Yugi put off confronting Kaiba about the car. It wasn't like he could drive right now anyway. And the thought of going down to the apartment parking lot to look at it made him sick. He'd almost decided against checking the mystery key.

Fortunately, Jonouchi, Shizuka, and Ryuji were all for checking out the new car, and seeing if the key belonged to it. Ryou so graciously put their Monster World game on hold while everyone else raced down to the Lexus.

Yugi was not surprised to receive a text that the key did indeed belong to the Lexus and that his little city car was nowhere in sight.

Ryou patted his arm sympathetically. "Look on the bright side, you have a delightful posh car when you can drive again."

"I hardly ever drove to begin with!" Yugi threw his hands up. "Domino is way too congested. It's easier to take the metro or the bus everywhere. The only thing the Lexus will do is attract burglars, to the car and possibly even my apartment once people figure out it's my car," he lamented and buried his head in his arms.

There was a sudden tickling sensation of excitement that arced down his spine, an anticipation that thrummed at the edges of his senses. But it faded almost as quickly as it came.

"You could tell Kaiba you want your old car back."

Yugi glowered at the pale man over his folded arms. "You try telling Seto no, and tell me how it goes. My entire job is just me telling him no, and him doing the thing anyway."

"What if you rang Mokuba? Certainly he's more reasonable?"

Yugi tapped out a text to Mokuba asking about his old car, and why Seto saw fit to drop off a Lexus.

{2:45pm} To Capsule King:

Where's my car? This is a joke right?

It only took a couple minutes for a response to come in.

{2:47pm} To Game King:

Bro says there was damage to the chassis of the car, so he had the whole thing replaced.

Yugi heaved an audible sigh, and Ryou patted his shoulder again.

{2:51pm} To Capsule King:

He replaced it with a Lexus!

{2:52pm} To Game King:

Wow! Lucky you~ He made me buy my own car. I bought the Fiat Spider of course. So I can tell people I drive a spider. Also it pisses big bro off. Win-win.

Yugi deflated again, and there was only so much sympathy Ryou could exude; which was saying something because he had a tendency to be overwhelmingly sympathetic. "I'll receive no sympathy from Mokuba, who has been scorned by brotherhood and is not hiding his envy."

At that point the others burst into the apartment again, returning from their excursion to investigate the new car.

"Damn Yuug! Ya have to see it! That thing is fancy!" Jonouchi roared upon entering. He was scrambling to kick off his shoes which were almost never tied to begin with.

Shizuka came in behind him saying, "It was big enough to fit all of us! Katsuya says we should take a road trip in it. Can we go on a road trip? I'd die for a beach vacation."

Ryuji took up the rear, shutting the front door behind everyone. He politely and calmly toed off his boots as he added, "The key definitely belongs to the Lexus, and fuck that thing is nice."

Yugi just fixed them all with a overwhelmed expression. This was a gift he didn't know how to accept.

0000

Yugi curled up on the couch once everyone had gone. Upon his request and before they left, Ryuji had brought him a pillow and blanket from the bedroom, which Yugi took to cocooning himself in now.

The last thing he wanted was to be in his bedroom.

"YUGI." His name sounded from beneath the furniture nearby.

He was too overwhelmed with mixed emotions to respond, and instead focused on the haze as his evening dose of pain medication took affect.

"YUGI?"

"I'm alright." he said, but it was more of a knee-jerk response than anything else. He wasn't alright. He was stressed and angry with Seto, but also endeared and flattered. On top of disconcerted by the thing he'd seen in his bedroom earlier. The intense cocktail of emotions was leaving him confused and exhausted.

Feeling helpless about the car left him running mental circles about the strange shadow. He was almost certain it wasn't Yami, the eyes had been wrong, as well as the shape. Not that he'd seen a lot of his ghostly cohabitant, but he'd seen enough. They'd showered together and been up close and personal. So he was fairly confident he knew Yami's shape. He recalled having a brief conversation with Yami before about other ghosts. He had said he knew some, but that they were not friendly.

"Who was in the bedroom today?"

"WHAT?"

That all but confirmed Yugi's suspicions. Yami came creeping out from beneath the recliner, dragging the Speak & Spell and peering over the edge of the couch to look at him. Currently the third eye in the middle of his forehead was closed, so it was just his pupil-less normal ones staring.

"There was a strange shadow in my bedroom, had glowing eyes like yours, and a third eye with lines running out of it." Yugi explained in barely a whisper. "I thought it was you. It left when Jonouchi-kun joined me."

Yami was gone in an instant. His form melted into an inky puddle on the floor, and Yugi watched it dart away, out of sight and in the direction of the bedroom. He left the Speak & Spell behind in his haste. Was he going to investigate? Or was he running off to hide?

Minutes passed. Yugi stared at the brightly colored toy on the carpet and hugged the blankets tighter. He felt… vulnerable.

And acutely alone.

In fact, the realization dawned on him that he wanted Yami to come back almost desperately. The silence of the building, the darkness of the room, the shadows in the corners… they all felt somehow much more oppressive.

It felt like an eternity passed until Yami returned.

It wasn't as a puddle, or a strange mass of black, but as long human-shaped legs stepping into Yugi's field of vision. Yami crouched down before him, glowing eyes peering softly, and picked up the Speak & Spell once more.

"I CHECKED. IT IS GONE."

The sudden jarring unnatural voice of the device made Yugi regret buying the thing. What had he been thinking, honestly? There were a million better ways he could have given his ghost a voice that weren't nearly as scary.

"Why was it here?"

Yami shook his head as if he didn't have the words to answer that. The wisps that made up the shape of his hair swished along with the movement.

"HE WILL NOT HURT YOU. I PROMISE YOU THIS."

"Thanks," Yugi's voice was barely a whisper, but he spoke it with all the gratitude he felt in the moment. "Will you stay with me?"

The spirit sat down on the floor right in front of him, folding his legs. When Yugi reached out a tentative hand—unsure exactly what he wanted but seeking comfort—void black fingers laced with his and a sense of reassurance passed through the touch.

It was what he needed. He needed this. These foreign emotions. Needed to feel them flooding his senses, and drowning out the din of turmoil in his mind. It felt like a door opened in his head, not entirely of his own accord, and a wash of… something pleasantly sweet and heated enveloped him.

It sent his heart racing, breath catching and chest tightening. Like Yami's emotions had taken him on a high that coursed through his veins and made them burn with… with…very intense endearment.

"What are we going to do about the car?" he asked despondently, but feeling relatively calmer than he'd been. Yugi didn't actually expect an answer or a proper solution.

But using his free hand, Yami tapped away anyway upon the keys of his toy computer.

"CAN WE SMASH IT?"

That made Yugi giggle despite himself.

00

Less than a week later, much to Yugi's eternal mortification, he had to ask Yami to help him shower again. Things came up with his Mom and Grandfather, and it was either wait another day or two, or break down and ask for assistance from his roommate.

It took a few hours but he managed to work up the courage to ask.

Yami agreed without hesitation. No questions asked, and he was just as patient and attentive as he'd been the first time. Even silently offering to wash Yugi's hair again.

Which had been almost as bad as the last time, because once more it left Yugi practically melting into a pile of boneless pleasure on the shower floor.

Yugi attempted to start a game of Tic Tac Toe in the condensation that collected on the glass shower door, but when Yami reached a finger out to make an O, his finger left no mark in the moisture. He tried several times, his eyes narrowing more and more in concentration, but he never managed it.

"You can't manipulated water?" Yugi asked curiously.

Yami held up a hand and caught the spray of the shower diverting the stream. After a few seconds he dropped his hand again to support Yugi.

So he can divert water, but he can't manipulate condensation. Yugi became ever curious what Yami's physical limitations were, and why.

In contrast to the last time, he prided himself that he didn't attempt to bolt as soon as it was all over, and allowed his incredibly sweet shadow spirit to bundle him up in three different towels.

When he reached for his crutches, he was a little annoyed to find he hadn't closed the shower door all the way and they'd gotten soaked in their spot leaning against the wall.

"My crutches got soggy." He wrinkled his nose. "I'm gonna have to set them to dry, and spray the arm supports with air freshener." They made a funny squelch when he tried to rest his weight on them. His mind had half a moment to ponder the safety of moving about in slippery wet crutches, when he felt his world tip back.

Yugi loosed a cry of surprise as Yami scooped him off the ground still wrapped in all those towels. The soggy crutches clattering to the floor in the process. With an unnatural gracefulness he carried Yugi out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into the bedroom. Then gently placed him on the bed before collecting a bunch of fresh clothes from the dresser and closet.

Yugi was still patting his hair dry rather dazedly when Yami set all the clothes next to him on the bed, silently bowed his head, then melted into the floor before darting out of the bedroom. Probably to got attend to the crutches.

The event left Yugi's heart racing.

Later, when his mom asked how he'd managed a shower, he told her a really great friend helped him.

"FRIEND," Yami's Speak & Spell stated loudly upon overhearing that phone conversation.

Yugi had to clap a hand over the receiver of his cell phone.

"FRIEND." Yami, continued to hit the repeat key, making the toy say the word, over and over. "FRIEND. FRIEND. FRIEND."

"No, mom. I'm fine," he said over the noise. "Just a toy malfunctioning. I'm going to smash it with a hammer if it doesn't stop."

Yami pulled the device into his chest, the bright colors vanishing as the shadows closed over it.

A distinct but still muffled, "MINE," sounded from within Yami, and his golden eyes arched in impish triumph.

Yugi glowered at him before returning to his conversation.

00

He'd caught glimpses. Just brief moments where he swore Yami had manifested an extra arm… or something. There'd even been that time where he fell off the couch, and although he'd been too startled to appreciate it at the time, he knew somethings that were definitely not hands had caught him.

He heard the marker squeak against the white board and glanced over.

'I have you backed into a corner. This time your queen cannot save you.'

The battery for the Speak & Spell was on the charger, so Yami had pulled up the white board again in the meantime.

Yugi watched Yami place the marker down and retract his hand, then reach for a piece on the board. Can he make them at will? How many does he have? And are they actually tentacles?

And today, he supposed, was the day he was going to find out because he guilelessly blurted, "Can I see your tentacles?"

And I'm an idiot, Yugi chastised. Please kill me now. I just asked to see someone's "tentacles."

Yami started with a full body flinch, dropped a Knight onto their Chess board subsequently knocking over several more pieces in the process. His third eye popped open with an alarmed expression, fixing Yugi with its pupil.

Yugi wasn't sure which eyes he should be making contact with, so opted on none of them, and dropped his gaze to his hands where he fiddled nervously with a defeated Bishop. He could already feel the burn crawling over his cheeks, and scorching the tips of his ears.

"They're a part…part of you, aren't they? I notice you always t-try to conceal them… at least it seems that way. You don't…have to," he stuttered over the words. Oh just kill me, why do you ask for something and then immediately try to backpedal out of it?

Yami appeared to consider his words. His head tilted down, seemingly looking at the chess board while he set the messed up pieces to right, but his third eye was looking up, it's stare still fixed on Yugi.

After a moment the third eye closed, vanishing into blackness.

In complete silence, a long, thin, void-black tentacle stretched from his form. It grabbed a pawn and placed it upright. Then it quickly retracted back into the mass of shadows that made up his form.

Yugi stared in awe.

Another thinner tendril peeled itself from Yami's form and grasped a fallen Rook, righting the piece once more, before it slithered around to return one of Yugi's pawns back to rights.

Yami, who appeared to have been avoiding Yugi's gaze this whole time, finally tilted his head up, unblinking golden eyes meeting Yugi's bright and appraising stare.

He looked so unsure, as if waiting for this situation to fall apart at any moment. It made Yugi's heart hurt. Yami was so confident and sure when they played games, sometimes even cocky, making comments that came off a little arrogant.

But when it came to moments like these, moments of vulnerability and judgement, Yami seemed to cower before Yugi. As if Yugi's opinion of him mattered more than anything else in the entire world.

"That's so cool," Yugi gushed with complete sincerity. "They're completely prehensile aren't they? How many can you make?"

Yami hesitated for half a minute, long enough for Yugi to begin to doubt himself again. But then, Yami's whole body pulled apart before his eyes.

Each tip of Yami's hair became the end of a tentacle. Yami's head split apart, shoulders and torso as well, everything splitting into hundreds of writhing, twining tendrils and arms, until the creature sitting across the table from Yugi looked like an eldritch horror straight from an H.P. Lovecraft novel.

Just as quickly as it began, the mass swirled back together like a sea anemone closing up, before the shadows burst as a black flame and resumed their normal Yugi-shaped appearance.

Golden eyes blinked open again.

"That was… wow." A strange warm shiver ran up Yugi's spine and burned at the base of his skull. "You're incredible."

Yami's edges quivered, and his form shifted akin to someone letting out a huff, just without the air.

The warmth overtook Yugi then, and he realized that what he'd been feeling wasn't his, but Yami's embarrassed gratification washing over him. He was so caught up in the feeling he didn't even notice Yami had written in the white board until it was pushed in front of him.

'Enough stalling, Aibou. I would like to claim my victory as you were about to lose most spectacularly.'

Yugi blinked out of his haze of awe. His eyes lingered over the endearment 'Aibou,' his heart skipping oddly, before he assessed the game board again. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, Yami. I've squeezed my way out of tighter situations."

Yami cocked his head to the side, and wrote with the marker again.

'This is not a schoolyard brawl, and you cannot slip between my legs to assassinate my king.'

The comment brought a flurry of unpleasant memories to the surface. Memories of teens in the schoolyard bullying him because he was so small and passive, and how Yugi had slipped through many a legs to escape such situations. There was no way Yami could know about them, the comment had to simply be a coincidence made because of assumptions about his size. He stamped the memories down.

Yugi picked up a Rook and took out a piece that had been obstructing his pawn from making it to the opposite side of the board. "I bet I could if I hit you in the crotch first."

'I do not have the feeling required for that to be effective.'

Yami took out another one of Yugi's defenses around his King.

"I also don't have the guts to sock anyone in the crotch," Yugi lamented. He inched his pawn closer to the edge of the board.

'I would not be so sure of that. You are capable of more than you give yourself credit for.'

Yugi watched Yami take his turn, his pieces encroaching ever closer to victory. "You know, this is an incredibly weird thing for you to be so encouraging about." Then he gave a lopsided smile, and moved his pawn to the final space. "Also, Queen me."

00

Week two of avoiding Seto and continuing to skirt around the car issue was coming to a close. And whether fortunately or unfortunately, Seto never took time away from his schedule to stop by again.

It was actually Mokuba who eventually came by with the paperwork for the new car, and patiently helped Yugi through a meltdown, before they worked it all out. Mokuba's suggestion was to keep the car for now, try it out, if it really doesn't work for him, sell it. Sell it, buy a new and cheaper car and pocket all the excess money. Or donate it to charity.

It wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but Yugi was still pissed at Seto for being so high-handed.

"You and me both," Mokuba responded in kind. "I'm the one who always has to smooth out his messes when he pisses people off."

They played a few rounds of capsule monsters after that, (which Mokuba won, because Yugi's head just wasn't in the game) before Mokuba's phone blew up with texts about appointments he blew off.

"I miss you at work." Mokuba leaned in to give him a brief hug before pulling back. "Can't wait for you to come back. But don't let my brother steam roll you, okay? He means well. He just doesn't take anyone's feelings into account until after he's already done something, and then he doesn't want to admit he's wrong. Business 101, never admit you've made a mistake, they could use that against you in a lawsuit."

Yugi scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to sue him for being being a crappy high-handed friend."

"Yeah well, he doesn't handle friendships so well, and thinks he can manage them the same way as business associations."

"I know. Doesn't stop me from being mad at him."

"As you should be." Mokuba straightened out and pulled out his phone which had started ringing. "Tell him how the car made you feel like a kept woman."

"I am not a—"

The younger Kaiba brother gave him one more brief hug, this one a little tighter, before dashing out the door with a phone to his ear.

"KAIBA IS AN ASS."

Yugi heard the synthetic voice intone from behind him. It was accompanied by a looming presence at his back, and instinctively Yugi leaned into it and the puzzle at his chest grew warm.

"Sometimes."

Yami remained silent.

"Okay, maybe most of the time," Yugi amended.

0000

Six weeks into recovery found Yugi sitting beside Yami on the couch playing video games. This had become another ritual among their strategy board games and Duel Monsters duels. He and his shadow had been playing Fire Emblem Warriors until it was becoming clear Yugi couldn't hold his eyes open.

"ARE YOU ALRIGHT, AIBOU?"

The endearment sent a jolt straight to Yugi's chest. Yami only used it when they played games together, most often when they played as a team, and he was loathe to admit he was choosing more and more games where they played together, just so he could hear it more.

"I'm a little sleepy," Yugi admitted, placing the controller on his lap. "I didn't sleep well last night."

"BAD DREAMS."

"Yeah," he couldn't actually remember them very clearly, but he remembered headlights, and the roaring of a car engine. The memory brought dread shuddering through his frame. He didn't want to go to the bedroom and be alone, but he also didn't want to boot Yami off the couch. He really wanted to curl up and just watch him play video games until he dozed off.

Before he could overthink it, he gingerly dropped into the shadow's side and shut his eyes.

Yami went as rigid and tense as a not-entirely solid entity could.

"Please, keep playing," Yugi whispered. "I want to watch."

After half a minute, the spirit relaxed a fraction and began playing the game again.

Yugi watched the bright colors through mostly lidded eyes, listening to the familiar and comforting game music. Out here on the couch, with his friend, the strange shadows and dreams could not reach him. He unconsciously nuzzled Yami's shoulder, and the spirit lifted his arm so Yugi could snuggle deeper into his side. Then he draped his arm back around him, and continued playing the game. There was something about Yami that made Yugi feel safe. Something…so familiar, almost like… like the… puzzle…

Yami could feel when Yugi's body went limp and his breathing evened out.

He looked down at his host, practically sleeping against his chest. That tight feeling in his chest was back, that burning, suffocating feeling. It had made it difficult to focus on the video game. Being so close to Yugi always made him feel like this.

One of Yugi's hands was closed over the puzzle. It wasn't an unusual gesture. He often placed his hand over the puzzle, even while he slept. But before he dozed off, Yami had picked up the slivers of thought via their close contact. They had whispered into his mind like sleepy little mumbles.

Yugi was a surprisingly strong broadcaster when it came to their mind link.

Yami placed his void hand over Yugi's on the puzzle, the contrast between them was sharp.

-I am here-

Then he placed his hand over Yugi's heart and spoke once more through their link as clearly and articulately as he could manage.

-I live here-

Yugi responded with a sleepy mumble.

This chapter is dedicated to KatieTurner9 on wattpad, who has singlehandedly left more than 160 comments on this fic, and has just absolutely blown me away. Thank you so much.

Just a chapter full of fluff, and wrapping up a few things, before something major happens in the next chapter.

Hope you enjoyed. Please leave feedback if you liked the chapter.