Disclaimer: I do not own YGO. This is a work of fanfiction.

Inspiration: Vanille Galante, Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood, black and white polaroids of late 60s California (blame tumblr!). I don't own any of those either.

...

"You smell like salted lilies."

The words were whispered, soft and fuzzy, like the matted lint balls yawning across Yugi's sweater. Tea thinks it used to be an iridescent sort of olive or puce, but now it's a faded green with spots that revealed flecks of tanned skin. A Christmas gift from Grandpa that stretched past bony hip bones just a few days ago and stretched tight across a set of well-muscled shoulders now.

His shoulders.

Broad, sprawling like the California desert underneath her feet, acres and acres of amber speckled gold rambling in the distance. Those arms were Yugi's but at the same time not Yugi's, as much or as little sense as that made sometimes. This, whatever this was, wasn't something she signed up for at the playground in second grade. She wished for a normal life with normal friends and normal teenage hobbies then. What arrrived instead was weird and supernatural and mysterious and illogical and confusing.

(Mostly confusing with a side helping of love for the relatively normal and distinctively abnormal halves of her best friend.)

She stopped trying to understand their bond a long time ago. One was the boy she grew up with and hugged without so much as an extra swipe of mascara or lipgloss, the other was the boy/man/spirit hybrid she looked up to with as many swipes of mascara and lipgloss as she could manage without looking like a Cirque du Soleil reject. One hadn't grown into the sweater yet; the other already filled the seams until threads dug skin in webs of mystery. One initiated hugs a little too often, perhaps, given their chest to head ratio, and one rarely ever initiated physical contact until now.

She buried her face in Yami's chest as she tried not to cry. Being brave was hard sometimes, especially with the kinds of adventures that liked to ambush them like errant muses on caffeine and glitter. Yugi had always faced all of them without fail, without complaint, and without foot-dragging; all she wanted was to drag him by his spiky little bangs back to Domino without fail and complaint and lock him in a safe house somewhere with padlocked windows and doors so the freaks couldn't kidnap him or remove his soul or any of that other nonsense involving trading cards.

Effing. Trading. Cards.

If only it was that easy.

Here they were again, in the middle of yet another one of Yugi's classic save the world moments. She wouldn't have minded the gut-wrenching fear if Yugi had been present for said occasion like he had been for all of the other ones. Worrying about what would happen to someone was one thing. Worrying about what the hell did happen to someone was not a feeling she wanted an encore of ever again.

It was Yami who held her as she awkwardly flattened herself against a chest that looked and felt like a more angular version of her bestest friend in the world.

"We'll get him back, right?"

Somehow, repeating the words over and over gave her some closure. Yami remained in silent marination until he inquired about her perfume, as one does when one is in close proximity to another for a moment longer than pure friendship.

"Huh?" Confusion etched across cobalt eyes. She wonders briefly if losing Yugi meant Yami lost half of his intelligence, too, or if the sleep-deprivation from the past few days have finally caught up to him.

"Lilies." Sonorous vibrations tickled her cheeks. "Salted ones. Like petals floating in the Nile on a burnt autumn day."

Tea smiled weakly.

Trust Yami to notice where Joey, Tristan, and Duke would all have blinked their eyelashes with confusion. Rebecca always wore some sort of fruity, floral-y concoction, too, an exuberant mixture that announced her presence from ten miles away. But even Rebecca hadn't worn anything lately, not even a splash of cologne in the middle of a flaming hot summer, not since Dr. Hawkins was kidnapped and his lab ransacked for information. The blonde was currently too worried and too busy to care about such girly luxuries. If she wasn't on the phone coordinating grid searches with Kaiba, she was actually conducting said searches while the rest of them helped, too, worry woven into their collective consciousness.

Tea wasn't sure why she reached for a bottle of perfume tonight, either. She had plenty to do but no will to do anything except wander outside after everyone had gone to bed. Exhaustion seeped into her bones, yet she couldn't sleep, so she brought the little golden bottle with her as she star-gazed. Hexagonal beams of light glinted on the surface, every twinkle reminding her of a very familiar pair of amethyst eyes while she cried her fears into the sand.

That was how Yami found her. The heavy glass bottle that clinked painfully against his humerus when he engulfed her in a big hug. Yugi snuck that damn bottle through customs (nearly getting caught!) after one of their Christmas press junkets in New York. Something about a childhood promise, Yugi mumbled at the time.

That was years ago.

She's still holding the bottle now because she missed him, which made Yami feel worse because it was his fault that he was gone and if he was here then she wouldn't have to burrow her face into their sweater for a whiff of his cinnamon and vanilla smell.

"Lilies are his favorite." Yami murmured after a long pause. "Remember how he snuck out at midnight to see your very first recital? You hugged him so tightly that he could not breathe properly for a week."

"Oops." She conjured a wilted giggle for his efforts, tears sliding down her face as the memory slammed into emotion. "How can I forget? Grandpa grounded him for a month. And I cried all over him and that bouquet, too."

Sniffle. Giggle. Sniffle.

The chest rumbled in mirth, then grief, then determination. "We'll get him back, Tea. I promise."

She hugged Yami tight as bits of lint dimpled her face.

He promised, too, to always be there for her. Neither of them have ever let her down and they sure as hell weren't going to start now.

Or ever, for that matter.

...

Feedback? This bashed me over the head and didn't let go until I wrote it down...