DISCLAIMER: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! nor any of the characters, and this piece of fanfiction is for the sole purpose of entertainment.
IMPORTANT: This fic is a collection of all the various vignettes/ficlets which I have written over the last year or so (perhaps longer) relating to Yu-Gi-Oh. All of these have at least some implication of male x male relationships (read: YAOI) unless otherwise noted. Most are fluff, some are dark. All are under 1000 words, ratings change with each installment, and pairings jump around all over the place. This is a proverbial album of the various experiences of Yu-G-Oh characters, in short. Now that that's been established, onto the details.
Pairing: Jou x Ryou
Genre: general
Rating: PG
Words: 582
Summary: Ryou ponders upon Jou and how he makes him feel.
Memory Album
Installment One: Moments
Life is nothing but a series of moments; eternity shattered into fractional proportions, sequentially laid out one by one along the mysterious path of time.
Ryou oftentimes feels as if he is traveling along in life too slowly. The moments seem to blur together as they pass him by—and they are transient, flitting out from his grasp before he can even comprehend their existence. They lay just a hand's breadth away, always tauntingly close yet out of reach; so he is left hollow and wanting, going through the motions versus experiencing life. He thinks that this is rather unfair, but there is nothing that he can do about it and he is forced to recite lines from a script which holds no deeper meaning to him.
He imagines what it would be like to live in the moment. He has heard such tales from his friends—where life is so awe inspiring that it robs one's breath, leaving them gasping and mesmerized by the happenings; where one is instilled with such exhilaration that all rational thought flees. "Take charge of the moment," they have told him. "Live life to the fullest." Honestly, he wants to try; really, he does. But life travels too quickly for him. He is perpetually in slow-motion, watching as the whirlwind of existence charges by, leaving dust clouds in its wake to blind and further hinder him.
Somewhere along the line, he gave up the chase. He contents himself to lingering in the past, those stepping-stones that have melded themselves into the fabric of time. The past is so much kinder—understanding, perhaps—in that it never changes, and he won't be left struggling with the new developments.
However, Jou shakes the tender foundation which he lingers on, causing him to plummet wildly into the chaos of the present.
He isn't really aware of how it came about. Jou has always been there, a constant in the ever-changing pattern of his life. He was the one to tug him out of the past and help him stumble along the many moments of life. Yet somehow along the way, that stability transmuted into unpredictability, and it was Jou who was pushing him face-first into that blurred mass—those pieces of infinity stacked precariously on top of each other.
All Jou has to do is smile at him, and somehow he would be falling (the initial vertigo is inevitable). He would lose all sense of time, of propriety, of right and wrong—and he would be drowning, burrowing further and further into those dark eyes. He imagines the taste of chocolate and coffee, sweet and bitter upon his tongue before washing into his body to clog his lungs. And he thinks it wouldn't be so bad to die that way, swallowed up in indefinite warmth.
But when Jou turns away, he'd come to a dead halt. Time would speed up around him as he slows down, and back to square one he'd go. He wonders whether this is what his friends have told him of—but he is unsure, therefore he doesn't place any hopes on it. All he allows himself to do is think about his friend and the way his smile fills him with a vague sense of belonging.
He wonders whether there is more to what he feels for his friend—but he fears questioning, so he just lets Jou drag him along the moments and awaits the day when he'll be able to catch up.
