Title: They Go Together
Rating: PG-13 for Slash content
Pairings: Tristan x Duke (main), with quick bits of Yugi x Teá and Joey x Mai.
Disclaimer: The material used to write this fanfiction is not mine. Oh, but I wish it were.
Notes: The theory of Fate, Chaos, and Choice belongs to Falsechaos. Written for Cairnsy's 20 YGO Themes challenge, with Balance as the chosen theme.
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Balance is important.
It's the one thing, sometimes, that keeps everything from spinning off course and landing face-first in a ditch. When everything goes crazy, then it's time to do something sane and easy and normal, just to remind yourself that you still have hands. That you still have skin. That you still have a dog at home and parents and a life.
That chaos never lasts forever.
I've heard that there's three things that keep life in balance. Fate, chaos, and choice. All three of them go together. Two you can't control, and sometimes the one you can control doesn't seem like much of a choice at all. But whatever it means, they come and go. I believe it's true – I mean, whoever made the world didn't take the time to set up everything for us, did they? That wouldn't be any fun. So just to mix things up sometimes, there's things that we can't do anything about, and then there's things that we have to decide about. Sometimes it's not big stuff.
Sometimes it's really big stuff.
And then again, sometimes we just get tossed a great big catastrophe, and everything spins off course no matter what we do. I s'pose, if you're the religious type, you might say someone was 'testing' us. I think it's just because whoever's up there is goddamn bored. But whatever it is, it's three things that balance. None of them can exist on their own without the other two. That's just my take on it.
Now me? I'm totally about choice. I hate it when someone tells me what to do – I do it, but that doesn't mean I like it. I like knowing that it'll be my hands and nobody else's all mixed up in what happens to me in the end.
That's why I like motorcycles and cars – things with parts that can be pulled out and replaced, things with seals and valves and miniature explosions that drive them and make sense. Things I can look inside of and see the problem. Things I can fix in maybe five minutes, or maybe a weekend. Or things that I can look at and see that for sure, I will never be able to fix. Things that I can walk away from, knowing that there wasn't a damn thing I could've done. There's never a 'what-if' when you total a bike. It's totaled. Most of the time, you're just happy to have all of your parts still working, insurance covers it if you didn't do something stupid, and you get yourself a new one.
So here I am, it's time to make a choice again. But this time it's between everything I have now...and chaos. There's an edge, and I'm looking over it, trying to decide if it'd be worth it to step off. It's been a long night. We haven't done anything. We could have, a few times. But we didn't. Everyone's together again, this one night, at a little pizza place in the middle of town. Yugi and Teá...look at 'em. If I'm all about choice, those two are about fate. And then there's my best friend Joey and Mai...and that's mostly fate too, I think, though she's blond chaos if I ever saw it. They make blond chaos together, and they know how good they look doing it.
So that just leaves me and Duke. Us and Kaiba, we're the loose ends of the equation. Well, not quite. Kaiba doesn't have anybody...but you know what? I think that guy's happy being by himself. And he's not here right now, and frankly, it pisses me off that I let myself think about him tonight. But whatever I'm thinking, it's still just down to us.
We used to fight over Joey's little sister. Huh. I forget when we stopped doing that. It didn't seem so important, the longer we kept doing it. Maybe it was just because every time we tried to really fight about her, something bad would happen.
What, is that fate? Or was it karma that threw us off the edge of the airship the first time we threw punches at each other? To be honest, I guess I was the one throwing most of the punches.
Duke just leaned in against my shoulder.
We're all squeezed into one booth, a big circular table in the middle of the restaurant, and we can look into each other's faces. Wasn't there something in the chronicles of King Arthur about that? Knights of the Round Table. Yeah, that's us. Except that I suppose with all that body armor, the Knights of the Round Table probably couldn't feel it if one of their fellow knights started snuggling in against their side. What, does he want me to put my arm around him? Okay, okay, that's not a big deal to me, I can do that. And for equal opportunity's sake, I put my other arm around Joey, who happens to be on my right side.
What? What's this with the smiles all of a sudden? Dude, did I miss something?
I lean forward, letting go of Joey in order to reach for my drink. But that's all pretense. What I'm really doing is getting a better look at Duke, to see if he got the joke I missed.
He's smiling too, but it's different. He looks totally contented, with the same sleepy look that my old dog used to get when I scratched her chest. It doesn't make me irritated, like the other guys' smiles do. Now I'm not sure I missed the joke, looking at him this time. It doesn't really bother me, which is odd because somewhere, I think that it should. But I'm happy, really. Everything's warm and the light in this place makes the rim of the water glasses glow a little bit, and it smells good.
He smells good. Every little move stirs up the scent of aftershave, which I know isn't mine. Leaning this close, when he starts squirming down closer against my side, warm air and that scent gets a little stronger.
I know myself. I made my choice a long time ago, back when Joey and I started wondering and maybe because we'd had too much stolen beer, we decided to just try kissing each other out of the blue and see what would happen. It was my idea, come to think of it.
We made our choices after that.
He was the first one that showed me what chaos was like, you know?
So it's hard for me to look at that choice of mine again right now. Joey doesn't even know how bad he hurt me. But Duke...if this is what I think it is...I'm happy right now. Everything fits where it's supposed to fit – everything's evened out. Do I really want to throw all that back into one big screwed-up mess? But Mai just said something cute and my best friend wrinkled his nose at her and we're all laughing...and Duke takes the chance to relax a little more against my side.
I'm starting to think that maybe...maybe...this wouldn't be so bad. Duke isn't Joey, and I really like that about him. But knowing him, I couldn't tell him straight out. It's not that he'd take it hard...he'd laugh at me. Tell me he's glad that he's not, thank you.
He knows about Joey.
He's the only person who does, besides me. I told him, the night Joey called me and told me he thought he was really in love this time around. And it wasn't me.
Duke heard me say some things that nobody else ever will. So there's that between us, and that's why it doesn't bother me so much to have his head almost on my chest. But at some point, I have to let him know, right? I can't keep on waiting for friendly get-togethers. It's just me keeping me from saying anything.
Fate could step in any time here. But I'm guessing by now that I'm pretty much left to choice in this.
He excuses himself in a few minutes, dislodging Teá and Yugi so he can slide out of the booth.
I give him two minutes, and then follow, ignoring Teá's smug smile and Yugi's sudden blush. He's how old? He still blushes. What's he blushing for, anyway? They don't know what I've decided, even though they know about the other choices I've made.
Not about Joey, though.
I do look to him, before I go after Duke.
He's not smiling.
He's giving me this look...like he can see right down past everything. His girlfriend leans forward, blocking my view of him. He leans back, and catches my eyes again.
You decided?
Yeah, Joe.
You think you know what you're doing? A dark blond brow raises.
I give him a lopsided smile and shrug, before I turn away. Don't I always?
Don't I always...?
I find Duke, just reappearing at the other end of the hallway leading from the restrooms. Walking toward him is supposed to be hard, but it's not. He meets me halfway, and suddenly I'm pressing him into the wall, my hands over his, his body warm against mine.
A whole row of tables can see us from here.
I don't care.
Vaguely, from the corner of my eye, I can see movement. That's all I know. It's not like I'm looking at them. Duke's filling up my vision now, and once we're close, he's looking at me like he never saw me before in his life. The green eyes, alive with feeling. So much so that it seems one face couldn't possibly hold it all. They flare a little wider as his head tips up to mine. A little defiant tilt to his chin?
And then I smile when I realize it's an open invitation. Slowly. I'm slow with things. He smiles back. He's not Joey at all. Joey would've blushed and glared and threatened to kill me later before he wrapped his arms around my neck.
The way the little hollows between his fingers mesh with mine makes me wonder why it took me so long to get here.
Now I remember why I hate fate so much. It's the waiting.
The first kiss isn't easy. It's open-mouthed and desperate – we have to say this fast, whatever it is that needs saying. Duke leans into me the same way he was leaning into me earlier. His knuckles and mine tap against the wall beside his head. From the awkward tilt of the lips on mine, I can tell his ponytail's getting in the way. But he's stubborn, and for once, won't let me go so he can fix it.
His knee jams between my thighs. Punctuating his closing arguments.
Shock is severely lacking here. The two of us are clumsy with the quickness of the situation, but my harsh breathing is probably more for the friction between cloth and skin and not so much from adrenaline. I should be surprised.
I'm really not.
This was supposed to be some big decision? It feels more like somebody whapping me on the back of the head.
It can't be Duke. His hands are still firmly in mine, and now his tongue is in my mouth, besides.
We can't keep going. He knows it, and I know it. People are watching. We're kissing in the hallway to the bathroom of a pizza parlor.
But it's been a long, long time since I felt someone licking against that particular warmth. I can't stop him. I can only arch my body away from his in a futile attempt to gain some space, flopping slowly like an exhausted fish on the dock. Gasping uselessly for air. If this is dying, oh god it feels good to suffocate.
He breaks away first, the way I knew he would, leaving me flushed and staring at the way his lips have gone red and shine a little with moisture. Belatedly, I realize he's staring at mine, too. Without his sliding over them, the air here is dry and cold. A little at a time, we look up at one another. And smile hesitantly, and then laugh. Softly, so this precious new thing between us doesn't break.
"See you at the table."
"Yeah...I'll be there in a minute."
He goes back to our friends, and I go on, to stare at myself in the bathroom mirror in shock. Oh, great, now the shock.
I was wrong. It wasn't a choice at all. And it wasn't fate, and sure as hell wasn't the chaos I had anticipated earlier.
It was right.