To paraphrase Louise Rosenblatt, "a story's just ink on a page until a reader comes along to give it life." This in my way of saying, I'd really like to know what you think.
CHAPTER 29: BAREFOOT IN THE PARK
BAREFOOT IN THE PARK: Romantic Comedy, circa 1967. A time capsule of a movie starring an almost-unrecognizably young Jane Fonda and Robert Redford as the newlywed Corie and Paul Bratter. What could go wrong with two people so obviously made for each other? Well… besides the moment when you realize that even if you love someone, you still have to find a way to learn to live with them.
MORAL: Sometimes a couple's strength and weakness can be summed up with the same two words: opposites attract.
Yami swept away with his friends after the duel, leaving Kaiba standing on the sidelines with Mokuba and Isono. The duel may have produced a revelation with each turn of the cards, but the aftermath was utterly familiar. Yami was surrounded by friends; Kaiba was already immersed in his next set of plans.
Yami glanced at Yugi, unsure which one of them to pinch, unsure what to do with the sudden need to confirm that they really were in two separate bodies, that this was his life... that as much as this moment felt the same as all those other moments after all those other duels, everything had changed.
His next glance was for Kaiba. Yami watched his rival reel off a series of instructions. It was another reminder. By this point in all their former duels, Yugi had reclaimed his body. Yami had never been able to look backwards before.
Kaiba joined him briefly in an anteroom that had been set up for the media. Kaiba was strangely subdued through the inevitable post-duel interview. Yami talked about the power of unity while occasionally shooting pointed glances Kaiba's way. The only thing that drew a laugh from Kaiba was the reporter's comment, "You sound just like your cousin, Yugi Mutou!"
Kaiba dashed away as soon as the interview was over. Yami was escorted out by a Kaiba Corporation employee. Yami rejoined his friends in the luxury suite. It had been turned into an exclusive party room. The duel had clearly been a success – for Kaiba Corporation at any rate. Personally, as the night wore on, Yami wasn't as sure.
Yami glanced at the door again. Their press conference had ended hours ago. He hadn't seen Kaiba since. Yami wondered when – or if – Kaiba planned on attending his own party.
Ever since their return from Egypt, Kaiba had sworn that he was never asking Yami for anything… not for a duel and certainly not for intimacy. Now Yami had asked instead. Maybe that action had satisfied whatever need Kaiba had carried with him through these last few weeks, like a video game that had been played to completion and was now awaiting a reset to clear the memory cache.
The duel had ended with their victory, but Yami suddenly realized that he had no idea what winning looked like to Seto Kaiba, what he'd hoped to gain. Whatever Kaiba wanted, it certainly didn't seem to be Yami.
Yami turned back to the crowd. Everyone was having a good time. Yugi was beaming. Anzu had been consoling him ever since the duel had ended, alternating between hugging him and covering his face with soft kisses. She hadn't noticed that Yugi broke out into a grin every time she lifted her face from his and crushed him between her breasts.
Jounouchi had played his best; he was used to finishing just out of the winner's circle. His exuberant cry of "Just wait 'til next time!" burst out at odd intervals. The tournament had brought together all their old friends. Now that the tension of the duels was over everyone was hanging out, eating Kaiba's food and catching up. Even Weevil Underwood and Rex Raptor were there, familiar annoyances.
Yami was sick of it all. He hadn't noticed how far he'd drifted from his friends until Yugi came over.
"Damn him," Yami muttered.
"Kaiba? What's he done now? We haven't even seen him for hours."
"That's exactly the problem. I thought everything was going to be different. But Kaiba's back to being his usual run and hide self," Yami grumbled. "Why say all those things during our duel, why play those cards if he was going to retreat the first chance he got?"
"To be honest, I've never figured out why Kaiba does any of the things he does," Yugi confessed. "But if he hasn't shown up by now, he probably isn't going to. Don't worry. You can straighten it all out tomorrow." Yugi yawned. "C'mon, Yami. Forget Kaiba. All our friends are here. And we still owe Mai an explanation – or at least the chance to gloat about how she guessed it all along."
As if on cue, Jounouchi came over and threw an arm around Yugi and Yami's shoulders, linking the three of them together. "Just wait 'til next time!"
Yami laughed as he let Yugi and Jounouchi lead him back to their circle. But he was relieved when the party started winding down and it was finally time to go home. Kaiba was still absent. Yami was at the back of the pack when the gang reached the door. They paused and started to say their good-byes to Mokuba.
Yami hesitated. He could leave a message for Kaiba, he supposed, but what was there to say? He tried (and failed) to think of something that didn't sound petty or resentful... or needy… or hurt. Before the pause got too noticeable, Jounouchi saved him from his own indecision by throwing his arm around Yami's shoulder again, yawning and saying, "You know if you didn't have Ring of Magnetism, the duel might have…"
"Do you really think so?" Yami interrupted. "Remember that Kaiba had Defense Draw. And then I would have had the Ring of Magnetism a few turns later when you attacked Kaiba's monster instead of mine."
"Yeah, but I would have played…"
The argument lasted until they reached the sidewalk. Yami glanced back at the stadium. He'd not only omitted to leave a message, he hadn't wished either Kaiba brother a good night. Yami's jaw hardened. He turned back to his friends. Kaiba's actions had spoken more loudly than any words Yami could have uttered.
Kaiba didn't notice Yami leaving until long after he was gone. Yami had been in the background with Mokuba as Kaiba had darted out of the press conference. Kaiba had smiled vaguely in their direction, still too shaken by his victory to talk. He'd jumped into the dispassionate routine of business, recovering enough equilibrium to celebrate their victory by ignoring Yami while smirking his way through a series of business meetings and their associated conferences.
It was late by the time Kaiba reached the luxury suite. He congratulated himself on avoiding the common herd; the last guests were leaving. Yami wasn't among them. Kaiba frowned. He called Yami. It went straight to voicemail.
"Don't bother looking for him. He's long gone," Mokuba said, awake despite the hour.
"He didn't say anything?" Kaiba asked.
Mokuba hated the confused look on his brother's face. "Nope. He was too busy with his friends to bother."
"Was he mad?" Kaiba asked. Kaiba shook his head. He wasn't making sense and he knew it. He hadn't spoken to Yami all night, so how could he be mad?
"Didn't seem to be. He was laughing and arguing with Jounouchi," Mokuba said, hunching a shoulder.
"I don't get it. I thought… after our duel…" Kaiba's voice trailed off.
As little as Mokuba wanted to be the one to tell his brother, he wasn't going to chicken out now, not after waiting up all night just in case his brother needed him. "Sometimes duels don't mean what we want them to. Face it, Nisama, Yami already has a team of his own and they'll always come ahead of you."
Kaiba straightened up; his face shut down. "You better get home," he said.
"Are you coming too?" Mokuba asked.
"No. I have some things to take care of first. Isono will drive you."
Mokuba nodded and headed for the door. He got halfway there, then turned and dashed back to hug his brother tightly. "You're worth a dozen of him," Mokuba insisted before running out of the room.
Kaiba left the stadium. The adrenaline from the duel had faded. He stumbled a little on his way to the car. But drained as he was, Kaiba wasn't sleepy. If he went home, he'd just lay in bed staring at the ceiling wondering if Mokuba was right. (After all, Yami had walked out on him once before.) Going to his office and getting some work done seemed like the better bet.
It was dawn before Kaiba was ready to admit that the only thing left that required his attention was Yami.
Kaiba dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, then stretched and ran his fingers through his hair. It wasn't the same as a shower, but it would have to do.
Kaiba could almost believe in reincarnation because it felt like he and Yami had been going back and forth about friendship and trust for at least 3,000 years. He thought back to the helicopter ride to the pier at Battle City. He'd taunted Yami, asking how he expected to hold onto a sense of trust when his friends had turned against him. Kaiba had waited for the duel to provide an answer. Then Yugi had faced Jounouchi and the only answer in sight was that one of them would have to die.
And Kaiba had found he couldn't accept that answer. So he'd helped to make another.
Mokuba was sure that Yami had deserted Kaiba, that after daring Kaiba to be his partner, Yami hadn't cared enough to say good-bye, that Kaiba was never going to be good enough to be worth hanging around for. History had taught Kaiba that hope existed only to disappoint. But Kaiba refused to believe that Yami was that fickle, not after he'd jumped in a Death Simulation chamber. Kaiba had seen Yami's face. He hadn't done it as a strategic move or as a way of proving a point – although he was capable of both of those things. Yami had refused to let Kaiba face that room alone. Yami would never go back on that promise. Even after a night without sleep, even without knowing anything other than that Yami had left him flat, Kaiba wasn't ready to accept that answer.
It was time to get another.
Yami woke up to the sound of someone swinging a battering ram at the game shop door.
He stuck his head out of the window and shouted for Kaiba to be quiet before he woke the neighborhood, surprised to realize the racket had been caused solely by Kaiba's fists… or possibly his feet.
Yami shut the window. Yugi lifted his head from his pillow.
"Kaiba?" he mumbled.
"Yeah, go back to sleep."
"Okay," Yugi said, flopping back down on the bed.
Yami pulled the blinds shut and headed downstairs. "Most people use the phone," he said with pointed sweetness as he shut the door and stepped onto the street.
Kaiba held up his phone so Yami could see that he'd called.
"I turn the ringer off when I go to bed, remember?"
Kaiba wondered how Yami could make a conversation about keeping a phone on mute sound so sexy.
Yami shrugged. "I figured it was your turn to wait."
"You are mad. Go ahead and yell and get it over with."
Yami shrugged. "What would be the point?"
Kaiba whitened slightly. Yami let him wonder if he'd managed to screw things up irrevocably this soon into the game. Then, as Yami watched, Kaiba's eyes frosted over. Kaiba was standing as stiff-backed as ever, but there was a brittle defensiveness to his crossed arms.
"All right, then," Kaiba said and turned away.
"Wait, Kaiba," Yami called. "Why are you here?"
"You left."
"Did you expect anything different?"
"Expect? No. Hope for? Well, it doesn't matter, does it?" Kaiba said, bleakly. He started walking towards his car. He couldn't see any point in abasing himself when Yami had already made up his mind. But then Yami called his name again, and the sound of it held him in place.
"You're right. I was mad," Yami said.
Kaiba took another step, then stopped, turned back to Yami and said, "Mokuba didn't think you looked angry. He said you were laughing and joking with Jounouchi. He figured you were too busy with them to remember to say goodbye."
It was, Yami realized appreciatively, an excellent strategy on Mokuba's part. It seemed that the younger Kaiba had passed his own judgment on their relationship.
Ever since his return from Egypt, Yami had been afraid of his vanished power to call up a penalty game. Now, Yami wondered if he'd created a new version, a game that required no mystical items or hidden powers to wound, a game whose only purpose was pain. Yami stared at Kaiba. Yami's eyes widened in horror at how well, how easily he'd played it. He took a step backwards as if he could walk away from his discovery.
Kaiba's sharp eyes picked up the movement. He took a step backwards as well.
Yami drew in a breath. Last night he'd wanted Kaiba to look like he'd felt: hurt and for once, unsure of himself. The morning was different. Yami had had time to remember just how ignorant Kaiba was of how people acted when they cared, how he'd walk in front of a bullet more easily than he'd remember a birthday. And Yami had had time to realize that he couldn't insist he wanted things to change and then continue to play the same games. He no longer wanted to see that blank look in Kaiba's eyes.
And yet, despite everything, bull in a china shop manner and all, Kaiba had come.
Yami caught himself before a smile overtook his face. There was only one explanation: Kaiba expected better from Yami; Kaiba wasn't willing to settle for being abandoned without a word. Kaiba believed in Yami enough that he wasn't going to accept that he'd been betrayed until he heard it from Yami himself.
Yami looked at Kaiba's crossed arms, at the way he seemed to be staring at a point somewhere around Yami's feet. He had to act quickly. Whatever reservoir of trust had carried Kaiba to Yami's door had been exhausted by the journey. Yami knew he was going to have to bring them the rest of the way home.
"I was mad… no, more than that… I was hurt," Yami said.
Kaiba looked up at the admission.
"You can't tell me in front of a stadium full of people that you're ready to be part of a team and then take it back the moment it becomes inconvenient."
"I didn't!"
"You left without a word. I thought you were putting all our promises away along with your deck now that the duel was over."
"That's not what happened! I had to discuss business after the duel. It's not just a game for me. It can't be. It's how I support Mokuba." Yami stared at him. After a moment, Kaiba ran his hand through his hair and said, "But I should have told you where I was going or taken a break or..." He shrugged.
"And I should have stayed to fight it out with you, rather than leave, after I promised never to walk away again." Yami winced. "After I promised to trust you. We're some pair aren't we?" he asked with a laugh.
It was plain from the slightly stupefied look on Kaiba's face, how little he expected anyone to understand the conflicting impulses that drove him. Predictably his expression hardened into a sneer.
"You don't have to play nice."
"I don't have to do anything. Neither do you. You didn't have to come to try to salvage things – and don't bother to deny that's why you're here. I didn't have to be honest in return. But here we are."
"Do you want me to apologize?" Kaiba asked.
"No. I think we both better quit while we're ahead."
There were dark circles under Kaiba's eyes; he was still in his clothes from the tournament. Yami thought of how often he'd wake up in the middle of the night to see Kaiba working at his computer. He suddenly remembered one of Kaiba's minions saying, on the night before Death-T, that Kaiba would stay awake until he finished a project and then collapse. Kaiba looked about two steps from falling over now.
Yami opened his mouth to suggest that Kaiba go home and get some rest.
"Why don't you come in?" he asked instead.
Kaiba gave him a brittle smile. "I've been in your shop. I don't think I've ever been asked inside the front door before… well, not unless everyone was drunk."
"I'm inviting you now," Yami said. He winced. It was one more thing he'd left undone in all the weeks he'd been sharing Kaiba's bed. Had Kaiba thought he wasn't good enough to be invited inside, like a guard dog that was handy when needed but too dangerous to be allowed indoors?
He wasn't surprised when Kaiba shook his head. Yami reached out and grabbed Kaiba's arm. He steered Kaiba into the house and to the couch. Kaiba sat down, then slumped over. He was asleep with his feet hanging off of the Mutou's sofa within five minutes. Yami murmured, "You really are a giraffe boy." He smiled, leaned over and brushed Kaiba's hair off his forehead. It flopped back.
Yami shook his head, still smiling. He went to find Sugoroku in the kitchen. The older man raised an eyebrow as Yami entered the room.
"Well, this was an interesting way to begin 'Respect for the Aged Day," Sugoroku said.
Yami was about to apologize when he caught Sugoroku's grin. "I'm sorry," he said anyway. "After the tournament, Kaiba went to work… he barely glanced my way, like he expected me to just be there when he finally was ready to notice."
"Mokuba's probably spoiled him in that regard," Sugoroku said.
"He was acting like he didn't care if I left. So I did. I knew he'd think I'd forgotten all about him. I thought he deserved it. I wanted to… " Yami paused.
"Push his buttons a little?" Sugoroku supplied.
Yami hung his head. "Yes."
"And he decided waking up the neighborhood was the best way to resolve things?"
"Sort of. But we can't keep treating each other like our feelings are part of a game. I don't want to make the same mistake twice."
"No. I agree. I think it's time for you to make some new ones."
Yami grinned. "Yes. I'd like to bring Kaiba over one evening – just like with Jounouchi or Honda or Anzu."
"He's not like them."
Yami stared at Sugoroku, his eyes almost as wide as Yugi's. He breathed in slowly and tried to remember all the things Sugoroku had done for him, how he was the only parent Yami truly remembered.
"I will respect your wishes," Yami said, trying not to feel disappointed.
"I'm not telling you that you can't bring him," Sugoroku rushed to clarify after seeing the look on Yami's face. "He's welcome here."
"I don't understand."
"You can't expect him to be like Yugi or your friends."
Yami's face cleared. A smile broke out. Having Sugoroku's blessing (even a partial one) mattered.
"I'm trying to do things differently, this time. I told Kaiba to come in this morning. He said he's never been invited past the front door except for…" Yami paused; he couldn't remember what Sugoroku had known about Yugi's party. "It was like I was living two lives. Kaiba probably assumed I was ashamed of him."
"You don't know that," Sugoroku pointed out.
"I don't know anything. That's got to change. I want Kaiba to get to know you and Yugi and all our friends. And I want you to get to know him."
Sugoroku paused, trying to find the right words. He'd assumed that if anyone was going to miss out on the basic points of being in a relationship it would be Kaiba and not Yami.
"Since he seems to be making a habit of breaking down my door to get your attention, I think he'll come. But he'll be doing it for you. Kaiba doesn't see the need for friends or a family beyond Mokuba. It's possible he never will. If you can't accept him for who he is, don't get back together. That's not fair to either of you."
"You think this is a mistake, don't you?"
Sugoroku frowned. Kaiba was a walking disaster, the kind of emotional train wreck that any conscientious guardian would warn against. Kaiba mistook decency for weakness, was far too used – from far too young an age – to ignoring anyone's opinion but his own, and, unless he was offering up his life as a sacrifice, had no idea how to act around the few people he cared for.
And it hadn't taken Yami and Kaiba long to get into another fight. But Kaiba had come after Yami. Unbelievably, he'd wanted to talk things out. Sugoroku sighed. "It doesn't matter if you're making a mistake. What's important is that you've earned the right to make it together."
.
Thanks to Bnomiko for betaing the chapter and trying to ensure fair play.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to GDDSSGRL for being so helpful in answering my questions on Respect for the Aged Day.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Even when we want things to change, we sometimes fall back into old patterns simply because they're familiar and comfortable and there. It's one thing to make a grand declaration in a duel and another to live it day after day. I didn't want there to be a bad guy to this, mainly because I think they all had a hand in creating the mess that neither of them wanted and that they ended up trying to resolve.
Respect for the Aged Day: this is a national holiday, held on Mondays to show respect for the elderly. Kaiba Corporation would be expected to do something in honor of the day. If the start of the story was in early August, with school starting at the earliest possible moment towards the end of August, the timeline actually works if you don't squint at it too hard. Since the previous two weeks were a day by day accounting of Kaiba's time, it felt odd to omit a holiday that would certainly impact on his schedule.
Tumblr Note: I'm on Tumblr as Nenya85, mostly posting manga frames and screen shots and rambling on about them. If you're interested in checking it out, the link is on my biopage.
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Thanks to everyone who's reviewed. I really look forward to hearing from you (to be honest, it makes my day!) I try to write the story in my head to the best of my ability – but it's incredible to get a glimpse of how it looks to someone who's reading it. I can't express how encouraging it is. Please review.
