Notes: It's time for the YGO RarePair Week! I want to write for all days, so unless one of them gets too long to qualify, I will post all the pieces to the short story collection here.

Day 1: Cooking Together/Flowers

Radley loved to cook. His fascination had started in childhood and had continued as an adult. He also loved to share his knowledge with anyone who was willing to learn.

Kalin did not love to cook. He had detested it since childhood and still did not find it that enjoyable. But Radley made it fun for him in a way it had never been when he had been forced to cook as a child since his drunkard father wouldn't do it.

"Okay, so now it's time to add the celery," Radley said calmly.

Kalin scooped up the pieces he had been chopping and added them to the kettle of vegetables on the stove. "What next?"

"We're almost ready," Radley grinned. He added the pinto and black beans he had been cooking earlier, followed by a sprinkling of chili powder.

Kalin watched him stir it all together. "So this is how you make your famous chili recipe we all go nuts over," he mused.

"And it's even better this time, since you're helping to make it too," Radley smiled.

Kalin had to smile a bit. Radley was always good at delivering compliments. He was never insincere about them, either. "What do we do now?" he asked.

Radley put the lid on the kettle. "We let the whole thing cook for about twenty-five minutes and get the table ready. Do you have the flowers from home?"

Kalin produced the vase of yellow roses. "Right here."

"That goes right in the middle," Radley smiled.

Kalin walked to the long table in the diner's private banquet hall and set the vase in what was approximately the middle. Radley soon came out with the dishes and set the bowls and cutlery at each place setting. He straightened, admiring their work.

"There! It's all ready except for the food. Let's get the side dishes going."

Kalin was amused as he followed Radley back to the kitchen. "You're really making a feast for us, aren't you?"

Radley looked back over his shoulder with a smirk. "Well, of course! We deserve it, don't we? After two whole years of running Satisfaction Town the way it should be run, we should definitely celebrate! We'll have a bigger bash with the whole town, but for now we should have one just with us so we can really talk and reflect."

Kalin slowed his pace, a thoughtful look coming into his eyes. Two whole years. . . . That also meant two whole years of getting close to Radley, who had wanted to make friends with him from the start. It seemed so much longer, as though they had always known each other. They had learned to their shock that they had met once as kids, but they hadn't been allowed to keep in touch back then. And yet even on that first meeting, it had felt as though they were meeting again after a long absence instead of that they had never seen each other before.

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" he asked. It was an abrupt and perhaps bizarre question, but it had been on Kalin's mind and now he wanted to discuss it.

"No," Radley replied immediately. He went into the kitchen and over to another stove where the potatoes had been cooking. He took them off and started mashing them.

Kalin leaned against the doorway with folded arms. "I'm not saying I do, but why don't you?" he wondered.

"Well, completely aside from the fact that the Bible says we only live once, I just find the whole concept kinda ooky-spooky," Radley said with a shiver. "If reincarnation is true, that means we weren't always ourselves, right? Or that there's some overseeing faction of us that keeps sending out new incarnations for each life that's a different person and yet part of the same big cheese?" He shook his head. "I just can't wrap my mind around that. I don't wanna think I wasn't always me."

"Fair enough." Kalin pushed away from the wall and went over to his friend. "But what if it was different? Before I grew up and learned about all these ideas of what reincarnation was, I always thought it was about the same spirit going into different bodies. Then it would be more like you were always you."

"Hmm, I guess," Radley mused. "But it'd still be that in some other life I was a sailor or a gardener or a magical guy or something else that is completely not who I am now." He stopped mashing the potatoes and turned to face Kalin. "What I like best is still that idea in the movie Soul, where there's something like a Heaven for spirits who haven't been born yet. Then we're definitely still us. And I still think that if something like that is true, we knew each other then and vowed to find each other again."

Kalin smiled. "I think so too. And I think that if reincarnation is real, we knew each other then as well."

"Well, I suppose it has to be one or the other," Radley conceded. "I agree that whichever is the truth, we knew each other before we met as kids." He rested his hands on Kalin's shoulders, smiling at him.

Kalin hugged him close. He couldn't imagine life without him now. Or the Bunch. Or Yusei, Jack, and Crow. They were all his closest loved ones, although he had ended up bonding with Radley in a way he had never expected was possible. Their unique relationship was understood by few. They had pledged themselves to each other for life, but not in a romantic or sexual way. Both were tired of only romance being seen as the most powerful love. They knew theirs was just as powerful.

"Now, let me ask you something," Radley said as he hugged back. "Have you ever actually had a flash of memory that doesn't seem to be from this lifetime?"

". . . Maybe," Kalin said. "I don't know if it's a dream, my mind playing tricks, or something real. I feel like I remember us walking through a garden late at night. We're talking and you're examining the flowers. You pick several yellow roses and give them to me. You tell methat it's going to be okay, that we're going to be together no matter what."

Radley smiled faintly. "That's a nice scene. Can you see how we're dressed? Anything about us?"

"It's faint," Kalin said. "What I mostly remember is that we look the same as we do now. My hair is even this length. Maybe that means it's just a dream or a trick of the mind."

"It doesn't have to mean that." Radley paused, pondering. "What intrigues me the most is the flowers, though. Yellow roses didn't always stand for friendship. They've gone through some real ups and downs in their existence. Sometimes they've had negative connotations. Of course, that's just stuff that's made-up here on Earth. Maybe in another realm, say, a spiritual realm, they've always had positive meanings."

". . . That's something to think about," Kalin mused with a nod.

Radley smiled and gently moved back from Kalin. "And now," he said, "I think the chili is ready."

"It hasn't cooked too long, has it?" Kalin asked in sudden concern.

Radley lifted the lid. "It's perfect!" He took the kettle off the hot plate and set it in the middle of the stove. "You're a good student."

Kalin smirked. "I had the best teacher."

Radley smiled, pleased, and went to get the butter and milk for the mashed potatoes.