ready to spit fire against his enemies.
._._.
It was some time later, after all their emotions had been poured out and calmed like so much water going into parched soil, that Yuugi realized something was very strange about what had just happened.
“Other me,” Yuugi said, peering out at the train car from over the other’s shoulder, not pulling from the embrace.
“Mmm ’aibou?”
“You’re... a spirit, and only I can see you, right?” Yuugi felt the nod against his shoulder, and the weak sensation of feedback, and the other’s hair tickled Yuugi’s ear.
“Only you can see me,” he said, his voice low and glad and bordering on sing-song, “only you can hear me, touch me, know me. Only you.”
Yuugi nodded, relaxing backwards slightly out of the embrace to look at the face of his other self, whose identical-to-Yuugi’s cheeks pulled at his identical-to-Yuugi’s lips into a partial smile, his eyes half closed between awareness and sleep.
“And did we... did we ever figure out why?”
The other Yuugi closed his eyes, but his smile did not falter. “When I touch anything but you,” he said softly, “I do not feel it because you do not. Whatever emotion I feel, or you feel, we both feel.”
“And we loop.”
The other nodded, and still his eyes were closed, but Yuugi’s attention had shifted to the glitter on the cabin floor.
“It’s as though, by sharing your body with me, you share your senses, even while you are in control of it. I want you to see me, you see me. I want you to hear me, you do.”
“That’s what I thought too,” said Yuugi with a frown, “until you broke the chess set.”
The other Yuugi’s blind contemplation instantly broke as he spun to gaze at the accusative glitter of the broken rooks. The other Yuugi stammered somewhat unintelligibly.
“If you’re a spirit bound to me,” prodded Yuugi, “then how—?”
“I don’t know,” the other replied, turning to stare at his hands instead. Worried, Yuugi trailed his fingers lightly over the skin of the backs of the other’s hands, noticing with some amusement that even their freckles fell in the same places. “I know that I have dominion over all games, but I did not realize it went to such an extent.”
Yuugi’s fingers slowed at the phrase, and with a sudden realization he pulled his hand away as if burned, and the other Yuugi merely watched with both amusement and dejection.
“Keh, I do not think you would fall under such a category, aibou,” he said, and Yuugi gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Well, it’s still— to think that you can— even without—!”
The other Yuugi smiled. “It is unexpected, yes.”
Yuugi laughed. “I was going to go with ‘fucking weird,’ but that works too.”
Yuugi was not sure what else to say, or do after that – it is therefore fortunate for him then that the train itself broke their silence with a series of squeals and the distinctive hiss of the train’s slowing movements. The other looked towards the door at the end of the cabin twenty or so feet away before turning back to Yuugi. Out the window, Yuugi could see the grand spires of Domino’s historic train station, and he realized they were now only mere city blocks away from the bus station where they had started their journey. To think, they’d only left this city two weeks ago! With how much that had happened, Yuugi was shocked that it had been only so short a time compared to the rest of the world.
Warm arms wrapped around Yuugi from the side of him, feeling solid and warm, and Yuugi allowed himself to be turned in that embrace, feeling the other’s face pressed against his, cheek to cheek. The sensations were still amplified – though Yuugi knew the other was behind him, Yuugi could feel body heat in his own arms, and his bare cheek felt the press of another’s as well, but after so long without true human contact, Yuugi’s mind was working in overdrive to adapt to the haptic input to keep him ‘sane.’ So long as they were not mimicking exactly, Yuugi remembered, every touch would ‘only’ feel echoed and not mind-numbingly intense.
Yuugi was glad that his other self was sitting behind Yuugi, and thus could not see how red Yuugi’s face flushed when his thoughts jumped from intense sensations to imagining other intense sensations; Yuugi would be mortified at the jesting inquiries.
“Mm,” said the other, “your cheek feels hot, aibou. Are you all right?”
Yuugi’s face was the red side of a Rubik’s cube. “... Maybe you should go back to being my shadow,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady but not unkind, “see what’s going on?”
The other Yuugi did not verbally respond, but Yuugi could feel the way the skin seemed to evaporate against Yuugi’s until Yuugi felt only the bed upon which he sat and the Domino air, still cutting in through the open window in the train’s final slowing movements. Yuugi pushed himself from the bed, spotting his rucksack against the opposite wall, and Yuugi’s shadow spun around his feet like a lost compass as he walked.
It is very difficult to detect the movements of others when all the ground is shaking, wrote the shadow, and for the first time Yuugi almost heard the words echo in his mind as well. Were they getting to the point where, even manifesting outside Yuugi’s body, they could still communicate within the confines of his mind? God how Yuugi had missed the sound of being not alone in his head!
“Train cars aren’t very well connected to one another in the first place, other me,” Yuugi said softly as he quickly assessed that all his belongings were accounted for. It was as he stood that Kaiba Seto himself strode in through the cabin door, throwing something large and black at Yuugi without pause. Yuugi fumbled the catch (he’d never been good at sports, after all), but he still identified the item readily.
“Come on,” said Kaiba, turning back to leave, holding a second, matching item under his arm, “You’re my bitch.”
Yuugi shoved the helmet on over his hair, ignoring the way his shadow had nearly exploded in a smattering of obscenities before all of them recombined, and the shadow retracted to Yuugi.
What. Did. He. Just. Say?
“I didn’t know you had a motorcycle license, Kaiba-kun,” Yuugi said, trying to keep the other Yuugi from surging forward and challenging Kaiba to a Dark Game for the comment. Just let it go, other me, he replied, it’s just a biking term.
That is NOT what he implied, aibou!
Yuugi didn’t bother to ask Kaiba how he could have gotten the license, being younger than Yuugi and thus much lower than the legal age; if Yuugi knew anything, it was that for the obscenely rich like Kaiba, there wasn’t anything a person couldn’t get if they threw enough money at it.
Even, he thought sourly as he followed Kaiba off the train and into the station, grandfather’s precious Blue Eyes White Dragon.
Aibou..., responded the other, his ‘voice’ softer, anger pushed aside, you’ve only sold him the opportunity to win the card. We both know he can never win in a duel against either of us, let alone us both working together.
Yuugi smiled, pulling down his helmet’s visor as he and Kaiba and Kaiba’s troupe of four bodyguards strode through the station proper. It was early afternoon, and the station was crowded, but no one even looked twice at Yuugi. He was grateful for the helmet, hiding his instantly recognizable hair, even if everyone still would be looking for Jounouchi as the murderer of those pop stars. In fact, Yuugi thought wryly, if people recognized Kaiba and his bodyguards, they probably assumed that the short kid in the leather and the biker helmet was Kaiba’s younger brother Mokuba.
Hidden from view Yuugi scowled at that thought, but eventually they arrived in the small parking lot of the station. The motorcycle was easy enough to spot with its three-man guard, situated as it was far, far away from all the other vehicles in the area. As Kaiba approached the bike, all seven of the suits seemed to drop into the background, letting their boss do what he would. Kaiba straddled the bike easily, and Yuugi followed onto the back as quickly as he could. Kaiba gunned the engine, and Yuugi felt mortified as he was forced to wrap his arms around Kaiba in an instant death grip when the jackass started peeling out before the machine had even gotten balanced on its wheels.
The machine roared as they almost flew onto the city streets, weaving between cars and pedestrians and bicycles alike. Yuugi watched his hometown zip by in a blur, his hangouts and haunts and favorite restaurants flashing past. Had they gone slower, Yuugi would have felt sappy and nostalgic, but instead he and his other self were both cursing profusely and worrying and swearing to inflict bodily harm on Kaiba just as soon as they weren’t in mortal peril. Kaiba was running traffic signals everywhere – including in front of the police station – without a hint of worry.
After they started getting on the more isolated roads and into the richer part of Domino, Kaiba’s acceleration slowed a kilometer or two, but even that was appreciated.
It wouldn’t be so worrisome if I were in control, grumbled Yuugi’s other self, and Yuugi smiled.
Oh? he asked, do you want to switch? I didn’t know you had a desire to cling to Kaiba-kun.
The other sputtered. What? No! I meant if I were steering the abomination. There was a slight pause, and the spirit continued in a teasing voice, do you not want to share the feel of Kaiba’s rugged back, aibou?
Yuugi bit his lip to keep from cracking, and hoped Kaiba wouldn’t notice how his body was jerking from suppressed laughter.
Oh, you know me, Yuugi replied with a smile, this past week was so lonely without you,
And Kaiba was willing to offer a hand?
Yuugi clenched his eyes and teeth and tried to suppress his silent laughter, not wanting to distract Kaiba from driving and thus crashing into a tree and killing them all, but he wasn’t succeeding and he knew it.
Mmph, and now that you’re awake, Yuugi replied slyly; the other was laughing in Yuugi’s mind, and Yuugi was dying from his amusement. He’ll be getting two for the price of one!
Considering how obsessed he is with gaming, noted the other, he’d probably enjoy playing with two Yuugis.
Gah! Bad images! Yuugi cried, his eyes in actual pain from squeezing them so tightly closed, his helmet pressed into Kaiba’s back. It’s a marine sandwich! Seahorse, trapped between twin starfish!
There was no stopping the laughter now – Yuugi was gasping for breath while the other Yuugi wondered if that would be a good dish to eat, and Kaiba had no idea why Yuugi was having such difficulty staying still.
After another five minutes of bad puns and even worse impersonating (and some exclamations of pervert! when one of them mentioned matching two Yuugis with a Kaiba and a half, but Yuugi couldn’t remember which of them mentioned Mokuba first), the motorcycle’s engine cut, parking easily. Yuugi flung himself off the stationary bike, pulling off his helmet and finally allowing himself to choke out a few seconds of pained laughter.
Kaiba merely stared for a moment, shaking his head. “Was I going too fast for you, Yuugi-kun?”
He couldn’t help it – Yuugi dropped the helmet and doubled over laughing again, and the other Yuugi was trying to make a joke about Kaiba’s stamina around his own laughter, and Yuugi knew he looked insane. Kaiba merely walked away without him, so Yuugi had to make his own mirthful way to Kaiba’s mansion without a guide.
After a moment, the shadow of Yuugi rose from the ground and formed into the semi-transparent apparition of his other self.
“I don’t know, aibou,” he said, sighing through gossamer-transparent lips, “I’m not sure if Kaiba’s going to keep dating you if you allow your other self to mock him in the shadows of your heart.”
Yuugi heaved a theatrical sigh, pressing his hands to his chest. “ ‘Seto, my darling,’ ” he said, doing his very best not to break character, “ ‘that was the other me. You know I love you, and I’m sorry that you’ve lost three more employees to insanity...’ I think you’re right; it would never work out. Oh, other me!” he exclaimed with laughter, pitching his voice up to falsetto, “my love has deserted me for entirely reasonable... reasons! My life is over! Hand me the dagger given to me by my father, for I have invoked great shame upon my family! Woe!”
“Aibou,” the other Yuugi said, and Yuugi nearly spat and choked with laughter at the other Yuugi’s ridiculously exaggerated bass voice, “if Kaiba cannot see how truly pure and innocent you are—”
“As if!” Yuugi interjected playfully.
“And how beautiful is your soul, and your heart of light and candy and flowers—” Yuugi was stumbling and hacking on his laughter at the way that ridiculously deep voice said such stupid things, “—and how your eyes shimmer like stars trapped in gemstones—”
“Stop, you’re going to kill me!”
“—then he does not deserve your radiant love. Come!” The other Yuugi seized him around the waist and flung him over an arm, like ballroom dancers, so almost all of Yuugi’s weight was supported by a mostly invisible arm, “let us run away together!”
“Not again!” Yuugi groaned, placing the back of his wrist against his forehead in a gesture of theatric woe, but the other Yuugi was not yet done.
“But it will be full of romance!” he protested, still in that ridiculously bass voice, “and love! And occasional kittens! In love!”
“You know,” said Yuugi in his own, normal voice, “if anyone were watching, they’d think I was stark raving mad.” He paused. “And that my balance is amazing. ”
The other Yuugi smirked, letting Yuugi’s weight slip a little bit, but did not release him to fall. “Let’s get married and have a thousand babies. You get to carry them.”
“Wait, why am I the woman?” Yuugi protested, pulling himself back to standing. He tried huffing away from the other, but the mansion was still a good five minute long walk away. (And how had Kaiba disappeared so fast?)
“ ‘Oh, other me!’ ” The other Yuugi mimicked, his falsetto not nearly as high as Yuugi’s. He added, in his own baritone, “You started it.”
“Heh, if I weren’t straight—” (which he might not be, his mind protested softly, considering how often the other Yuugi made him feel... well.) “—and you weren’t dead, and we each had a physical body to leave behind, I would get us adjacent burial plots, or share our urns, or something.” Yuugi joked, but the other Yuugi seemed to be drifting towards more ridiculous thoughts.
“I don’t see what sexual preference has to do with dead bodies, aibou. Is there something you should tell me?”
Yuugi laughed, and shook his head. “No... I guess it doesn’t. Well, I could always have the Puzzle buried with me, or bind myself to it—”
“I do not recommend it.”
“—but I was implying that we’d be the equivalent of married, playing off your ‘Yuugi, have my babies’ moment, though how I would explain that one to Mom—”
“You could blame the ‘Magic of the Puzzle,’ ” he said in an intentionally too-innocent way. Yuugi was having difficulty not laughing, so he stopped trying to fight his joy.
“That too, but I was thinking more along the lines of ‘the father is an invisible guy who lives in my head who would probably be my twin brother if he wasn’t an invisible guy in my head, but since he’s not he isn’t’ bit.”
“But you know,” the other said playfully, with a smile and a laugh, “the sex would be amazing.”
As they walked together to Kaiba’s mansion Yuugi was barely able to keep the flush from covering his entire face. Yeah, Yuugi was pretty sure he was mostly straight, but when he’d been kissed by Rue-chan in their last year at middle school at the festival, it was nothing compared to simply touching foreheads with his other self, and Yuugi didn’t know if there was anyone who could make Yuugi feel as happy and wonderful as the other Yuugi did today without even trying.
Yuugi laughed, and sprinted ahead, letting the other Yuugi chase after him – distracting him from Yuugi’s lack of response to that last line. Anyway, to Yuugi’s ears, it had sounded less like a joke and more like a promise.
._._.
Yuugi’s return to Domino was not precisely what he had expected. Kaiba had essentially locked Yuugi in one of his mansion’s lesser-used wings, since neither he nor Yuugi really wanted him in police custody straight off. Kaiba had hired a team of top-notch attorneys and investigators to comb up everything they could find about Yuugi’s case and the Sasori sisters: history of violence, motive, a reason they were living in a run-down apartment building in Domino when they owned three houses from Titan to Monopolis alone. Yuugi was, of course, to stay out of sight until they had enough evidence to stand a shot against the obscenely high conviction rate.
Although the rooms Yuugi was permitted to wander were numerous and large, he was feeling anxious and slightly claustrophobic. Grandmother Kameyo must have felt something similar in her isolation in the Tower, though of course even handicapped as she was she was allowed to leave. Yuugi did, however, get the chance to catch up on the news published about his case – something he had neglected while in Titan.
The hospital had, in one of the earliest articles, released information about his surgery, and how ‘anyone with half a brain could tell that the kid couldn’t have possibly shot himself’ because the angle of entry was apparently all wrong. It never was mentioned again. Hikari had a permit for a gun, and neighbors were apparently surprised they hadn’t been killed sooner, what with how often they were volunteering with the homeless and, like such good Samaritans, allowing strangers to stay overnight in their apartment.
There were a couple of quotes from Yuugi’s family; both his mother and grandfather staunchly stating that Yuugi was innocent, without a doubt, but of course the papers spun it as though they were the idealistic and blind affirmations of relatives who could not see the truth of Yuugi’s nature.
In the interviews with Yuugi’s classmates, however... in the early papers, from the day of Yuugi’s incarceration to maybe two days after his escape, everyone thought he was innocent and framed. But, with each passing day, those affirmations of innocence grew fewer and fewer in comparison to the numerous claims that Yuugi categorically fit in with other school-aged murderers; how he was always the quiet one, the shy one, always bullied, how he didn’t have many friends and how he often turned down his classmates’ offers of companionship.
“It was really only a matter of time before he lost it,” this article quoted Honda Hiroto as saying, merely a week into Yuugi’s absence, “I’d told Jounouchi that the kid was bad news, and look what happened!”
“It probably started when Yuugi-kun’s father was killed,” said Anzu only a couple days ago, and Yuugi’s blood ran cold. He’d never told anyone – not even Anzu – about what had happened to his father all those years ago. He hadn’t had any close friends at the time, and he’d not wanted to make anyone else feel sad or sorry for something they couldn’t control. It was the same reason he’d usually not told his family about the bullies at school – that’s just how life was, and other people knowing wouldn’t have changed it. Even years later, he still told anyone who asked that his father was always away on business. He wasn’t ashamed – it just didn’t matter what anyone else thought.
How, then, could Anzu know? He read on.
“Yuugi was only nine at the time, I think. Somewhere around there. There was some political thing going on at the airport, and Yuugi’s father got caught in the crossfire. Yuugi never told anyone about that – even he knew that you shouldn’t trust a boy who grows up without a father—”
Yuugi felt something grab his wrists, and startled he dropped the paper and looked up in surprise. The other Yuugi was kneeling in front of Yuugi in the armchair, the other’s face tight.
“Do not distress yourself so, aibou,” he said, calmingly.
“But she’s my friend, other me! So is Honda-kun! Why would they say such cruel things about me?” Solid hands with a less-than-solid appearance rested on Yuugi’s knees, and the other Yuugi shook his head.
“I do not know. When all this is over, we can confront her – confront them both – for this trespass against you.”
Yuugi’s body jerked at the phrase, remembering it being shouted to Kaiba before everything went to hell, remembering the fury with which the other said the words, remembering how close he could feel the other to—
Yuugi trapped the other’s hands against his knees, and he shook his head. “No! You’re not going to challenge them to Dark Games over this, other me! I... I know what you’ve done to the others, I know! And it stops now.”
The other’s grip on Yuugi’s knees tightened, and Yuugi could see the fear in that gaze – though Yuugi couldn’t understand why his other self should be afraid.
“You... you know? You saw?”
Yuugi shook his head, and grew even more worried when the other visibly relaxed.
“I didn’t see you do it,” Yuugi admitted, “but you left a trail, and Kaiba-kun found it. It all adds up—” Yuugi’s voice did not get louder in his anger like it normally would; instead it softened to a hard whisper. “—the strangeness of it all, of my blackouts, the way that people who hurt me would just vanish. I’d suspected it before, but now to know just what you did—”
“Aibou, they—”
“You set a man on fire!” he hissed angrily, “who does that? Who deserves that? A dozen people saw you kill a man by burning him alive!”
“He’d killed people – he hurt you – the Dark Games only reveal a person’s heart, their true character, and punishes them—”
“—in equal accordance to their crimes,” Yuugi admitted, his anger abating, “I know. But that isn’t how the world works anymore, other me. You can’t just kill people like that because of it. We have a justice system for things like that—”
“It doesn’t work very well, does it, aibou?” The other Yuugi raised himself to his knees and, freeing his hands from Yuugi’s entrapment, pushed Yuugi further into the chair, until Yuugi’s spine was pressed flat against the back cushion. “I know your heart, I can see how little faith you have in that system.”
“But I do—”
“Then why did we run, aibou? If you trust it so much, then why did we run from it?”
Yuugi pursed his lips, his body nearly shaking in anger at the other’s words. “I wanted to stay, other me, remember? You wanted to use the Dark Games to escape, but I said no, and wanted to stay.”
The hands on Yuugi’s shoulders dug in painfully, though Yuugi did not cry out against it.
“Do not play the fool, aibou. I remember that day well.” The other’s face was angered, but not cruel, and his voice was level. “You did object at first, I recall, and I let the matter drop until we learned that the game was rigged. I offered you a way out; I offered you the means. You, aibou, are the one who swung the Axe, not I. You are the one who initiated the Game that allowed us to escape. Had you wanted to brave that system, had that truly been your desire, then you never would have touched the Axe. You made the choice there, of trust.”
The hands on Yuugi’s shoulders relaxed and, as if sensing the pain caused, began a slow massage of Yuugi’s tense muscles.
“A choice?” Yuugi asked, letting his body relax slightly under the inconstant hands gnawing away the tightness of his muscles. “What choice?”
“Your life was in danger,” murmured the other, “from an unjust penalty. You could have placed your faith, your life, in the hands of your system, but instead you chose me with your safety. You only now face their game when you can match their rigging of the game with an advantage of your own.”
Yuugi gave a small ‘mmph’ of pain when those hands started kneading at the juncture of his neck and shoulders, but the other continued.
“So do not tell me to leave distributing justice to those who are inefficient and see with closed eyes. Was it not you who told me that the Millennium Puzzle was the greatest of all the Items, because it could punish justly? Even without the crime being known?”
The hands slid further up, pinching at the tight sinews on Yuugi’s neck, just behind the curve of his jaw, further back than his ears, and Yuugi’s body clenched as the fingers brushed the hair at the base of his skull.
“But—ah! —But I...” Yuugi’s eyes slid closed, and he felt the other Yuugi climb onto the chair with him, calves pressing against Yuugi’s legs, and with the extra leverage—
“But you what?” Yuugi’s hands were clutching and releasing the arms of the chair in time with the massage of his shoulders again, the sensory feedback muted but still distracting. Struggling to focus, Yuugi stilled his own hands and looked up to meet the other’s almost muted gaze.
“There’s... there’s been enough death, other me, enough insanity. I don’t want to cause it, too. Please.”
Yuugi watched the careful play on the other’s face, the soft gaze and the brief scowl, and finally the hands stilled.
“All right. No more Dark Games without your permission.” There was a smile on the other’s face Yuugi wasn’t sure he liked.
“You know I would never agree to one,” Yuugi said, but the other just shook his head with a gentle laugh.
“Your mercy is too ready and too swift, aibou.”
“As is your retribution, other me,” Yuugi countered, “and mine can be corrected if proven wrong.”
The other Yuugi merely rolled his own shoulders before attacking Yuugi’s with greater skill, and were Yuugi not already pinned in place he would have slumped with pleasure.
“You know, if I didn’t know any better,” Yuugi said with eyes narrowed, his body lax, “I might think you were doing this to get in my pants.”
The other Yuugi laughed. “You obviously know me so well. Are my true intentions so apparent?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he murmured, “and I’m too comfortable to be mad. Or fight. Cheater.”
“Nowhere do the rules say I can’t distract you with something you want.”
“What about you? What—” he yawned, “What do you want?”
Yuugi felt the hands slip from his shoulders, and the weight from his body, but he barely reacted to that, or to the way the other Yuugi pulled Yuugi to his feet, guiding him wearily across the room to the unmade bed. Yuugi didn’t resist when the other Yuugi had to guide Yuugi’s arm to move aside the covers – he even laughed a little when the other Yuugi started bouncing Yuugi’s arm around like an unresisting doll – in order to cover Yuugi against the night chill.
Yuugi felt the other climb onto the bed after, pressing against him – Yuugi’s back to the other’s front (and faintly there was a body in front of Yuugi, but it was gaseous and felt only like the final echo rebounding from a cliff face). Faintly, as fatigue caught up with Yuugi, and as an arm wrapped around Yuugi’s waist and torso, he felt the words whispered into his ear more than he heard them.
“Just to be here with you.”
As Yuugi was falling asleep, comfortable and warm, an earlier conversation came to mind. The sex really would be amazing, if it didn’t drive him insane first.
He could feel the other’s laughter (had he actually said that aloud?), even as he began to dream.
._._.
It was at dinner, several days after Yuugi arrived, that Kaiba revealed the news.
“So long as you don’t do anything unaccountably stupid,” he said, while Yuugi was attempting to balance some bizarre French pasta precariously caught in his chopsticks, “we can get you an innocent verdict.”
The dining room was like everything else in the Kaiba mansion – too large by half for even the obscenely rich, too empty, and everything was bright primary colors or dark, dark black. The chandeliers were ridiculous in size only because they were so high up, they would not be able to illuminate the room if they were even only moderately huge; the ceiling was probably three stories up, and it would take a mechanical lift to change the innumerable light bulbs. The dining table itself was ludicrous: it was probably designed to seat a hundred people, so having all three of them sitting at one end of the table seemed a bit insane. Kaiba, of course, was seated at the head of the table; Yuugi sat to his left, and Mokuba was on his right.
Yuugi fumbled the pasta a moment in his chopsticks, his dexterity with the utensils having deteriorated after even only three weeks of bad soup and fast food sandwiches. He set them down shakily, turning his attention to his host.
“You can? There’s enough evidence?”
Mokuba laughed, and clicked his chopsticks at Yuugi in a manner that was probably meant to be threatening, but since Mokuba looked about as threatening as an old drowned cat, the action was merely silly. “Big brother could prove anything!” he boasted, clicking his chopsticks again as though they were the mouth of a hand puppet, “he could find a kappa in the desert if he wanted to!”
“Mokuba, Yuugi-kun doesn’t need to hear your subservient worship. Leave him alone.” The words were not harshly inflected, but Mokuba winced like a kicked animal that had long since learned better than to whimper at the blow. Mokuba reeled in his chopsticks, and with his head bowed began rearranging the corkscrew pasta on his plate.
Kaiba did not react as though he noticed this, but Yuugi could instantly see that he had and didn’t care. Yuugi fought down his anger at Kaiba’s maltreatment to his brother.
“My attorneys have made some... connections that are beneficial to your case, and recovered some damning evidence.”
“That’s great!” Yuugi took up his chopsticks once more, though now he stabbed the pasta as though he held skewers. “When will the trial start, do you know?”
Mokuba had started building up his pasta in a very stumpy tower, but Kaiba did not look in his brother’s direction.
“We’re going to speak with some people at the courthouse and try to get the opening trial started tomorrow morning—”
Yuugi’s chopsticks clattered onto his plate, rolling slightly into the sauce, but neither of the Kaibas spared him a look of concern.
“To-tomorrow? Is that enough time? I mean—”
“The prosecution has had three weeks to prepare for your conviction, Yuugi. They’re aiming for the death penalty, even though you’re not of-age. We have to surprise them in every way we can, and if it means surprising them with new evidence then we will, and I’m not below initiating a first strike.”
Yuugi bit his lip, but said nothing. Getting a ‘first strike’ wouldn’t be an advantage in the courtroom; the only thing that would help Yuugi was lots and lots of evidence, or maybe a witness who had seen everything (except for maybe the Dark Game, as Yuugi still didn’t know the particulars of what went on in one of those other than the result). Yuugi ferried more pasta into his mouth, his eyes straying to Mokuba’s short rook-like tower of noodles, before he turned back to Kaiba once more. Kaiba ate with a fork.
“Do you think they’ll let me talk to—?”
“No.”
Yuugi’s mouth closed at the terse reply, and he felt the press of the other Yuugi against his eyes like a migraine with a foul mouth and a worse temper. Yuugi’s chopsticks rebelled against their servitude once more, falling into the pasta with a reckless abandon, splattering some of the thick, white cheese sauce around the perimeter of the dish, and the globs of white against the black of the table shined like gelatinous stars.
Yuugi pushed away from the table, his excuses quiet and unacknowledged. He made his way quickly back to the ‘abandoned’ wing, passing no one in his journey. His presence was no longer a necessary secret, he thought, his hands clenching at his sides. He wasn’t even sure why he was so angry; just Kaiba and Mokuba and the stress of knowing that tomorrow would be the beginning of – well, whether Yuugi would live or die. His fate was no longer in his own hands: whether he would be able to graduate high school, or take over the Game Shop, or even learn the other Yuugi’s true name all depended now on Kaiba and the court.
Yuugi kicked open the bedroom door, but since it was already ajar it wasn’t one of those action-packed balancing acts of a kick like the door itself hoped for to break the monotony, though the door was pleased by the forceful way Yuugi slammed it shut. Yuugi fumed and brewed and stormed across the room, too long by half, and half, and half. The bed was too large, the room too cold, the air too empty. He hated that he was getting used to this room – it had been a several weeks in all since his departure, and Yuugi missed his family, his bed, the rattle of the closing school gates, the start of morning classes. He missed the way Anzu and Jounouchi and Honda would get into the most ridiculous of arguments during their short breaks. He missed Jounouchi’s easy smile and the way he could believe anything, more gullible than Yuugi in a surprising twist considering Jounouchi’s violent past.
The bed wasn’t squeaky enough either, and Yuugi didn’t spring back up nearly as high at home. The blankets were too thick and the ceiling too plain and the other Yuugi’s face too blurry. Oh. He was tearing up again, like a pathetic little girl. Yuugi clenched his eyes shut tightly.
“I’m not crying.” The other Yuugi said nothing, but merely lay down beside him, letting their opposing hands overlap. “I’m not.”
“I know,” said the other. “Let’s play a game.”
“Can’t,” said Yuugi wearily, “I don’t have a table map for Duel Monsters, I gave my last packs of regular cards to the owner of the motel, and I don’t even want to look at dice.”
The other Yuugi gave a small chuckle, and in one fluid roll stood once more, and he offered a hand to Yuugi. The other Yuugi pulled Yuugi to his feet, a pleasant tingle running through both Yuugi’s hands.
“Not that kind of game.”
“What kind, then?” Yuugi asked, confused, but the other Yuugi just smiled, his hands catching under Yuugi’s elbows and with a thrust tossed Yuugi back upon the mattress, further from the edge than he’d been before.
“Other—” Yuugi sputtered, but when he sat back up the other had climbed onto the bed and was crawling towards Yuugi. Yuugi did not shift backwards, or attempt to move away, but his desire to do so must have shown on his face; the other looked hurt.
“Do you no longer trust me, aibou?”
Yuugi could not think of anyone he trusted more! But...
“What kind of game?”
The other Yuugi smiled, and continued his approach. “I could never play a Dark Game with you; there’s no darkness in your heart. I would always lose.”
Yuugi rolled his eyes, and preferring not to be completely trapped by the other he sat up. The other was poised over Yuugi’s legs, still coming closer.
“Everyone has darkness in their heart, other me,” Yuugi countered, pushing on the semitransparent shoulders to halt the other’s progress, “but it doesn’t mean that anyone deserves what the Dark Games do to their minds, to them.”
The other Yuugi shook his head, his smile a very shallow curve. His face was very close to Yuugi’s, now – Yuugi could see little freckles of darker hue in the other’s irises, and he wasn’t sure if he himself had such variation. Yuugi wondered what his other self would have looked like as the Pharaoh of legend, that king of immense power and a balanced heart.
“Let’s don’t talk about the Games of Darkness,” said the other Yuugi, his smile still controlled and slight on his face, but Yuugi could hear the other’s confident, nearly gleeful grin when he added, “I want to play a game of distraction.”
Yuugi was not by nature a suspicious person, but Yuugi knew his other self too well by this point to not raise his guard against such a tone. “How do we play?” Yuugi asked, his shields on as high alert as was possible against someone that lived inside one’s head. If the other Yuugi noticed this wariness, he ignored it so completely that Yuugi himself nearly forgot he was feeling suspicion in the first place.
“You’re still worried about the game tomorrow,” the other Yuugi said, his stare on Yuugi so intense that, even on only half opacity, Yuugi wondered if he was not the only one of them who could see through his opposite’s head to the wall beyond. “So if I can distract you from thinking about things that make you anxious, then I win.”
“So in order for me to win,” Yuugi interjected, “I have to worry?”
The other Yuugi nodded. “If anywhere you can keep that feeling of anxiousness, of worry, then I lose.”
Yuugi frowned. “This doesn’t sound very fun for me,” but the other Yuugi just grinned and climbed closer as Yuugi’s hands slipped away from the other’s shoulders.
“Game start.”
Yuugi gasped as his mind fell into a flood of hypersensitivity overload. Like in the labyrinth of white that was Kaiba’s flat at the Tower, the other Yuugi had decided to take Yuugi’s mind off his worries with the press of flesh to flesh to flesh to eternity, a feedback loop stemming from their flush pressed foreheads. This was not all. The other Yuugi had also entwined their hands together, linking their fingers through one another like the teeth of a zipper, creating two separate loops of infinite feeling.
But it was not enough. After even what few occasions they had succumbed to this anomaly of feeling, Yuugi’s mind had begun to adapt, and now Yuugi was still perfectly able to engage in coherent thought, and he used this process to decide that he was glad that hugging his best friend no longer held the threat of instant insanity. He also was saddened that he could only ever have one best friend at a time (though he was sure holding a still-living Jounouchi like this would have been much more awkward).
The hands holding Yuugi’s squeezed tighter around his own, and tentatively Yuugi tried to reach through their feedback connection, through their shared heart, to understand why the other Yuugi was trying to break his hands like this.
The other Yuugi had apparently felt Yuugi’s sadness, and had discovered his surefire trick had somehow been broken while he was locked away. He could no longer protect his rescuer from anything, and had realized he was so utterly useless and worthless and all he ever did was frighten and worry his aibou, and he hated the way his eyes would expand in fear and contract in suspicion and water with sorrow or burn with uncommon rage, and he just wanted to see him happy and feel as good and as happy and wonderful as he felt when he was with aibou, and dammit he couldn’t do anything right! He thinks it would have been better for aibou if he hadn’t rescued the other Yuugi in either occasion.
Yuugi pulled away from the other’s thoughts, but did not physically withdraw. Unlike the other Yuugi, and unlike his cursed grandfather years before under the influence of the Puzzle, Yuugi knew that sometimes, winning was the worst outcome to a game. Had he been able to see Hikari’s madness, he would have tricked her into winning that game so many nights ago. If, instead of the legendary Pharaoh of Balance, it had been Yuugi and his other self playing games with the Egyptian Gods of old, it would be Yuugi and not this broken Pharaoh’s ghost that would have ‘won’ the Millennium Items.
So really, to lose this game was hardly a sacrifice.
The other Yuugi tried to pull away in forfeit, but Yuugi’s hands tightened right back on the other’s, and Yuugi pressed his forehead forward when the other tried to retreat. Yuugi hesitated. Though it was not something that he had never done before, and even though it was something he wanted to do, it was something he had not imagined would ever happen again for someone as – as Yuugi as he was. But now it was here in a way Yuugi could have never foreseen and it could very well drive the other away, but god even though the feeling wasn’t as insane as before, they could hold it for longer and now everything was warm and so good.
“Pharaoh,” Yuugi whispered, using this title for the first time, his hands squeezing the other’s in his nervousness, and apprehension and mild terror were coiled all through him like a corkscrew that had pierced but had not yet removed the stopper to reaction. “I don’t want to be scared anymore.”
“Ai—”
Their noses collided at first, but on the second attempt Yuugi’s lips covered the other’s, and though it was tingly and warm and pleasant, it was also pretty awkward what with neither of them moving.
“Aibou?” The lips trembled against Yuugi’s, warm and brilliant, and the movement seemed to pull at the cork within Yuugi’s torso.
“Please,” Yuugi’s lips trembled in reply, still lightly pressed against the other’s, “Pharaoh, aibou, other me, please...” Yuugi’s thumbs massaged small circles on the other’s hands, but Yuugi kept his eyes closed and their lips pressed together, “it’s your game... play with me.”
Yuugi’s hands slipped from the slack hold, rising up and caressing the other Yuugi’s neck and jaw and combing gently into his hairline.
“My game?” There was something different about the way he said it, echoing in Yuugi’s ears and faintly in his mind, but then there was a shift as the other’s leg slid up and against Yuugi’s for balance, and Yuugi tried to say the words but no air came out, so it was merely his lips moving while your game managed to echo between them.
It was then that the other Yuugi started kissing back, though it was awkward to start of course. They neither one had much experience in kissing, and any advice was forgotten (except breathing through the nose, that one was easy enough), but eventually their barely open kisses mellowed into something warm and soft.
The other Yuugi did not taste of chocolate – he did not taste of anything except for skin, to be honest – but to Yuugi, kissing him like this was like sipping warm cocoa after weeks of endless cold. Yuugi was not one to sip; he was one to drink things down, to savor with the heat filling him, and Yuugi slid his tongue against the now-wet crease of the other’s lips. The body above him pressed in closer, the hands that now held onto Yuugi’s shoulder and his hip tightened, but the mouth retreated and Yuugi did not whimper, but someone did so it probably had to be Yuugi, and his eyes opened.
The other Yuugi’s skin, though semitransparent, was flushed with heat in his cheeks, and his eyes didn’t seem to want to open completely either, and they were so filled with want that Yuugi’s corkscrew finally did its job and all that clogging of anxiety was ripped away and all that was left was bubbling warmth within him.
“My game,” said the other, moving forward to kiss and straddle and holy fuck even through layers of clothing, having weight and warmth there was amazing and Yuugi agreed, “Your game, yours,” and they weren’t really saying ‘game’ anymore, were they? Yuugi hadn’t noticed because the other never called him ‘Yuugi,’ did he? He was more possessive than Yuugi first supposed.
“New rule,” said the other, and Yuugi hoped it had nothing to do with point tallies because he wasn’t sure if he could even manage simple addition right now (other than more would be good). There was a magical hand-shaped press of heat on Yuugi’s back, under his shirt and leather (and when did he do that?) and Yuugi let the hand press him closer to the other, whose mouth was at Yuugi’s ear (and when did that happen?) and the new rule was designating the type of game.
“Solitaire?”
And then there were TEETH on his EAR and it hurt but then it didn’t and Yuugi was agreeing full-heartedly because that had been painful but good and— oh.
“Sorry,” he murmured while the other was apologizing in a much more tender way to the poor lobe, “it was the only way to get him to agree! And—”
“Would you rather be with your precious Seto? Or perhaps Anzu-chan would be more to your liking?”
Yuugi was very glad he didn’t have to lie. “I’ve only felt like this with you,” he said, kissing up the other’s jaw line, “and I wouldn’t trade you for anyone. Besides, they’re both too tall, I’d need a stepladder—”
Kissing was much more fun than talking, so they didn’t bother too much with the latter besides the occasional gasp and moan and every few minutes a pet name or two. By the time they noticed that their eyes were closed more from fatigue than arousal and decided that sleep would be fantastic, if they had remembered they were playing a game to begin with, the other Yuugi would have been deemed the winner by incredibly ridiculous margins. Yuugi wouldn’t have felt too bad about losing, either, as the consolation prize was most excellent.
._._.
