Duel professionally.
“Going to go on some dates?” Yuugi teased.
“Well, if Mai forgives me for Time Wizarding her Harpies again, yeah.” With a shrug, Jonouchi added, “Not gonna tell you the details though.”
Yuugi wrinkled his nose. “I don’t want to know about the details of that kind of date, Jonouchi. Mai and Anzu would kill you if you talked about it anyway.”
He laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Hey; what about you? Have any dates lined up?”
Yuugi made a noncommittal hum in the back of his throat. His legs kicked aimlessly against his bedframe. “Still not dating anyone, Jou.”
“But do you liiiike anyone,” Jonouchi teased. If he was in person, he’d be pulling Yuugi into a playful headlock by now.
Yuugi hummed again.
“Not even that Daisuke guy you keep talking about?”
Did he? He wasn’t sure whether he did or not. It had been a while since he felt those things, wasn’t sure if he could tell them apart from friendship right now. The two had always gone hand in hand. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
“Huh.” Jonouchi sounded thoughtful. His expression didn’t give anything away for once, whether he thought it was a good or bad or anything in between.
“What?”
“It’s the first time you haven’t said no when I ask that question,” Jonouchi said.
Yuugi felt a roiling mess of embarrassed and flustered because that, he realized, was true. He didn’t know if he liked Daisuke that way or not, but he wanted to spend time with him—did spend time with him almost as much as he could spare—and that meant something even if it might not be romantic. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out,” he mumbled.
Jonouchi laughed and wished him the best before launching into a story about Haga and Ryuuzaki, leaving the topic of romance behind.
It was Yuugi who couldn’t get the thought to stop lingering.
*
The semester was almost over now. Projects were done and it was just Yuugi with his laptop poking at his game again in Daisuke’s art study room. Daisuke wasn’t there for once, just his multitude of paintings. There was a tiny painting of Yuugi up there with all the other ones and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. His eyes glinting purple from a shadowed image. It could have been a threat or an invitation into a secret, and Yuugi kind of hoped it was the latter because it wasn’t a very good thought that his friend might find him threatening.
Yuugi got caught up in the minutia of coding and checking his plot and dialogue script with each advance. So caught up he didn’t even notice Daisuke’s arrival until he turned to get his character reference sheets and found Daisuke sitting in a chair back to front watching him, and looking like he’d been there for a while. Yuugi dropped the reference sheets.
Daisuke leaned forward to pick the few that had scattered up. “You’re really making progress on that aren’t you?”
“Some?” Yuugi said. “Not as much as I would like, but I’m only one person and there’s a lot to do for a game, even just a simple one.”
“It’s come along pretty well,” Daisuke said. He looked at the character sheets in his hand, at the Spirit’s sheet on top. “You’re not making something simple after all.” A double tap of his fingers against the chair back, a tic he had every once in a while, like his hands got restless but he tried not to fidget with them. “You’ve written the rest of the plot now, right?”
“Pretty much.” It had taken almost as long as putting together the sprite world had. It was harder than Yuugi had anticipated to create a game off his life even in a once or twice removed fashion. “I still have some dialogue to go but the main parts are all written.” It was the puzzles that were harder to make.
“Did you ever decide what would happen if the player chose to keep the spirit in the end?”
“If he keeps it?” Yuugi glanced down at his drawing. The spirit looked nothing like Atem, the only connection the eye of Horus worked into his design. “The spirit stays with him, still locked in the puzzle.”
“And after the protagonist dies one day?” Daisuke pressed. “What would happen to it then? Would it pass along to another family member or...?”
Yuugi shook his head. Whatever had been between him and Atem, he couldn’t imagine it happening between anyone else. Not his grandfather, not his friends, and not even a hypothetical child in the future. “It’s a once in a millennium sort of thing,” Yuugi said. Fate, or more that they’d perhaps once been one soul before Atem had been lost. Egyptian mythology held that the soul had five parts after all. “The spirit would be stuck in the puzzle alone until by some chance someone else who was compatible was born, which could take a long, long time.” Yuugi smiled wryly. “I’m sure they would be happy for the lifetime they had together, but there’s the question of if that evens out against a possible eternity alone after.”
“Oh.”
“There’s also a point where the spirit could have taken over the protagonist’s body,” Yuugi said. “Instead he rescues the protagonist’s soul. So they’re both looking out for each other in the end.”
“Oh,” Daisuke said again. This time it was slightly choked. “With two souls that close, it makes sense.”
Yuugi hummed, agreeing. For him and Atem, it had made sense. Even for Ryou and Bakura it had a certain amount of sense, and that was with Bakura lashing out at all times and willing to sacrifice Ryou. In the end he hadn’t—maybe couldn’t—and it was all more complicated than Yuugi could understand. Daisuke looked like he understood, though. Understood in a way that only someone who had lived it could. “Why does it mean so much to you?” Yuugi asked finally. “I know what this means to me, but what does the story mean to you?”
Daisuke, instead of answering, looked at the paintings leaning against the walls. “It’s hard,” he said finally, “to choose what’s right when there isn’t a right answer that will make everyone happy.”
Yuugi didn’t press the topic. The faraway look in Daisuke’s eyes was something he was too familiar with. “We make the choice and keep going,” Yuugi said. “Because if they cared, they’d want us to try to be happy too, right?” He smiled, more a slight lift of the corner of his lips than a true smile. “We have people who care to fall back on and then we find other ways to cope. You paint. I make a game.” Daisuke looked back at Yuugi. They hovered over the edge of mutual understanding. This wasn’t something that needed to be explained to be understood. Pain and loss were universal as were happiness and friendship. “We’re doing pretty well with what we have, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Daisuke said. He sighed, then slumped abruptly, leaning against Yuugi’s shoulder. “How do you make it seem so easy to keep going?”
“It’s not.” Yuugi touched Daisuke’s hair, and maybe it was his imagination that Daisuke tilted himself into that touch. “But moving forward doesn’t mean the past never happened or that you can’t remember it or that you weren’t changed by it.” Atem changed everything in Yuugi’s life, from helping him make his first friend besides Anzu to opening up his world to so many more things than he thought it would ever hold. “I’d rather remember than forget, and if it’s hard, then it’s a good thing that there’s always someone who can help even if they might not be there yet.” Like meeting Daisuke and Satoshi had helped.
Daisuke breathed out a laugh. “Yeah. Thanks.” He moved away, back toward the side of the room that had become his as Yuugi had slowly taken over a part of his own. “When you finish that game someday, I’d like to play it,” he said. “With both ends.”
Yuugi nodded. In real life you couldn’t have both endings play out, but in a game? “When I get to the test phase, you’re one of the people I hope will play it.”
“I will,” Daisuke said with a quiet conviction more like an unbreakable vow than a casual promise. He started sorting through paint tubes and Yuugi pulled his character references to himself. He had a lot of work to go if he was going to meet that promise halfway.
*
The sun was bright and it was unseasonably warm for March, warm enough that they could sit outside with only a light jacket and enjoy the fresh air. Their convenience store bentou were empty beside them as they sprawled out in the grass and enjoyed the early spring sunlight.
Yuugi tilted his face toward the sun, eyes closed, a happy smile on his face. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I missed being outside so much. I didn’t even realize how much I was inside until it was winter and I missed the best of spring and summer glued to my computer.”
Daisuke, sprawled next to him, snickered. “You really do have to go out sometimes. I go out in the mornings to sketch. Believe me, your body will thank you for the sunlight.”
“Mm, no, I remember someone calling me a gremlin this winter, and gremlins don’t like sun.”
“You seem to like it right now.”
Yuugi aimed a half-hearted elbow jab in Daisuke’s direction. It missed and all he got was another laugh and a tickling poke to his side. Yuugi squirmed away.
“This is nice though,” Daisuke said.
“Yeah.” Tucked away in a quiet corner of campus with the first birdsong of spring and a cluster of daffodils a few feet away, it was peaceful. A little private bubble that wasn’t the art room and both more and less connected to reality because of it.
“I exercise most mornings too,” Daisuke said. “If you’re missing sunlight you could join me and—”
Yuugi groaned. “No, I am not a morning person!” Or an exercise person. Or someone who would ever combine the two.
Daisuke laughed at him. “Maybe that’s why you’re so short. Stunted growth from lack of sun, like a plant.”
This time Yuugi’s elbow connected. The tiny hiss of breath as Daisuke massaged the hit was satisfying. “I’m short because of genetics.” Gramps barely got over a meter and a half tall. Yuugi considered himself lucky to pass him up by a handful of centimeters. “I’m not sure why you’re so smug when we were both asked if we wanted children’s menus that one time.”
They watched wispy clouds chase like feathers across the sky.
“I think,” Daisuke said suddenly, “I want to paint something new.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He looked toward the daffodils and their bright green and yellow against the browns of winter hanging on. ��I signed up for more classes this spring. I think...” Daisuke trailed off, voice going soft. “I think I can handle it now.”
“Great!”
The small smile Daisuke sent back Yuugi’s way was like the sun coming out from behind clouds.
*
It was Yuugi that moved first. It was less a conscious decision and more an inevitability, bridging the gap between them during a post-finals movie binge. Daisuke had looked at him for some reason—something to do with the movie that had immediately gone out of Yuugi’s mind because Daisuke had been smiling—and like an object caught in the Earth’s gravitational pull, he’d been pulled in by that smile. Lips, smooth except for the corner Daisuke was forever biting while he worked. It went on for an eternity. It lasted only a moment.
Yuugi pulled away. Daisuke’s eyes fluttered open; at some point he’d closed them. The movie kept going, white noise in the background of the moment. The air had the same feeling Yuugi got before he pulled the card that would turn a Duel on its head.
“Oh,” Daisuke whispered, both too quiet and too loud for Yuugi’s frantic heartbeat in that space of a moment before it was clear whether it was a good or a bad reaction. Then Daisuke’s hand was tangled in one of the heavy chains and gaudy pendants around Yuugi’s neck, pulling him back in. The second kiss was better because Daisuke was kissing back.
When they finally parted again, Yuugi couldn’t help but burst into giggles at how Daisuke looked more like he’d been hit over the head than like he’d been kissing someone.
“I thought—” Daisuke’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I thought...your friend? You seemed...close.”
“Jonouchi?” Yuugi asked. He was almost in Daisuke’s lap, couldn’t help but keep touching him, fingers trailing on bare wrists and arms and along Daisuke’s strong fingers. “No, we’re just friends. He’s my best friend.” Yuugi reached up to touch Daisuke’s hair, like that kiss was permission to give in to all the little things he’d longed to do. “He’s dating Mai and Anzu. Or they’re dating him and each other. Or something.” He couldn’t stop smiling. “It’s complicated. And you’re not with Satoshi?”
Daisuke blinked, the dazed expression fading away. He caught Yuugi’s wandering hands in his own, lacing their fingers together. “No. Satoshi’s not interested in people like that. Isn’t Anzu your ex?”
“Yeah.” Yuugi kept grinning. Everything was right in the world right then. “And one of my oldest friends. But we didn’t work out, and she ended up falling for Mai, who also liked Jou, who liked her, and I don’t know how it all works with them, but they’re happy so I’m happy for them.”
“My ex only talks to me via her twin sister.”
“I think it helped that we were friends for a long time first. Friendship is more important than anything else.” And for Yuugi it always would be. Friendship had been part of what made him notice Daisuke. He wouldn’t have a romantic relationship any other way.
Daisuke scrubbed the back of his hair. “We weren’t not friends, but, uh...” He glanced in Yuugi’s direction. From this close Yuugi could really notice how long his eyelashes were. And how they were the same red as his hair. And how Daisuke was blushing and had very faint freckles from how he’d been making time to go outside lately. “I can see why being friends first can be good.” Their eyes met. Yuugi couldn’t look away, not even if Kaiba’s Blue Eyes were to burst through the door right then.
“I like you,” Yuugi blurted. “A lot. As a friend and more.” He gripped Daisuke’s hand tight.
Daisuke’s head tipped forward, their foreheads bumping together and noses brushing. Yuugi could feel the flutter of his eyelashes on his cheek and Daisuke’s breath against his jaw, so close, but not quite close enough. It was ticklish and electric, everything narrowing down to those points of contact as his heart beat too fast and hopeful in his chest.
“I think I like you too,” Daisuke said. He laughed softly, the tremors shaking Yuugi with him. “I like you a lot.”
“Date me?” Yuugi asked hopefully.
Daisuke pulled back and gave him a lopsided smile. “Yes. I can’t guarantee anything, but yes.”
“No one can guarantee anything,” Yuugi said. “If you worry over whether things will or won’t work out, you just miss out on actually living what you have.” If he’d learned anything over the years, it was to appreciate what he had when he had it. Friends, family, memories; all of that had been discovered and rediscovered with Atem and after him. This was just one more case of learning it again.
“I guess I should appreciate living then,” Daisuke said. He pulled Yuugi into another kiss. Yuugi took his own advice and just enjoyed the moment.
*
The game wasn’t complete, but it was far enough along to be playable in a rough way. It was far beyond the school project it had started as; in fact, Yuugi was already wondering if he could eventually submit it as his final project. It might just take the next three years of school to get it to the point where he was satisfied with its quality.
Still, it was playable. And Yuugi could feel the pride and weight of most of a year’s worth of work as he arrowed his avatar through a pixel world.
“So this is the game?” Daisuke asked. He sat next to Yuugi on Yuugi’s bed. He was the first person Yuugi was showing it to. The first person he would let play the parts that he had finished. If Jonouchi was here, he’d let him play it too, but Jonouchi was on a break in New York and Daisuke was the closest person to his heart right now even if he wouldn’t get the game the way someone who lived the events it was based off of would.
Yuugi handed over his laptop. “You can play through making your first friend and unlocking the spirit.” Technically you could play further, but only the main events could occur without any of the interesting side plots and puzzles and NPC interactions.
Daisuke settled against Yuugi’s side and let his fingers skim the keyboard, familiarizing himself with the controls. “It’s cool to see your character move,” he murmured.
Yuugi didn’t answer. He rested his head on Daisuke’s shoulder and watched him play with his heart in his throat. Somehow this was more soul baring than sharing the drawings. Than sharing the art room for almost a year, more vulnerable and intimate than kissing or any of the things that could follow that. This game was Yuugi baring his soul and most precious memories into something that perhaps one day hundreds of people would see and play. Those people wouldn’t know Yuugi, wouldn’t know how it mirrored his life or what it meant to him.
Daisuke knew him and how important the game was.
Onscreen, Daisuke played through the introductory puzzles and met the characters who would be the protagonist’s friends. He seemed to know how important this moment was because he didn’t say anything as he played, just followed along with the storyline. Yuugi could feel when Daisuke got it, right when the protagonist awakens the spirit and makes a wish. Yuugi had told him once how he became friends with Jonouchi. “It felt like fate,” Yuugi had said. As Daisuke continued, completing the puzzles as the spirit to get back at the bully and cement your new friendship, Daisuke finally looked Yuugi’s way.
“This is you, isn’t it?” Daisuke said. It wasn’t really a question with the certainty shining in his eyes. “Your story.”
“More or less,” Yuugi said. “I’m not including any ancient Egyptian gods or card games in this though. That would make it a bit too obvious.”
“The spirit?”
“He was a spirit trapped in the puzzle.” Yuugi hid his face in Daisuke’s shoulder. It felt so weird to talk about this to someone who hadn’t lived it, but so freeing as well. It wasn’t a secret hovering over his head anymore. “He was like a part of me, a part I didn’t know I was missing until he was there, and then he left.”
“You let him go.”
Yuugi hummed in affirmative. On screen, the protagonist’s avatar climbed into bed, the spirit’s outline hovering above the bed as he slept. It was the end of the intro chapter. It was a bittersweet feeling. Daisuke set the laptop down.
“That had to be a hard choice to make,” Daisuke said.
“It was and it wasn’t.” The hard part had been knowing he would be alone in his head again. The actual decision to let Atem have his peace in the afterlife hadn’t been hard to make at all. “There was only one way it could go in the end.” He wasn’t selfish enough to make any other choice.
Daisuke hugged himself, curling in on himself and it would have been closing Yuugi out except he was still angled toward him and hadn’t made any effort to stop Yuugi from leaning on him. “I.” He wet his lips. “I didn’t have any choice. With mine.”
Ah. “The person you paint?”
“Yeah.” Daisuke uncurled a bit. “He was a spirit of an artwork that was tied to my bloodline. Sort of meant to be closer to a curse than another half of a soul, but...”
“When you share a mind and body...” Yuugi said.
“Yeah.” Daisuke sighed. “He was half of a whole work. Return the two halves together, fix what shouldn’t have been separated... He doesn’t exist anymore. Not how I knew him. And after we sealed the painting he might as well not exist in any form at all.”
“We?”
“Satoshi.”
“Oh.” Yuugi thought of Bakura, the thief king he’d housed. He wondered if however Satoshi had been involved had been anything like their situation. Bakura’s relief at having it all over hadn’t been something Yuugi could fully empathize with even if they could both look inside and feel the missing pieces where the spirits had resided in their souls.
“I’d bring him back if I could,” Daisuke said. “It wasn’t a curse to me. It was to Satoshi though, and in the long run it wasn’t doing either of our family lines any good. I’d still paint him back if I could.”
Yuugi felt the part of his soul Atem had been in ache, like a phantom limb. He knew that emptiness well, but he was filling it with new bonds and experiences, bit by bit patching over the emptiness. He could be happy and mean it with his whole self again. It sounded like Daisuke was still reaching that point.
“It’s not possible,” Daisuke said. There was sadness there, but acceptance too. “It’s time to move on with living.”
“Souls,” Yuugi said after a long moment, “have a way of returning to each other.” From the Duel Monsters seeking out those they had been connected with in life like Atem and Mahado to parts of a whole like Yuugi and Atem had been, to even significant lives like Kaiba’s previous life had been to Atem. Even if it took a millennia, they found their way back. He’d see Atem again one day. And Daisuke would see his spirit again too; that was how the world worked. “Maybe not in this life, but you’ll meet again.”
“Thanks.” Daisuke said. He didn’t sound like he believed Yuugi, but that was okay. He hadn’t seen the things Yuugi had to have that solid certainty. Daisuke twisted against Yuugi until they were face to face. “I only ever told one other person about any of that. Everyone else lived it or already knew.”
“Me neither.” Yuugi smiled suddenly. “Although I had to explain it to Kaiba a few times and he lived it and he still doesn’t want to believe it happened.”
Daisuke laughed. There were tears in the corners of his eyes that they both ignored. “I know people like that too.” His laughter trailed off, both arms coming around Yuugi in a loose hug. “Thank you.”
He didn’t need to say more than that. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for existing. Thank you for being here.
*
Kaiba set down the file in front of him, one eyebrow raised as he surveyed the man in front of him. “Let me get this straight, Mutou. You agree to work for me if I hire your boyfriend and his friend as an artist and a coder.”
“Yep.” Yuugi in high school might have felt intimidated by the cold stare across the desk, but Yuugi had lived a lot of life since then. Kaiba wasn’t very scary at all in comparison to some of the things he’d seen. That and Kaiba was the one who wanted him as an employee in the first place.
“Why?” Kaiba demanded. “I was under the impression that you hoped to start an indie game company of your own. Your first game has a cult following already.” Kaiba said it like it was more of an insult than a compliment, though it was probably because he took it as a slight that Yuugi had made and sold the game without ever approaching Kaiba about it.
“I considered that,” Yuugi said, rocking back on his heels. He’d thought about it the whole time he was in college, made several smaller games besides the one centering around Atem’s counterpart, all of which had done fairly well. But those games had been made either by Yuugi alone or with Satoshi and Daisuke’s help, or one of his classmates, all on school equipment or Yuugi’s own laptop. “It was pointed out that you had the resources and teams already if I wanted to put any of the more complicated game ideas I have in mind into action. It would take me a lot longer to establish a brand and get a decent staff and funding of my own, and that’s not the kind of thing I’m good at.” Starting from the ground up was more Kaiba’s thing really.
“What makes you think I’d put you in charge of a team?” Kaiba challenged.
Yuugi frowned at him. “Well you’re not hiring me just because you want an excuse to make me test all your new Duel Monsters things,” he said. “That would be a waste and you know it. You hate wasting resources.”
There was a moment where Yuugi thought Kaiba was going to get annoyed, but instead he smiled. Smiles did not fit well on Kaiba’s face. He settled back in his desk chair looking too pleased. “You’re right. I do hate waste. Which is why your friends had better be top notch or they’re not getting hired, deal or not. I can’t have useless employees.”
“I’ll have them send you a resume and portfolio,” Yuugi said. “Daisuke was an art major and Satoshi has been doing coding for indie games for the last year.” He had a running bet with Daisuke on whether Kaiba and Satoshi would get along or hate each other on sight. It would be interesting to see how it turned out.
Kaiba snorted. He was still smiling. He always was in a better mood when things went the way he wanted. “No speeches about the power of friendship and how you believe in their abilities?”
“I could give one, but I figured you’d prefer seeing their credentials over taking my word,” Yuugi said drily.
“Good. I don’t need to hear that sentiment anyway.” Kaiba steepled his fingers. “Are either of them Duelists?”
“Daisuke has a Wind-Dark deck but he only plays casually.” Yuugi put on as harmless a smile as he could manage. “Satoshi doesn’t like the magic clinging to the cards.”
Kaiba grimaced just like Yuugi expected him to at the mention of magic. “So you’ve found more people who believe in your mumbo jumbo.”
“You lived it, Kaiba,” Yuugi said, more amused than anything.
Kaiba waved a hand, turning away to gather up papers from a file. “Something happened. I’m sure science will reach an understanding of it one day.” He held out a stack of papers. “Here. Get these signed and back to my secretary by the end of the week and you’re all hired.”
“There’s not a clause saying I have to Duel you at your leisure in here is there?” Yuugi flipped through the stack, glancing at the pages.
“No.” Kaiba sat back in his chair again, smug and content that things were going his way again. “But you can expect to be asked to test things in the future.”
“Of course.” Yuugi hadn’t expected anything else.
“I expect you to be an asset to my company, Mutou.” Kaiba stared him down. “If I’m putting you in charge of a team, I expect high results.”
“Of course,” Yuugi repeated.
“Then we have a deal.” Kaiba waved a hand and Yuugi knew he was dismissed. “I expect those papers back as soon as possible. If there’s anything on there that you need to discuss, you have my office number.”
Yuugi had his private number too, but he could appreciate keeping their private and work lives separate. He stood up to leave.
“And Mutou?” Kaiba said as Yuugi was almost to the door. Yuugi waited. “Tetsuro? Really?” Kaiba asked, referencing the game character Yuugi had based off him. His character had the most dramatic character development of everyone, going from full on villain to reluctant heroic tag along.
Yuugi sent him a grin over his shoulder. “I thought it was a pretty good likeness.”
Kaiba huffed and Yuugi laughed, leaving him to the rest of the work day. As soon as he was out of the office, he pulled out his phone to call Daisuke and let him know their jobs were lined up. He had an idea for a game that Daisuke would want to be involved with. It involved a phantom thief. His boyfriend had experience in that after all.
#my writing#fanfiction#yugioh#Yu-Gi-Oh#DNAngel#crossover#crossover pairing#yuugi/daisuke#feel free to give me weird looks for this one#can i write anything without angst creeping in?#according to friends#no#i feel like everyone in this is bi except satoshi who came out ace aro#and i can't help but do that sometimes#hopefully someone enjoys this
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I'm on the bus to school and I'm still waking up so this may suck, but here it is: Atem and Yugi have been high school best friends and are currently attending the same college when one day Atem says he has something to tell Yugi. Yugi has something to tell him too, more along the lines of how he feels for Atem, but Atem goes first and says "I've been accepted into the study abroad program to Egypt." Yugi knows this is something he's worked hard & wanted forever so he swallows his feelings (1/3)
(2/3) Yugi instead decides it is a chance to celebrate the happy event for Atem and proposes they go out and do all of their favorite things one last time before Atem leaves. As they go and spend the day together it somehow starts to feel more like a date than just a regular hangout between friends, but they both dance around the idea all while fluffy occurrences happen. By the end of the night, Yugi really wishes he could kiss Atem (so does he but Yugi has no clue) and as they say goodnight
(3/3) Atem tries to confront Yugi about how pained he looks saying goodbye. “It’s not forever.” Yugi tries to explain how he knows that this is pretty much everything that Atem has been working for and how from this point on he can’t help but see their paths beginning to separate. Atem tries to reassure Yugi he won’t leave and never come back and Yugi asks how he can be so sure, “Because you’re here.”
SO SORRY THIS IS LATE I’ve barely had time to reblog anything, much less write. But here it is!
This prompt is easily worthy of a huge piece, but I don’t want Tumblr prompts to blow up too much ^^ sorry if that’s what you wanted.
This one is called Transfer. If you don’t wanna read it on Ao3, check it out under the cut!
The day before Atem’s flight to Egypt, he wakes to a text from Jounouchi that plainly tells him to get his ass out of bed and spend the morning with his friends.
(There’s another text from Kaiba demanding a duel, but he sends one of those every day. Atem has learned not to respond.)
He walks outside, tea in his hands, to find Yugi, Jou, Honda, and Ryou waiting. Anzu is even on video call, waving enthusiastically. New York has been kind to her, breathing fresh life into her smile. Atem hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her.
Anzu can’t stay on the line for long, but she’s made herself available through breakfast. They all go to a nearby deli and talk to her as much as they can. It almost, almost, feels like they’re back in high school, the future a pleasant dream and a distant one.
Yugi is a warm presence at Atem’s side, as he always is. With a pang, Atem thinks about how much more he’ll miss him.
After Anzu hangs up, the others confess that they can’t stay much longer either. Jounouchi and Honda have jobs that’ll only let them have so much time off, and Ryou has a mound of work for his Masters degree at the university. However, like Anzu, they all promise to be there for him at the airport, no matter how early he’s leaving. Atem smiles sadly as he watches them go.
When they’ve all gone their separate ways, Atem turns to Yugi and asks, “Doesn’t your grandpa need help at the shop?”
Yugi smiles. “Actually, he’s given me the whole day off. Since most of my programming classes are online, I can spend the afternoon with you. If you want, that is.”
Of course, Atem couldn’t ask for a better day.
They go to their favorite spots, do their favorite things. It all involves games of some kind, from arcades to a simple race down the street. Mokuba winks when he sees them in KaibaLand and leads them to a duel arena that wasn’t supposed to be open. He wishes Atem luck on his travels and leaves them to it.
After that, Atem and Yugi quite literally duel the day away. Sometimes Atem wins, sometimes Yugi, and sometimes it’s a draw. Either way, it’s the most fun either of them have had all summer.
Atem will miss him every day.
As they stand on Domino Pier watching the sunset, he tells Yugi as much.
Yugi’s eyes dim despite his smile. “I’ll miss you too. When are you thinking of moving? After your trip, I mean.”
Atem blinks. “Moving?”
“Well, yeah.” Yugi tilts his head. “Anzu went to New York to follow her dream. And even if you didn’t have the same passion she did, which you definitely do, you have family in Egypt. Why wouldn’t you move there?”
“Yugi. I am only going on a dig. Domino is my home.”
“Atem, it’s okay to tell me the truth.”
If there’s one smile Atem hates to see on Yugi’s face, it’s this one: a bittersweet, strained little thing forced there for others’ benefit. He never wanted it directed at him.
He grips Yugi’s hand. “I am telling the truth. I’m coming back, Yugi.”
Yugi stares at their fingers. That smile is still in place, but his voice comes out quiet: “How do you know?”
Did Yugi honestly not know?
Atem pulls him into a hug. Yugi stiffens, but reciprocates immediately.
“Even if by some miracle, Set and I don’t kill each other on the first day,” Atem murmurs, “I won’t feel like I belong. I never will.”
“But you love Egypt.”
“I do. And that won’t change. Yugi,” Atem pulls back to put his hands on Yugi’s shoulders. “I will always come back because you are here.”
Yugi’s jaw drops. “What?”
“You helped me find myself. You’re the one who took me to that Egypt exhibit, the one who badgered me into reconnecting with Set. Even the smallest things you do have an impact on me. I don’t know what my life would be like without you. How could I just leave you?”
Yugi kisses him. It’s a little salty with tears―whose, Atem isn’t sure. Perhaps both―and it’s perfect.
No. He could never leave this behind.
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th1nlizzy-blog
it's a numbers game and i'm bad at math
radfemreferences
ref
thatcsiguy
the world's poor pessimist
trashpandasquotes
Trash Panda's Quotes
benzyonart
Benzyon Art