Again, beware of out of character Pharaohs.

"Hello, Yugi," Grampa Moto greeted, coming up from closing down the shop and walking into his grandson's room.

"Hi, Grampa." Yugi turned away from the homework laid out on his desk to face his grandfather. "Is anything the matter?" he asked, noticing the distracted, somewhat worried look on Solomon's face.

"Well, not really, I guess… Perhaps a bit. I got a call from the school that Yami ran out of his fifth period class and then skipped the rest of the day. Did you know about this?"

"Yeah, I noticed that he was gone," Yugi admitted, feeling a bit guilty for not confessing earlier to Yami's truancy.

"…Is it just me, Yugi, or does something seem to be bothering him?" Solomon continued, sitting down on the bed, taking off his cap and playing with it. "Cause, if there is, I don't know if I'll be able to help him with it. You might, though." His grandfather looked up hopefully at Yugi, seeming to beg something of him.

"Well… yeas, there is something bothering him, but it's not something terribly serious. Not to anyone but him, anyway," Yugi said cautiously. Him and the few fans he has, that is, Yugi amended in his mind. "I'll talk to him about it if you like, Grampa, but I don't think it will help much."

"…Is it that fanfiction thing again?" Solomon asked, slightly snappishly. He'd been through the fanfiction gamut again and again with the past Pharaoh, thinking that the last time he'd finally been able to get through to him the idea that school and home-life came before fanfiction, but apparently he hadn't. Fanfiction still had priority in Yami's mind.

"Yugi, you do know that I don't want to do anything such as berating the past ruler of Egypt, but something really must be done!"

"I know, Grampa. Really, I'll talk to him after dinner," Yugi promised.

"Will Yami be coming down to eat?" Solomon asked tiredly.

"Most likely not." Yugi winced. "If he ran out of school to work on a fic, he's probably not going to be so much as taking a bathroom break for the next several hours."

Grampa Moto grunted. "That can't be healthy," he mumbled under his breath before leaving his grandson to his studies.

Later that evening, Yugi poked his head into Yami's room. The only light came from the harsh white illumination of the screen of Yami's beloved laptop. Yami himself had his face stuck in the garish glow, eyes bloodshot, wide open, and slightly glazed over as he typed along, occasionally stopping to read what he'd written, mouthing along as he made his way across and down the page.

"Yami?" Yugi gently called.

"Shh!" was his harsh reply.

"Uh, are you okay—?"

"No! Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Yami leaned even closer into the screen. "I'm on a roll, Yugi," Yami whispered feverishly. "Please… don't interrupt."

The clicking and clacking of the keys being depressed started up again even faster than before.

Yugi came in and sat down on Yami's bed, just as Solomon had done with him a few hours previously.

"Do you want me to bring you something to eat?" he tried again.

"Noooooooooooooo," Yami drew out. "I'm busy, busy, busy," he babbled.

"Yami, you have Grampa worried," Yugi informed him.

…

"Yami?"

"Yugi, I really need to finish this up, alright?" Yami said in a rush, determined to publish that night.

"Yami, you're addicted."

The typing paused for a moment and Yugi thought he'd finally broken through the foggy cloud of fanfiction.

But, then Yami muttered, "Stupid spell-check; that is not a fragment sentence." The typing began again.

"Yami!" Yugi quickly bit out, calling for his attention.

Yami flinched into his already hunched shoulders, before slowly, slowly spinning around in his desk chair. "What?" he asked, almost clueless, but not quite.

"Yami, my grampa got a call from the school about you skipping, and I'm pretty sure when your grades come that they're going to reflect how obsessed you've become with this." He waved his hand in the vague direction of the laptop. "Grampa might even have to take it away if you keep this up. It's not healthy, Yami."

Yugi sort of understood that having something to cling onto in this new, different time was important for Yami to feel at home. But, this was nuts!

"Would Solomon really take my laptop away?" Yami asked, trying to seem nonchalant about the whole thing, but failing.

Yugi sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Probably not, but—"

"Then, there's nothing to worry about," Yami said quickly, twirling his chair back around and continuing on as if Yugi had never interrupted.

Yugi groaned, realizing that he had no choice but to admit defeat. He stood up and made his way wearily to the door.

"At least turn a light on before you go blind," was the last thing Yugi said before closing Yami back in with his creepy passion.

For the next several hours, Yami worked on and finished his story, published it, then compulsively checked his email for almost another full hour, praying for a review.

The next morning, Yami came downstairs looking like the living dead. His face was waxen, his eyes were set off by purple bags beneath them, and all his muscles were worn out and lax, causing him to shuffle along like a zombie.

Sitting down at the breakfast table, he realized that all the other members of the household were looking at him, almost as if they were scared of him.

"Rough night," he thought he heard Yugi's mom murmur.

After a moment, once things had gotten back to what they had been before he'd arrived, he turned to Yugi sitting beside him.

"Yugi," he waited until the other boy looked at him.

"I think you may be right about fanfiction."

"You mean you're going to take a break from it?" Yugi asked.

"Uh, no," Yami muttered, not looking at him. "I'm just agreeing that it's addictive, not that I'll be giving it up." A blush came to his pale cheeks and he chewed a bit on his lower lips as he waited for Yugi to respond.

"Yami… you're sick." With that, Yugi got up and left Yami sitting with Solomon at the breakfast table.

"Well, at least I get reviews!" Yami shouted after him. "So, there!"

Thanks for reading!

I wanted to write something that most of the people on this site could relate to. It was originally just going to be a oneshot, but oneshots and I have a history that is not very magnanimous in nature, so I decided to add on another chapter that would show the desperation that can overtake some of us fanfiction writers.