Good grief this took me forever to get around to. I apologize!
Song suggested by: Methodical Madness
Summary: He'd told himself he was fine with you moving away, with giving up seeing you every day, but that had been such a massive lie even he couldn't believe it. He hoped you still remembered him, even after all this time, because he certainly remembered you.
Pairing: Yūgi Mūto/Reader
I found a line and then it grew
I found myself still thinking of you
I felt so empty and now I'm fine
But still it's burning, when will you be mine...?
The photo was faded around the corners, mostly from time and too much time spent stuffed in the inner most fold of a wallet, but the center of the picture was what held his amethyst eyes. Two brightly smiling faces stared up at him from a moment caught in time so long ago, and he felt his heart give an extra little lurch as the memories rolled over him.
He'd told himself he was fine with you moving away, with giving up seeing you every day, but that had been such a massive lie even he couldn't believe it.
He drawn a line in his mind and shoved all the memories of you onto the opposite side of it from himself. He'd watched that line grow as he tried to keep himself on his side, watched as it finally grew so wide it swallowed up both himself and the memories and there was no escaping the fire in his chest now that flared up whenever he thought of you.
He stroked a thumb idly along one crumpled edge of the photo and allowed himself a rueful smile. That had been such a long time ago, back when you'd all been in school together and you'd dragged him into the photo booth, just the two of you, while you were at the carnival. He'd been so embarrassed he'd messed up the first picture, but then he'd gotten the hang of making funny faces and laughing as the camera flashed that the rest turned out alright.
He'd only kept this one, the one where you were both smiling brightly, no funny faces or tongues jutting out at odd angles. Just pure delight shining from your faces up out of the photo at him. He wondered if you'd kept all the others. This had been the last one on the strip of five, and something in him hoped you'd kept the other four- kept all the other memories that the two of you had made.
He hoped you still remembered him, even after all this time, because he certainly remembered you.
Look at me still in your mind
Our memories so intertwined
Well you broke through and found your way
And so did I no need to stay
The same old picture, tried and true
Been through there, let's look for something new...
You grumbled as you hefted another box up the stairs to your new apartment, wondering when, exactly, you'd acquired what appeared to be so much junk. This had to be the fifth box of seemingly useless stuff you'd hauled up here and you wanted to know when all these boxes had crept into the back of your car because you could have sworn there were only three in there when you left home.
You kicked your door closed behind you and plopped the box onto the nearest chair, recognizing Serenity's handwriting across the top spelling out the word Memories.
Well, you decided, that explained why the thing was so heavy.
You grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter behind you and slit the tape on the top of the box open, flipping the cardboard out of the way and peering inside. Faded colors and photos stared back up out at you as you gazed into the box, and it took you a second to realize half your high school life had been packed into the box.
There were yearbooks shoved all the way to one side, in order of year, awards you had won and a few medals that you didn't recall ever being given. A stuffed animal you'd won at the carnival your senior year was beaming up at you over the top of a picture frame that had several photos crammed into it awkwardly.
All four had faded with time, but they were still identifiable. Unlike the other framed pictures in the box, these weren't taken with a regular camera- they were from a photo booth. Yūgi looked awkward and uncomfortable in the first one, like he wasn't entirely sure what to do, but then in the next he was sticking his tongue out and giving you bunny ears. The third featured the two of you hiding behind two massive lollipops that you vaguely remember Tristan giving you that day. The fourth made you laugh, as you kissed Yūgi's cheek and he turned vibrantly pink. You remembered there had been a fifth picture, one where you both smiled properly for the camera, but you couldn't remember where you'd put it.
There had been a lot of memories you'd made with Yūgi and the others, and not just in your senior year. You'd spent most of your high school career making trouble with all of them when you weren't busy studying your butts off at two in the morning at someone's house for an exam you'd all managed to forget until the last minute, or passing notes in class because you all thought your professors were boring.
They'd all been a huge part of how you'd ended up where you were now, actually, all been part of your life for so long you had to remind yourself that you'd graduated and said your goodbyes. You were living your own life now, and that was that- no regrets, you'd all promised.
And yet you still had them all the same.
Too much of the same stories in our lives
I think it's time for change, don't you?
Too much of the same stories in our lives
I think it's time for us to walk away from here...
"I'm tellin' ya, man, just call her and ask!" Joey's hands were tucked behind his head as he looked at the playing field, always up for a game of Duel Monsters between classes when he had nothing better (like studying) to do. "She'd be thrilled to hear from you after all this time."
"You say that, but you don't actually know." Yūgi argued back, drawing a card and surveying his friend's defensive line. "She moved away for a reason, Joey, it's not like she's down the block and I can just go see her, or anything."
"She moved away for college, Yūg. That's a legit reason. It's not like she was runnin' from anything, right?" He looked up at the younger boy and gave him a stern look, as though challenging him to admit there had been bad blood between you two before you'd left.
"Right." He muttered, turning his attention back to the game at hand and blocking the idea that you might actually have been mad at him from his mind. It was absurd to speculate over something like that, right? Especially when you'd hugged him so tightly before you left and whispered in his ear… He stopped that train of thought before it could get much further out of the station and stamped out the blush that threatened to spill out onto his cheeks. "I just don't want to intrude on her life, that's all. She's probably busy with classes." He glanced up and smirked faintly. "Unlike a certain blond we both know."
Joey sputtered, effectively distracted from the subject at hand, and Yūgi tried not to think too hard about what you might say if he called you out of the blue like Joey was suggesting. Your lives had been so closely intertwined for so long that it had physically hurt when you'd left, but that didn't mean that calling you and seeing you again would fix that… Even though he really hoped that it would.
He wasn't ready to walk away from you completely, even if you had walked away from him and the rest of them- he didn't believe for a second you had actually abandoned them.
Do you remember lying on the beach so late at night
Do you remember running through the sprinklers that night
Do you remember all the songs that I have wrote for you,
All the songs that I have wrote for you...
You spent the next week wading through the box labeled Memories and putting the things out into your otherwise barren apartment. You hadn't even gotten all of your clothes unpacked before you plopped the box down onto your bed and took up residence in front of it with a mug of coffee and plans to put every single item in there around your apartment somewhere.
There were albums full of pictures you weren't even sure which one of you had taken, the perspectives changing so often you decided the camera must have been passed around a lot.
There were pictures that you could barely make out of when you'd all gone down to the beach and had a bonfire, Joey and Tristan in charge of food while Tea and Serenity handed out drinks and you danced in the background with Yugi and Duke to music Ryou had somehow managed to get playing so far from the car. The albino must had wielded the camera for most of the night because he rarely showed up in front of the lens, but you couldn't blame him.
Another several pages of photos showed you setting off fireworks on New Year's and playing in the sprinkler in your front yard, all of you laughing as Tristan and Joey posed midair for the camera. Ryou featured more heavily this time, and you noticed a lack of Serenity in several of the shots. There was one picture, though, that actually had a flush sweeping up into your cheeks as you looked at it.
You were soaking wet, having jumped through the sprinkler several times already, and Yugi was kissing the bandage on your knee that you'd gotten when you slipped and cut your knee open on the deck of your house. You'd forgotten he'd been the one to come to your rescue even when you waved everyone off and told them you were fine.
Serenity had managed to capture the moment on camera.
In the back of the album, hidden away among other little things like ticket stubs to movies and arcades, were the lyrics to a song you recognized as one Yūgi had written on the back of a napkin. You'd kept it without ever telling him, just because you liked the lyrics.
You stared at the napkin for several long seconds before your phone rang and you nearly dropped your coffee right into the box of memories as you fumbled to answer it. "H-hello?"
"Hey, it's Yūgi… Do you think I could maybe come over some time? House isn't a house till it's been warmed with company, right?" The line sounded cheesy and maybe just a touched rehearsed, but as you looked down at the lyrics he'd written for you, you realized you didn't care.
"Yeah, sure, whenever you like." You tried not to sound as eager as you felt. "But I'll warn you now- I will make you help me unpack."
He laughed, and you felt like it had been years since you'd heard the sound. "I promise not to complain too loudly. Later this afternoon work for you?"
"Perfect." You replied automatically, already hurrying up off the bed and trying to remember where you'd put all your cute clothes. "See you then, Yūgi."
"Yeah," you could hear the smile in his voice. "See you then."
You hung up and quickly threw the phone back onto the bed, putting your coffee down on the table beside it and cracking open another box of clothes in search of something more date-appropriate despite the fact that this probably wasn't going to be a date. It was the principle of the matter, you told yourself.
And you kept telling yourself that when he showed up on your doorstep not two hours later and you pulled him into a kiss.
I remember, the way you made me feel when I was with you
I remember, the smile that always brought me back to you
That look in your eyes, I never thought that this could be untrue...
I love Yūgi to bits and pieces, not gonna lie. And I think this song suits him, in an odd way. So thank you Methodical Madness~!
The song "Stories" belongs to: Trapt
Yu-Gi-Oh! and its related characters belong to: Kazuki Takahashi
