Pairing: SugorokuxAtem

Prompt: Yuugiou Fanfiction Contest Season 9.75, Round 3

Word Count: 1,650

Warnings: None. Post-series AU where Atem comes back. Uh… Does the pairing itself deserve a warning? Fluff, kind of.

This one was a doozy to write; please bear with me, as this week was also a nightmare. It's deliberately a little disjointed, but I hope you guys will enjoy it anyway!

It was the kind of awkward, wordless agreement that neither of them would talk about. Yuugi's grandfather made no protest, never brought it up in the morning, and was perfectly content to let Atem come and go as he pleased. Some nights, the former Pharaoh just needed something tangible, some solid tie to his past that wasn't the Puzzle, and the doppleganger of his vizier qualified as that. Sugoroku certainly didn't mind; it was good to have someone to hold onto in the winter.

Sugoroku had no idea what to tell his grandson.

Initially, it had been easier not to; to just let Atem do as he wished, to invade his bed at nights, to leave in the morning without so much as a word. But as December gave way to January, and then to February, the former king's visits became increasingly frequent. Sugoroku awoke more often than not to the sound of bare feet on his carpet (he'd never been a heavy sleeper), and the more time passed, the more he expected the much younger visitor to join him.

Yuugi didn't know; Atem often snuck back out before sunup, up to his own room, and the boys would come down to breakfast together. Some nights, Sugoroku knew, Atem slept with Yuugi-and sometimes, he caught himself watching from the doorway, with a strange sense of longing he couldn't put his finger on. But Yuugi didn't know.

And something about that felt like cheating.

But Atem never let on; he was completely at ease at breakfast, talking amicably every morning with Yuugi, and with Sachiko. He offered to clear the table, and Sugoroku was sure that the teen deliberately brushed against his shoulder in the process. Surely Yuugi would realize, and then…

Sugoroku wasn't sure what would happen.

But he didn't deny Atem when he came to his door that night, either. Or the night after that.

Atem often spoke of the dead as though they were still alive. Sugoroku listened intently to his stories of palace life, of the memories he and his grandson had fought so hard to restore, and sometimes it felt as if he were there himself. The man chimed in-once in a great while-with a long-forgotten memory of his own, and every time, he was rewarded with the sort of smile that could draw out the sun on a rainy day.

Sugoroku couldn't assign faces to some of the names Atem used; he impressed himself enough by remembering the names at all, even though some part of his heart didn't think he could ever forget. Isis was the easiest to supplant; he'd met her reincarnation, and she still looked like a priestess. In his mind's eye, Set and Seto Kaiba were interchangeable. Mahaad would always be his grandson's signature card, no matter how many stories Atem told that sounded completely different from the media's portrayal of the monster card. The same went for his lovely assistant, Mana. The rest were faceless ideas, and Sugoroku didn't have the heart to tell Atem that he'd forgotten which was Shaada and which was Karim for months before the former king mentioned which man had hair.

Shimon was a topic they rarely covered. Sugoroku still remembered, vividly, despite the years, his near-death experience in the Pharaoh's tomb. He recalled the specter almost fondly, the regal way the original Atem, who didn't borrow Yuugi's clothing or sit around the house in sweatpants, had looked, reaching for his hand. He remembered the rich voice that called to him in a name he'd never heard before as though it were yesterday, and Atem had told him some things. Not much. Not enough. He didn't seem to have stories about his vizier the way he had stories about rolling down sand dunes with Mana while Mahaad watched, horrified, as they came too close to falling into the Nile.

He attributed it to age, when it bothered him. Shimon had been his father's right hand man, and even then, had been considerably older than the former king. While it certainly wasn't unheard of for staff to serve multiple Pharaohs, it must have been madness for a man so old to be close to such a young king.

Not that whatever they had wasn't madness. Sugoroku found himself wondering what things would have been like if he were maybe thirty years younger-maybe fifty, but that sometimes hurt to think about as well. He'd never been one for propriety, but Atem was young.

The once-Pharaoh often teased him behind closed doors about it; maintained that, technically, he was several thousand years Sugoroku's senior, even if he'd slept through most of that. They knew it didn't hold water, but at least Atem was in good humor over it all.

Instead, Sugoroku felt a gnawing sense of guilt in his stomach.

Strictly speaking, they never crossed any lines-not really, nothing illegal-but knowing that didn't make the feeling fade. Atem sometimes embraced him, held tighter than was really familial, and Sugoroku sometimes hugged him back, when his old bones moved fast enough. More often, Atem was there and gone again too quickly.

Still, Atem didn't seem to mind that whatever-they-had constituted of playing Go late at night and exchanging stories of lifetimes long passed. Sometimes, Atem asked him for stories, too, and Sugoroku would tell him of his own adventures. Of the pursuit of impossible games long ago enough to get away with murder over a game of Poker (not that he ever had), and of following wild goose chases in his pursuit of the Puzzle.

They both laughed, often enough, when he admitted that he'd nearly gotten his hands on the Key not long before he put together the final clue to the Puzzle's whereabouts. Some things, it seemed, were a constant across lifetimes.

There were nights when Atem cried over giving up his seat in the Afterlife, and those nights, Sugoroku would fumble his way through whispered assurances in a language that no one else spoke anymore. He knew enough to read from hieroglyphs, and Atem had been all too happy to teach him more. So in a low voice, he would make the types of promises all parents did, the ones they couldn't guarantee, and he would rub Atem's back. The boy (he really was only a boy, and times like those were a heavy reminder) would cry himself out, silently, as though he daren't let on that he was as real and human as anyone else.

But without fail, he smiled and thanked Sugoroku afterwards.

One night, Sugoroku dreamed up an incredibly vivid memory.

There was a difference, he'd discovered long ago, between dreams of the past and dreams that were nothing else. Most of his dreams were the normal sort, when he remembered them, and were always through an observer's eyes.

Memory dreams were always in first person, and always took place in Egypt. Atem often confirmed their validity in the morning, when he had the chance to ask about them. Memory dreams were still safe to talk about.

This one hadn't been.

Sugoroku was the proud father of two sons, both grown. His wife had been a very lovely woman, and their relationship had been completely normal until her death some fifteen years prior. Still, she'd stayed with him through his globetrotting, through rearing their boys. He was no stranger to marital activities.

That dream had been anything but normal.

"Grandpa, your face's been red all morning, are you okay?" Yuugi asked, peering over his orange juice, visibly concerned. "You're not sick or anything, are you?"

Now was absolutely not the time to come clean with Yuugi.

So Sugoroku tried to laugh it off, although he was still somewhat shaken. Atem hadn't slept in his bed the night before, and it was a good thing, too. "I'm fine, Yuugi," he lied through his teeth, smiling disarmingly. "You worry too much about this old man."

He hurried to excuse himself to the other room not long after that; there was no sense in letting Yuugi worry longer, and if he were lucky, he might be able to avoid Atem-because right now, he didn't think he could face the boy.

"Sugoroku?"

Luck was not on his side.

Sugoroku didn't jump-he knew better, knew his aching body's limits in that respect-but he did jolt a little. Of course; Atem sleeping in his own room meant that he would be on his way to breakfast now.

"Good morning, Atem," Sugoroku said almost automatically, averting his eyes. True enough, he couldn't quite bring himself to meet Atem's intense gaze.

"Are you okay?" Atem asked, reaching for and squeezing his shoulder. "You're flushed."

Flushed was one word for it. Had Sugoroku been in front of a mirror, he might have scoffed; flushed was an understatement. His cheeks blazed redder. "Completely fine!" he spoke too quickly, and the shrewd boy could see his lie, but let him slip away. "Don't worry about me, Atem. Get some breakfast."

The former Pharaoh cocked his head to the side, watching as though mystified as Sugoroku walked stiffly down the hall. "Did you dream som-" Atem started, then clicked his jaw shut as the much older man froze. Sugoroku turned slowly, pivoting on his foot, and was almost horrified to see a wide grin lighting Atem's face. "You finally remembered, didn't you?" the boy asked excitedly, "After all these months!"

Sugoroku hadn't been expecting that.

For all that life had thrown him innumerable curves, that one slipped past his defenses entirely. Sugoroku stared, slack-jawed.

"You and Shimon-?" he asked at length, and Atem looked positively thrilled.

"I thought it was obvious," Atem said easily, as if he weren't having this conversation with someone more than fifty years his senior. "We'll have so much more to talk about now that you know!"