So this isn't a oneshot anymore. Why does this keep happening? Don't answer that.
Anywayyy, this isn't going to be anywhere near as intensive as my other stories. I don't think it'll really have an ending. I can at least give it a sorta beginning though. This second chapter takes place a year or two before the first. YYugi, YBakura and YMalik have not returned yet. This chapter is pretty much just Heartshipping with a quick dash of Peachshipping at the start, though it doesn't last. Yugi's POV, substantially lighter in tone than the first one.
Don't worry Malik, you'll worm your way in there next time.
Yugi dated Anzu, for a little while. It was nice having someone he could call his girlfriend. They held hands, kissed in the park, all the good stuff you could expect from teenage first love. Unfortunately, it was still teenage first love and once the rush of butterflies and blushes wore off after a few weeks, neither Anzu nor Yugi could really find a reason to keep going. The break-up was mutual, albeit about as awkward as breaking up with the 'girl next door' that almost everyone assumed you'd marry could possibly be. It was a lot easier once everyone else stopped going on about how they were so good together, what happened? "Nothing happened," Anzu would say with a shrug. "We just didn't work out."
And that was that. Yugi wouldn't go on to date anyone else while he was still in school and neither would Anzu, or anyone in their little group. There simply wasn't time during the run up to finals and college and all the scary normal things that normal teenagers fret about. Then he was in Domino College, studying Arabic and Music History - as well as signing on for the first trial run of Duel Monsters studies, of course.
Anzu hadn't made it to New York just yet, but a dance troupe from Okinawa had scouted her after another failed audition and offered her a spot across the country, which got her into a private audition with some bigwigs from Tokyo, which led to her becoming a back-up dancer for a rising J-Pop trio. Experience was experience as well as exposure, and Anzu managed to handle her semi-celebrity status with ease. She even had an online fan club - the 'Mazaki Monsters' - which she explicitly forbade everyone from joining. She didn't say anything about them not buying the merch though. Or wearing it.
Jounouchi took on as many social care courses as he could handle and worked part-time at the orphanage. There were a lot of angry kids out there just like he had been so long ago, he'd realized one day. Kids who wouldn't give a shit about the opinion of some stuffy busybody who'd never had their face stomped into the bottom of the barrel, or hurt and hated themselves as much as they hurt and hated everyone around them. They most likely would never meet someone like Yugi, or Honda and Anzu to show them that they had so much more to themselves than they thought. So, why not try to be that guy for them?
Honda dove straight into training to be a cop, while interning for the local station. He didn't have any illusions about beating up bad guys or even touching a gun. At his level and for many levels to come, his jobs would be shuffling through stack after stack of paperwork and menial labor. An action packed day was when someone forgot to bring in milk for the office fridge, or when he got to legally scare the crap out of the more crooked cops with the magic of bureaucracy.
Yugi didn't run into Kaiba or Otogi much after graduation. Considering that they both ran their own major corporations, they probably just did online courses instead, if they even felt the need to bother. Otogi was always a friendly face whenever they did manage to catch up with each other, but he honestly learned more about what Kaiba was up to from the ever chatty Mokuba than from actually talking to him. Kaiba never answered his phone when Yugi called, but he would keep trying until he did. He had to cave eventually, right?
The first year was a whirlwind of deadlines and papers and the shock of having teachers who gave a damn about teaching AND their students threw Yugi for a loop. He'd never forget when he'd arrived early to a lecture on the anniversary of Atem's departure, having not gotten any sleep the night before. The lecturer had taken one look at him and practically ordered him to go home and he'd make sure Yugi got a set of notes for what he missed. The email with his notes arrived while he was trying to convince Grandpa that no, he didn't need to come and whisk him back home forever and ever, he just wanted to talk.
In his second year, he ran into freshman Ryou. Ryou had had to repeat the final year at Domino High, having lost so much time to the Ring spirit that there was no chance of bringing his grades back up. Graduation day was the worst - Ryou came to see them all off at the ceremony and once it was just the two of them in the old classroom Yugi couldn't stop crying, no matter how hard he tried. He'd promised to never leave Ryou behind again, but there he was, the only one who still had to wear a school uniform while everyone else ran off to chase their dreams. Ryou didn't think that way, of course he wouldn't think that way, because Ryou was a freaking saint who comforted him when it should've been the other way around.
They bumped into each other at a vending machine between classes. He'd recognize Ryou anywhere, though gone were the long locks he remembered. Now he had a short choppy cut that framed his face just enough that Yugi felt his cheeks go a little warm. Ryou was studying Creative Writing and while Yugi had elected for dorms, Ryou's apartment was practically next door. They'd stop by each others places almost every day, to study and chat and sometimes duel. He'd woken up snuggled under a blanket with Ryou on their couch more times than he could count, or at least enough for him to start calling Ryou's couch their couch at any rate.
Yugi knew his sexuality was about as fluid as it could get, having figured out that he absolutely wasn't straight all the way back in Domino High. Anzu and Mai were as equally appealing to him as Ryou and - though he'd never admit this to anyone ever - Kaiba. He didn't think about any attraction he held for Atem. There was no point in dwelling on it because he was gone, something he told himself every single time. He'd had a few casual hook-ups, with people all across the gender spectrum, though less so in his second year. So it didn't really surprise him when he started having those sorts of dreams about Ryou again, or wondered what it'd be like to kiss him or even just to hold him. What had surprised him was how different those urges felt compared to what he'd felt with Anzu. Not necessarily better, but different. Everything about being with Ryou felt different.
The first time Yugi kissed Anzu, it felt like The First Kiss. The first time Yugi kissed Ryou, it felt like he'd kissed him a hundred times. They'd woken up to find a blizzard had buried the whole city, classes cancelled until further noticed. They'd squeezed on Yugi's dorm bed to watch a horror marathon the night before, falling asleep beneath the covers, legs curled together and Yugi's bicep making a handy pillow.
Even at the unthinkably early hour of nine AM, students were already running around outside, throwing snowballs and half-finishing snowmen. In what was a first for Yugi, he'd woken up before Ryou at the sound of the merriment outside. Ryou didn't take long to wake up after Yugi did, and he'd laughed when Yugi made a face at a particularly loud shriek of joy that Yugi would later swear made the window shake. Part of Yugi always wanted to find out who the screamer was, because they were kinda sorta responsible for what happened next.
Ryou made a joke that Yugi didn't really remember, something about Scrooge, and Yugi took mock offense and tackled him. They'd tussled on the bed until Ryou suddenly slid off and hit the floor, dragging Yugi down with him. Yugi had ended up straddling Ryou. His eyes were alight with his smile and his hair was still long enough for Yugi's fingers to get lost in and the sunlight broke through the clouds at just the right moment to make Ryou absolutely stunning.
He leaned down and Ryou's lips met his halfway. They came apart after a few seconds that felt like hours and moments at the same time, then Ryou wrapped his arms around Yugi's shoulders and pulled him down for another one, and another.
Then they both became horrifyingly aware of their own morning breath.
