Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Author: Higuchimon
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V
Story Title: A Little Strange
Characters: Reiji, Shun, their scarves||Pairing: Reiji x Shun/Shun x Reiji, Reiji's scarf x Shun's scarf
Word Count: 2,575||Chapters: 1/1
Genre: Romance, Humor||Rated: G
Challenge: Diversity Writing Challenge, section D7, a one-shot
Notes: This takes place in a hypothetical post-canon situation, where people can travel between the four dimensions freely and all of the carded people were uncarded. It also has scarves making out and reproducing. I wrote this for my birthday.
Summary: One year after the end of the interdimensional war, Shun and Reiji spend a lot time together. Nothing unusual about that. What is unusual is what happens to their scarves when they're not looking.

Shun finished getting dressed, all except for his scarf. His hand closed on where he'd left it, only to encounter empty air instead. He stared at it for a few seconds. Again?

Movement caught his attention and he glanced up to see Akaba Reiji, also put back together after their exertions, save for his scarf. The faintest of frowns also hung over his lips as he scanned the room.

"Yours missing too?" He wasn't surprised by the nod. It wasn't at all the first time that their scarves had gone missing at the same time. Shun had a slowly growing suspicion that it wouldn't be the last.

Reiji stepped back and bent his head to the side, checking under the bed. His frown deepened as he reached under to pull out the two red scarves, tossing Shun's over to him.

"How did they fall under there?" Shun didn't think they'd been active enough to knock them over, especially when the scarves had rested on the chair and not anywhere near the bed.

Reiji just shrugged, wrapping his scarf around his neck neatly. "Gravity."

Shun rolled his eyes, putting his own scarf back into place. Whatever. At least no one stole it. This scarf meant more than being part of the Resistance – even if the Resistance wasn't needed anymore. He wasn't going to let any of Ruri's gifts slip away from him.

As always, Reiji provided dinner after one of their sessions together. Shun wouldn't call him an attentive lover – though he could be when he put his mind to it – but he at least didn't just toss Shun out on the street afterward.

He'd done his best to tie the scarf into place as firmly as he always did, but halfway through the meal he could feel it slipping down. Pausing for a few moments, he retied it, and started on the meal again, only to feel the fabric moving downward yet again.

"What in the..." Was there something wrong with the scarf itself? In all the years he'd had it, this hadn't happened before.

Another movement drew his attention. He found himself more than a little surprised to see Reiji removing his scarf and setting it on the empty chair next to him.

"It's getting uncomfortable," was all that he said when Shun gave him a very curious look. "You might think about doing the same."

Even after all that had happened, Shun wasn't going to jump to Reiji's every lightly given word. But when his scarf slid down once again, falling all the way to his lap this time, he decided it wasn't that bad of an idea. He didn't have an empty chair on his side, so he tossed the scarf over to Reiji's side of the table. It could stay there until he was ready to leave.

Getting rid of it did make matters a little better. He'd need it on his way home, of course. As much as Ruri and Yuuto knew what he and Reiji were up to when they spent evenings together, he didn't want the visible marks on his neck to be quite that visible. His scarf came in handy for that these days.

So when he got up to head for home, he was more than a little surprised to find that his scarf and Reiji's scarf had somehow gotten tightly entangled with one another, too much so for a few tugs to sort them out.

"Let me." Reiji reached over to run his fingers across his scarf – easily identifiable by being at least twice as long as Shun's was – touching on where they wrapped around each other. Shun couldn't get a very good view of what he was doing, but soon enough, Reiji handed him his scarf.

"Thanks." Shun muttered the word; he wasn't one to tender such things often, but he also didn't want to stay here too long. Ruri would worry about him.

Still, the thought of how tightly the scarves had somehow gotten around one another, twice, lingered in the back of his mind on his way home. It wasn't an easy thing to happen, so far as he knew. Once his scarf and Yuuto's sort of flopped around one another, but they hadn't ended up like that.

Don't be stupid, he admonished himself. If anything, it's Reiji's fault. He's the one who has that stupid scarf that's twice as long as it needs to be. Too much fabric probably helps tangles.

And with that firmly held in front of him, he hurried on his way back.

If it had only happened that day, maybe nothing else would've come of it. But it didn't. While the war ended nearly a year earlier, every dimension still had a certain amount of rebuilding to accomplish. That meant Shun made more trips to Standard than he might have otherwise. Not all of those trips involved personal time with Reiji, either.

But on more trips than not, there were excuses – plausible ones of course – for the scarves to come off and more often than not, Shun or Reiji found those scarves wound up around one another once the time for Shun to go home arrived.

That wasn't the only strange event, not at all.

Shun shook his scarf free, giving Reiji's a look as he did. Something about all of this kept tugging at his mind. It didn't feel right at all, though he had no idea of what it did feel like. 'Disturbing' came to mind, though he couldn't put his finger on why.

But when a very large dust bunny fell out of his scarf, he could not help but stare at it in surprise before he looked back at Reiji.

"I didn't think your building had dust bunnies in it." He poked at the thing with the tip of his shoe. "Where did this come from?" It didn't seem to make sense. This time they were in Reiji's personal office, the scarves discarded for the sake of the heat, and Reiji's office gleamed as if it were new-made. Shun didn't think he'd ever seen so much as a speck of dust in here, let alone an actual dust bunny.

Reiji leaned forward to give the offending item a careful look. Then he looked back at Shun. "I haven't the faintest idea."

Shun knew Reiji could lie with the best of them if he so chose. He just generally didn't lie to him. Not without some sort of reason behind it.

That didn't mean Shun liked it once he found out Reiji had lied in the first place, but he generally knew it didn't happen because Reiji had nothing better to do with his mouth.

But it was a dust bunny and a couple of lengths of fabric, that was all. Not that much to worry about, no matter how confusing it was.

And it got even more confusing as days turned into weeks. Any time they took the scarves off for more than five minutes, for whatever reasons, one of them found the scarves wrapped around one another. Shun even went to the effort of wrapping his around the back of a chair once, only to find it once again underneath the bed, fairly entangled with Reiji's.

If scarves could be said to be alive, he would've said they snuggled together. If they'd been cats or dogs or something alive at all, he might have even entertained the notion that it was cute.

But they weren't and it was far more confusing than Shun wanted anything to be, and nothing Reiji could say about it would make it any better.

"All right, now where are they?" Shun growled, peering under the bed for the third time, in the vague and dying hope that this time he would see the two scarves.

"Not under there this time?" Reiji adjusted his glasses as he took a look of his own around the room. "Curious."

Shun gave him a withering look. "After all this, that's all you can say?" He rubbed the side of his neck; Reiji didn't often get very demonstrative, but there were times when Shun found himself very glad of his scarf's existence, and this was one of those. He didn't think anyone he passed on the way out would care – it wasn't as if they didn't know – but he didn't want Ruri or Yuuto to see it, not to mention he was due for a trip to Synchro that weekend. The idea of Crow seeing this wasn't even to be thought about.

But Reiji, as always, let nothing ruffle his calm, especially something like a pair of missing scarves. "I suspect they'll return soon enough."

Shun gave him another look, even more withering than the first one. "They'll return? They're scarves. Pieces of clothes. The only way they're going to return is if someone brings them, which means someone had to take them in the first place."

"Perhaps not."

Shun didn't bother with a reply. He just stared at Reiji for a few moments before he turned on his heel. He'd find something to hide the marks on his neck, but he wasn't going to stand there and listen to Reiji trying to say what he knew couldn't be possible. Other dimensions were fine; everything else they'd seen was fine. But the idea that their scarves, that his scarf and Reiji's scarf would...would… could…

No. Not in the slightest. Shun had his limits and this rammed right up into them.

He could feel Reiji's amused gaze on him all the way out of the building.

Reiji's fingers moved quickly, checking all of the security cameras. He had a suspicion of where he'd find them, and wasn't surprised when it was borne out at last.

Three days. His suspicion had grown mainly from the fact there wasn't anywhere else in the building that the scarves could actually be. Once he'd made absolutely certain that no one had snuck into his private room to take them – not that they could or would have, since he and Shun both had been there when the scarves vanished – he started searching for places he knew his scarf liked to hide.

He'd never told anyone that his scarf enjoyed wriggling off by itself on occasion. It harmed no one and sometimes the scarf even brought back useful information.

What had startled him, more than anything else, was when it began to lure Shun's scarf into like actions. More so, when Shun's scarf began to respond. He'd never dreamed such a thing could happen.

There. Not everyone agreed with him having had security cameras installed in the air vents. He'd convinced them he wouldn't do it, then went ahead and did it anyway. One never knew when something like that could be useful. And now he saw the two scarves neatly curled around one another, tucked away into a disused air vent.

He couldn't tell what else was going on there and once he'd figured out where they were, he decided that he didn't want to know. Some matters would have to remain private, even to him.

Though truth to be told, he looked forward to seeing Shun's reaction when he found out what was going on.

"I don't know why you're trying to hide them when you're going to Akaba's," Ruri said, watching as Shun touched up the concealer. "He's just going to put more on there, you know."

Shun ignored her for now and checked the reflection. So far no one had said anything. Crow had given him some very amused looks, but that was all. Yuuto gave him a few more. He didn't even want to think what some of his other friends would have to say if they saw what he was up to, and found out why he was up to it.

Frankly, the looks he envisioned from Kaito and Chris were more than enough to spare himself the real thing.

As if I haven't seen it on them before.

But thinking about what his teacher was up with Kaito and vice-versa wasn't what he really wanted to do. He wanted to find that scarf and give it a good washing before he wore it again, and he'd made up his mind to spend every spare moment he had today looking for it.

"Should I wait up?" Ruri asked as he turned toward the door, her eyes sparkling with her usual mischief. Shun rolled his eyes.

"Stay out of trouble."

"I guess that's a no. Good, I'm calling the girls and we're going to have some fun."

Shun almost hesitated on the way out. The idea of what Ruri, Rin, Yuzu, and Selena could do while out together sent chills down his spine. But… he needed his scarf more than he needed to hover over them.

Soon enough he was back in Reiji's room, though this time he wasn't there for their usual amorous pursuits. This time he searched every nook, cranny, corner, and hideaway that he could find for any sign. He didn't have the authorization to examine the security tapes, nor did he have the patience it would take to do so. He much preferred handling this on his own anyway.

He wound himself down to checking the vents, and could not have said he expected to find them there. It was more to say that he'd checked everywhere than anything else that he looked.

But there they were, curled up in that heap he'd grown used to seeing them in. He sighed. Finally.

When he tugged them apart, something else tumbled out, landing on the floor. Before he could reach for it, Reiji's scarf shot forward, propelled by nothing at all that he could see, and smacked into his chest. Shun took a step or two back, staring in disbelief.

Then Reiji stood there. He picked up his scarf and wound it around his neck. One end remained raised up, turned toward Shun. It made no sound, but Shun experienced the uneasy feeling of having a poisonous snake glaring at him. It didn't matter that the scarf had no eyes and was a scarf at all. It moved on its own. It did not like him.

"Pick them up, carefully," Reiji instructed, and Shun didn't know what he meant until the other beckoned downwards. There at his feet there lay a pair of mittens. He blinked several times, far beyond confused. The mittens appeared to be of the same type of yarn that the two scarfs had been made of. They didn't move. They lay in his hands like any other pair of mittens would have.

Hadn't they been smaller when they were on the floor, though? Now they looked as if they were big enough for him to wear.

"What are these? Where did they come from?" None of this made a shade of sense to Shun. If Reiji knew something, he wanted answers.

Reiji gave him a very careful look. "It appears that our scarves have mated with one another and produced offspring."

On the other hand, no, he didn't. Not at all.

He set the mittens down carefully. "They're your responsibility then. Your scarf did this." He refused to look at his right now. He would talk to Ruri about getting another one. This one could stay here with Reiji and their … its…

It could stay here with Reiji.

That was all he needed to know.

The End

Note: Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the story. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.