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.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal
Title: Habits
Romance: Yuuma x Shark x Kaito
Word Count: 723||Status: One-shot
Genre: Romance||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: Written for the 2014 Advent Calendar Challenge, day #; Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section B, #43, roll a die, choose from a set of randomly generated words; the die roll amount is how many of those words are in the fic.
Summary: [one-shot, Yuuma x Shark x Kaito, Stolenshipping, 2014 Advent Calendar Challenge; Diversity Writing Challenge] Everyone has habits. Some good, some bad, some just plain interesting.
Yuuma has habits. One wouldn't think so, given how random and glorious he can be – and there is no way that either Kaito or Shark would actually tell him that last part out loud, even though they both think it and they both know the other thinks it as well – but he does. It's almost funny in a way. Neither would've ever believed it of him when their paths first crossed. But what is, is.
Yuuma likes to cook. He's not very good at it, and the taste of what he dared to call coffee the first time made Kaito wonder if for some reason Yuuma was trying to poison them. But the earnest glow in Yuuma's eyes told a far different story.
Because Yuuma has habits and Yuuma likes to cook, then on those days when the three of them wake up together, wheresoever that might be, Yuuma almost always cooks breakfast for them. He's getting better, they both know it. Yuuma has never known that his cooking isn't nearly as good as his grandmother's. He eats everything that is set before him, no matter who does so, with the same abandon as he does everything else.
Kaito muses on occasion if Yuuma would find a use for a cookbook. Shark points out that Yuuma's cooking style is much like his dueling style: to take whatever comes and do his best with it. A cookbook would only give him more ingredients, not a path to follow. Kaito must admit that he is right.
Perhaps Astral would find a use for the cookbook instead. He still cannot touch things in this world, but on those moments when he emerges from the Emperor's Key, he can and does advise Yuuma on certain things. Yuuma does not always listen. Not right away. That will never be his style. But they don't care. It's Yuuma. They understand.
He has other habits as well, ones that aren't nearly as hazardous to life and limb and some that are hazardous in different ways. He's the only one of them who genuinely checks up on Vector out of liking him, not because he fears what Vector might do if no one checks up on him. In the aftermath of the war, Vector has become...different. No one knows if he can be trusted or not, but Yuuma does so with all of his heart.
As he always had, even when everyone told him otherwise.
Kaito wonders about Yuuma. But Yuuma wouldn't be Yuuma if he didn't extend this trust to everyone. In a sense, Yuuma loves everyone. He loves Kaito and Shark, of course, and it is in their arms that he has wept out the fears of the long, hard-fought war and each and every battle they had to deal with. He confesses his fears that he would never see his friends again, that he would fail everyone, and how only the spirit of his kattobingu kept him going.
No one else knows of these moments. Only Kaito and Shark and Astral, and while Astral loves Yuuma, it is not how Kaito and Shark do, and they all understand this. They could not do anything less. No more than Yuuma could be less than he is and not love everyone in his own special way.
There is another habit Yuuma has that they do not speak of, but it is not one that anyone would think anything of if they knew. Be it in the Tskumo household, the Kamishiro mansion, or Kaito's own home, when the three of them sleep, he sleeps in the middle.
It's a good habit. Yuuma is strong in so many ways, probably the strongest of them all. But that doesn't change the fact that both Kaito and Shark wish to protect him.
Sometimes they wonder if they want to protect him from themselves. That isn't something they talk about to him. When he's asleep and their own dreams haunt them, sometimes they speak of it to each other.
Shark and Kaito have habits of their own. One of them is to watch out for each other. Another is to watch out for Yuuma.
But Kaito would still like to see if he could teach Yuuma how to cook a decent breakfast. Before they have to watch out for Yuuma in an entirely different way.
The End
Note: I rolled a five, chose from six words, and the chosen words are battle, funny, key, aftermath, and use.