Greedshipping (Mutou Yugi/Ushio Tetsu)
. . .
If anyone else knew that he still came here every so often, they'd probably think he was crazy. His friends would definitely try to talk him out of it. Sure, the one he was visiting wasn't actually awake, but what if he did wake up? He probably wouldn't take his visitor very well.
But he felt like...he felt like he owedhim something.
"It's so nice of you to keep coming to visit him, Mutou-san," the nurse said, smiling over the top of his clipboard.
Yugi ducked his head towards the small armful of flowers. He really didn't like it when people told him that—it happened every time, too. "So kind of you to keep coming to see him." "I think you're his only visitor, actually." "You must have been really good friends, huh?"
It wasn't true...he wasn't kind. Not for this, at least. He couldn't feel that way about what he was doing.
The nurse pulled open the door for him and sent him another bright, twinkling smile.
"Are you planning on staying long? I'll have to escort you out again, is all."
"No, just a few minutes," Yugi said, gripping the flowers. "Just to...switch out the flowers."
"All right, I'll wait outside the door."
He nodded with another smile, another smile that Yugi duck his eyes away to avoid. He really, really didn't feel like he deserved it.
He scurried into the room and let the door swing shut behind him. Immediately, the silence that only belonged to a hospital room overtook him, blotting out the sounds of gurneys or carts being wheeled through the hall behind him, the sound of sneakered feet and chattering voices of nurses and doctors.
It was just the silence of the room, and the sound of his breathing.
He hadn't changed since the last time Yugi had visited. Ushio Tetsu still just lay there, staring at the ceiling. He wasn't really...quite unconscious, the doctors had said. After the initial few days of violent hallucinations and the aggression he displayed because of it, he had just kind of...faded away. He didn't need any equipment to help him breathe or eat, since he'd eat when prompted, but he wouldn't otherwise react to anything else. It wasn't a coma, it was like his brain had decided to cease functioning in certain areas. "The impolite term for it is that he's a vegetable,"a particularly blunt nurse had told him during one visit, when he had asked what exactly was wrong.
Yugi didn't move for a moment, cradling the flowers in his arms. He swallowed—his throat was suddenly dry.
Despite how many times he had come to visit, he still felt that initial crawling discomfort every time he saw the other young man's face. The knee-jerk, gut punching desire to shrink back against the wall and make himself small, try to reduce the area that he'd be able to hit him.
But Ushio wasn't hitting anyone in this condition, and the feeling faded away quickly. Yugi just looked at him for a long, long moment. The blank face, completely barren of any emotion. If he had been awake, he probably would have been snarling at Yugi, or threatening him, or something. Something other that nothingness.
Finally, Yugi let out a breath around the lump in his throat. He walked over to the table where his last bunch of flowers were starting to wilt, and laid the new batch beside the vase. He pulled the old flowers out and refilled the water with his water bottle, before unwrapping the bouquet and slipping into the vase. It lent at least a little color to the otherwise white, stark room. He had always hated hospital rooms. His mother had had to be in one for a few weeks when he was a child—he couldn't remember what for, but he remembered crying every time he came to visit. He had been convinced the bare white walls were sucking up the color out of his mother. Hospital walls sucked the life out of people. Flowers only helped a little
Yugi took a moment to fluff the flowers out so that they were displayed nicely, but it was mostly just a motion to prevent himself from looking at Ushio again. His fingers curled up suddenly around the stems, and he felt his shoulder tense up around his ears.
I'm sorry, he thought. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Jonouchi would have told him there was nothing to be sorry about. Honda would have said that Ushio got what was coming to him. Anzu would have reassured him what happened wasn't his fault, that he was just defending himself. Ryo would have reminded him that if he hadn't done anything, Ushio would have kept hurting people, maybe not just him.
His other self already was whispering at the back of the head that, technically, it wasn't even his fault. The blame belonged only to his other self, to his aggression.
It didn't matter.
None of those words did.
"Maybe you did deserve something," Yugi whispered, letting his eyes wander over to Ushio one last time. "Just...not this."
. . .
A/N: I'm getting heavy with this one lol. Next is Gravityshipping (Thief King Bakura x Marik x Ryo).
