Everyone ignored Ryuji and his sudden outburst.
Yugi stared at Ryou, who stared back with stricken brown eyes on the verge of tears.
Without consent, Yugi's left hand moved on its own. His heart clenched in terror.
No! Please stop.
He didn't have the mental strength to fight it anymore. He just couldn't. Every muscle in his body was shaking like a leaf.
The hand reached up and touched his cheek, fingertips brushing over skin. It flinched back when it felt the wetness of tears.
His left hand began trembling uncontrollably.
A terrible dark sea of emotion flooded out, a remorse so intense it threatened to overtake Yugi and drown him.
Before it could, Yugi yanked at the puzzle over his head, removing the leather chord and all. He held the puzzle out and away from him, hesitation curling his fingers. Compulsion whispered like an obsession not to release the puzzle. He let go; the puzzle fell away from his fingers to thud heavily against the carpeted floor. It rolled once, coming to rest a couple feet from Ryou's golden ring, the eye pattern staring off at a pile of boxes.
Silence.
Yugi's head was silent. No foreign emotion, no ill intent. Only himself. Only…his own thoughts. That compulsion still itched under his skin to rush back to the puzzle and pick it up. He wondered if it was Yami, or something about the puzzle itself that called to him, that made every bone and drop of blood in his being crave the presence of the millennium puzzle.
"I…" Yugi began, but he wasn't sure what he should be apologizing for, rather he had so many questions.
"Can we… we should probably talk… now," Ryou said as he wrung his hands nervously in the hem of his sweater.
Yugi crossed the distance of the room and took Ryou's hand. Both their grips were clammy and shaky, but he gave a squeeze regardless. When he tugged, Ryou came along with him willingly.
"Excuse us," Yugi ducked his head when they passed the still gawking Ryuji. He wouldn't meet Seto's calculating eyes as they passed him as well. He continued to lead Ryou into the kitchen where they could get a cup of tea, before they sat down at the table to have a much needed conversation.
"What the heck's going on? What just happened?"
Kaiba shoved a sputtering Ryuji aside and stepped into the spare room, he stopped when the tip of his socked foot was a mere inch from one of the golden ring's needles.
Then he crouched down to stare at the two golden artifacts.
"You really fucked up," he told the pyramid in a matter of fact tone.
Silence was the only response. The CEO couldn't be certain Yami could hear without a host, but he was Seto god-damned Kaiba. He would make the spirit hear through sheer will power alone.
"I… probably would have done the same in your position," he continued in a reluctant tone.
Still no response.
He reached a hand out to touch the golden pyramid.
A black hand shot out of the shadows beneath it and seized Kaiba's wrist.
"So you can hear me."
The hand released him to shoot a rude gesture with its middle finger.
Kaiba released a bark of laughter and returned the gesture with equal enthusiasm.
"Fuck you too."
"Are you talking to Yugi's Pendant?" Ryuji asked from the doorway.
Kaiba rolled his eyes, heaving a sigh through his nose.
"Go away, Otogi. Go busy yourself with a table top game or something. Yugi can explain the stupid ghost bullshit later."
Before Ryuji could make it two steps Kaiba spoke again.
"Well actually, go find me the Speak & Spell."
"The what?"
"The Speak & Spell," Kaiba growled out. "Stupid red and yellow child's toy. Retro tech from the 80's, looks like a big gaudy brick. Find it."
He heard Ryuji shuffle off and returned his attention to the Puzzle.
"You don't need a host to do your spooky thing it seems. What else can you do apart from him?"
The shadows around the puzzle were normal again, no longer providing a response.
"What about this thing?" Kaiba jerked his thumb at the ring sitting beside him on the floor. The gold glinting in the artificial light, and the pattern on the triangle of gold set in the center of the ring stared ominously at the ceiling. "Is it still active too? I assume it's not given how things settled down as soon as it became separated from Bakura."
Kaiba knocked the ring away with his foot, and felt a peculiar jolt that made his skin crawl when his socked toes made contact with it. The feeling quickly passed and he sank down to the floor, to sit with his legs crossed. He pulled a deck of Duel Monsters cards out of his pocket and began shuffling them in silence.
Ryuji returned about a minute later stepping into the room just far enough to hold out the Speak & Spell. "I found it."
"Good." Kaiba snatched the toy computer from Yugi's assistant without bothering to look at him. "Now go away."
Ryuji shot the golden ring a skeptical look as he backed out of the room, then disappeared down the hall towards the living room.
Kaiba placed the Speak & Spell next to the Puzzle, and continued shuffling his cards.
"Do you have a deck?"
Ryou stared miserably into his cup of tea, the color bled from the teabag into the water, slowly growing darker and darker. The reflection of the cup shone in Ryou's glasses.
Yugi sat at the table too, prodding his own teabag with a spoon. All their Monster World paraphernalia was shoved to the side to make room for the two men, their tea, and the inevitable conversation to happen.
"So… how long did it take you to realize Yami wasn't an apartment ghost?" Ryou asked in the quietest voice. He sounded absolutely ashamed.
"You knew?" Yugi wasn't even surprised anymore. Seto knew, Grandpa supposedly knew, he had a feeling a lot more people knew about Yami even if they didn't completely understand what he was. Yami it seemed, got around. Yugi was a car that Yami took for a ride when he so pleased.
"…Yes?" Ryou squeaked. "I have a spirit too… just like you. He lives in the Ring artifact."
Something twisted in Yugi's chest. Unconsciously he reached up and touched the place right above his heart.
I live in here, Yugi.
Yami had gestured to the puzzle when he'd said it, but then he'd taken Yugi to a place within his own heart.
"The blackouts we both experience…"
"For me it's when the Ring Spirit takes control," Ryou whispered. "He's… not very nice… most of the time, but we're working on that."
"Yami told me that he takes control when I am in danger."
Ryou nodded, clutching his teacup between his hands, letting the warmth seep into his fingers. "That tracks with all I've witnessed over the years. Yours has always seemed much more…" He trailed off and didn't finish. Yugi waited but Ryou just took a sip of his tea instead.
"He's caring," Yugi finished.
Ryou dipped his head, tracing the rim of his cup with a finger. The steam from the tea fogged up the lenses of his glasses. "Mine cares too. Sometimes. In his own way. It's complicated. I'm sorry he hurt you. I don't know why he's been acting up so much recently."
"He didn't hurt me," Yugi defended. He took a sip of his own tea. He wasn't sure why he was defending the spirit of the Ring, but he felt it worth saying regardless. "He terrified me, and made some ominous threats. But he didn't hurt me."
"That's good," Ryou sighed. "How did he threaten you?"
"I have a whiteboard, the one that Yami uses to communicate with me when he's not using his Speak & Spell. Your spirit got ahold of it. He told me I made Yami powerful, and that he could take me from him."
"That sounds like something he would do. He's kind of a thief."
"What would happen if he did?"
Ryou looked up to meet Yugi's gaze. His right eye was twitching with a spasm but he held firm despite both their aversion to eye contact. "Honestly, I don't know. He can't exactly have other hosts. Not as far as I'm aware. Not just anyone can wear these artifacts, the Ring specifically will drive an unworthy wearer into incomprehensible madness within minutes of putting it on. Often resulting in their death. Can the Puzzle have other wearer's?"
Yugi shook his head, recalling his conversation within the soul room. Yami had told him that an unworthy host would be destroyed. But he hadn't gone into detail how they would be destroyed.
"Although," Ryou continued, "it stands to reason that if you are worthy of the Puzzle, you might be worthy of bearing the Ring as well."
Yugi shuddered at that. A full body thing that started at the base of his skull and worked its way down to his toes, leaving him feeling cold and unsettled. "I… I don't want that."
"I won't let him have you," Ryou said and he reached out to place his hand over Yugi's.
"If he's mean, why don't you just get rid of the Ring?"
Ryou gave a small squeeze before retracting his hand and moving to clutch the front of his sweater where the Ring might have settled if he'd still been wearing it. "The Ring is my responsibility. The spirit within is hurting, troubled and lost. And I think he's been hopelessly abandoned for so long that he doesn't know how to trust anyone. He's angry and a troublemaker, but I feel like if I give up on him now it'll only validate all his cynicism and hatred. Someone needs to help him, and why not me?"
"You're too nice, Ryou." Yugi took a long sip of his tea.
"Says the guy who gives everyone a second chance. Your boss literally attempted to murder you on multiple occasions when you were teens, and now you moon over him."
At that Yugi blushed a furious shade of red, and buried his face in his palms. "Why do I crush on the most dangerous men in existence? It's like I have a kink or something. Can they leave lesser men crying, destroy people, possess my puzzle, or manipulate shadows at will? Excuse me while I go rub one out."
Ryou blinked at Yugi, cup frozen against his lips in mid sip.
"Don't look at me like that! I'm already ashamed." Yugi's face disappeared into his folded arms.
The pale man made a dismissive noise and resumed drinking his tea. "I'm not one to judge if you have a crush on a spirit. Just surprised me is all. Never thought I'd hear you admit to something like that. Me? Undoubtedly. But you?" He shook his head.
"I have spectrophilia," Yugi whined. "We made fun of you for having it, but now I definitely have it."
"I honestly don't know what to do with that information." But he patted Yugi on the head comfortingly; because of the volume of Yugi's hair it was mostly just petting down his spikes.
Ryuji poked his head into the spare room a half hour after he first left Seto Kaiba with the puzzle, curious to see what he was up to.
The lanky six foot tall CEO was still seated cross-legged on the floor, Yugi's golden puzzle sitting across from him two feet away, and there was a field of Duel Monsters cards laid out between them.
Kaiba slammed down a card and announced, "First I play a Harpies Feather Duster to wipe your side clean of traps and spells, then I summon a Goblin Attack Force."
The shadows around the puzzle gathered up three cards from the spell and trap card zone closest to it, and dumped them all in the discard pile.
"No counter cards?"
Silence met Kaiba's inquiry.
"Sucks to be you," Kaiba sneered. "I attack your face down monster with my Goblins and then attack you directly with my Blue Eyes."
A shadow hand reached out and flipped over a Vindictive Old Magician. It reached out and tapped the Blue Eyes White Dragon on Kaiba's side of the field.
The CEO muttered some nasty curses under his breath before placing the dragon in the discard pile. The shadows followed this up by placing the Vindictive Magician into the discard as well.
Void black fingers drummed the floor, giving off a smug sense of satisfaction.
"Yeah, yeah, I end my turn. Go you conceited fuck."
The shadows tapped a message into the Speak and Spell sitting beside the puzzle.
"NO NEED TO BE CHURLISH KAIBA."
"No need to be a smug asshole, Other Yugi," Kaiba sassed right back. He watched the shadow draw a card, and hold its hand in front of the eye on the puzzle, like it was using it to see. "You know I can prop the puzzle up so you don't have to look at everything from an awkward angle.
A tendril typed out a new message.
"I WILL NOT TAKE THE CHANCE THAT MY PUZZLE MIGHT CONSUME YOU WITH FIRE."
A pause then more typing.
"PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH IT. IF I NEED TO MOVE IT, I CAN DO SO MYSELF."
Kaiba huffed through his nose and propped an elbow on his knee, then placed his chin against his palm and smirked. "That almost sounds like you care."
"HARDLY. I AM ONLY CONCERNED BY HOW SAD YUGI WOULD BE."
"Where was all that concern over Yugi's feelings earlier?"
The shadows stilled in their card plays, and an eery silence fell over the room.
After a good long minute, a very tiny tendril reached from the shadow beneath the puzzle and tapped buttons on the Speak & Spell.
"I DID SOMETHING TERRIBLE," the spirit admitted.
"Hmm," Kaiba hummed in agreement. He turned his Goblin Attack Force to defense position after the Spirit attacked it.
"I HURT YUGI. I BROKE HIS TRUST."
The spirit ended its turn, retreating back into the natural shadow cast by the puzzle to wait.
"What do you intend to do about it?" Kaiba asked lowly and with astonishing patience.
"I DO NOT DESERVE FORGIVENESS."
"Oh stop with that gross despairing self pity. Did you try to kill him? Did you construct an elaborate amusement park attraction with the soul purpose of humiliating him in front of a crowd of thousands and potentially murdering him? Did you ever have his Grandfather kidnapped, and then used your cutting edge technology to send him to the ER?"
The shadows began to ripple beneath the puzzle, wisps writhing about like a pile of angry snakes.
"I highly doubt it," Kaiba continued, completely unaffected by the angry demonic display. He drew a card and browsed his own hand. "That's my personal brand of asshole. But, Yugi saw fit to forgive me anyway and we've….moved past all that. Grovel, beg forgiveness, prostrate yourself before him and kiss his feet. Whatever you feel you need to do to apologize. But he will forgive you. He has this… capacity for forgiveness that's…" Kaiba trailed off and placed a card on the field face down.
The mass of shadows appeared to calm down, all the wisps shrinking back beneath the puzzle.
"Anyway. I end my turn."
"Where did you get that Ring, Ryou," Yugi asked as he poured them both fresh hot water for their tea.
With Yugi's permission Ryou searched the cupboards for a snack and found a box of crackers. He made a comment about Yugi needing to go shopping because his pantry was barren.
They both returned to the table, and Ryou unashamedly stuffed his mouth with crackers. "My father gave me the Ring when I was a boy," he explained after swallowing a mouthful.
"Don't you think it's weird that both of us had a family member that smuggled an ancient Egyptian artifact and then gifted it?"
Ryou nodded, but said nothing, stuffing another cracker in his mouth.
"When did you find out you were possessed by a spirit?" Yugi asked.
The other tilted his head in thought, chewing slowly for a good minute before he responded. "I don't remember. I kind of always had this suspicion that paranormal stuff was happening around me. Growing up, a lot of weird things happened. Mostly bad things. Although it's only recently that the spirit has been attempting to communicate with me."
"How does he communicate?" This had Yugi very curious. He'd used a white board and markers with Yami, before buying him the Speak & Spell. Ryou was much more versed in the paranormal stuff, so he must have tried some more conventional methods.
"I tried all the usual things," Ryou gave an awkward laugh and flushed, the color traveling to his ears. "The Ouija board, pendulum, water, candles, tea dregs, ashes, the sound recorders, and white noise settings on the tv and radio. None of it really worked."
Yugi played with his tea bag while he listened and stirred some sugar into the cup.
"Then I saw what you were doing with your spirit, and I tried setting out markers for mine as well. It took awhile, I got a lot of one word responses at first. Turns out my spirit has terrible handwriting and a… colorful vocabulary." Ryou paused to take the tea bag from his cup, and blew on the hot liquid, before taking a sip. "But, it is progress. More progress than I've made in all years I've had the Ring and suspected I was possessed. I think… all his recent activity is in response to your spirit."
"Like they are feeding off each other?"
"More like… antagonizing each other I think."
Yugi stared into his cup for a long moment, processing this. Then he finally asked the question that had been burning the tip of his tongue since they started talking. "If you knew Yami wasn't an apartment ghost, why didn't you say something to me?"
Ryou fidgeted in his seat and began twitching his head, his eye going into one of its usual spasms. He winced to try and make it stop before he said, "It wasn't my place to spill Yami's secrets. I don't know your spirit Yugi. Not like you do. But I do know mine, to an extent. Mine would not be so kind about its secrets being spilled. I trusted that you would speak up if Yami was doing anything sinister or bad to you." He managed to the get twitching under control to level Yugi with a pointed look.
"No," Yugi admitted. "He hasn't done anything bad to me. Not until today, when he tried to take possession against my will…when he tried to hurt you."
Ryou reached out and placed a hand over Yugi's. "I appreciate you coming to my defense. I don't have a lot of friends who would do that for me."
"You're my friend Ryou," Yugi said with more firmness, "just like Jou and Honda. I'll do anything to protect you."
The smile Ryou gave him was so grateful that a tear welled up in the corner of one of his eyes.
"Th-that… means so much to me." Ryou might have broke down right then and there if a sudden shout hadn't startled them both out of their chairs.
"LET ME WIN OR I WILL PUT THIS FUCKING PUZZLE ON!"
The chair Yugi had been sitting in was knocked over in his haste to get up. He pushed past Ryou, bolting down the hall, socked feet smacking the hard floor of the kitchen and hall. Ryou followed close at his heels, and shared a concerned look with Ryuji when the assistant joined them.
All three men tumbled into the guest room to find Seto Kaiba and a shadow man rolling around the floor, both their hands on the millennium puzzle.
Seto was kicking and clawing, one sleeve bunched up and his normally immaculate hair a ruffled mess. Both his hands dug into the puzzle trying to wrest it from Yami. Yami, in turn had one leg hooked over Kaiba's hip, the other hooked around his leg. One of his shadow hands was grasping the puzzle, the other grasping onto the metal bracer on Seto's wrist.
Duel Monsters cards were thrown all over the place, both men unconcerned that they were wrestling atop them.
"Seto!" Yugi cried, skin flushed red with too many emotions, and quite possibly none of them good. "Put my puzzle down right now!"
"LET ME WIN!"
Ryou shouldered past Ryuji and Yugi, making sure to give the wrestling men a wide berth as he bent to scoop up the Millennium Ring. Some sort of magic appeared to arc through him when he picked it up, his hair fluffing up momentarily before everything around him settled back to rights.
When he turned to look back at Yugi it was Ryou's soft brown eyes that looked out at him. "He's not going to cause anymore trouble for now," Ryou promised.
The men on floor rolled too close to Ryou for comfort, and the pale man jumped away, back to the group at the door.
"Seto!" Yugi yelled again, taking a step into the room.
"Fucking bastard!" Seto snarled, but refused to release the puzzle. "He's biting me!"
And it was true. As hard as it was to tell, it did appear that Yami had sunk shadow teeth into Seto's arm.
"Then let go!"
"I want to win!" the CEO snarled back.
"Do you really want to win like this, you immature asshole?" Yugi dodged their rolling and grabbed hold of the Puzzle, his small fingers joining the fray and attempting to peel Seto's grip from it.
"I don't want to lose like this."
"Neither of you win!" Yugi snapped. "The game is over. The cards are everywhere, and this," he peeled Seto's hand from the golden artifact and with Yami's help yanked it away from them both, "is MINE."
Yami stopped biting Seto to look up at Yugi.
And no matter how angry Yugi was at Yami for what happened earlier—and whatever was happening now—he couldn't stop the flutter of intense affection when Yami looked at him. It caused his heart to skip a beat, or two… or four. Breathing heavily, Yugi fought all the feelings down and glared at them both, eyes snapping between them.
Yami dropped his gaze to the floor, and all his shadowy hair spikes drooped. Little tendrils erupted from his body, gathering up all the cards in the Dark Magician Girl protective sleeves that Yugi had given him, all the while leaving all the cards in the Blue Eyes sleeves. Once his deck was reassembled the spirit became a puddle, moving along the floor to Yugi's feet where he left his deck of cards like some sort of peace offering, then disappeared into his host's shadow.
Something about having Yami with him, in his shadow again, felt right.
That left Yugi to glare daggers at only Seto.
Seto wouldn't meet his eyes, and continued to lay on the floor. He was frowning at Yugi's shadow.
"I think you should go home," Yugi said in a very flat tone. He lifted his gaze to look at his other friends standing in the doorway. Ryuji looked as bewildered as ever, and Ryou clutched his Ring fidgeting in worry. "I think everyone should go home for now. Ryuji, can you call Jou and Shizuka and tell them that the game is canceled today?"
"Is anyone going to explain to me what is going on?" Ryuji asked, a deep frown setting his features.
Ryou grabbed his sleeve and tugged him from the room, "I'll explain what's happening while you give me a ride home."
Yugi returned to glare at Seto. "You might be my boss, but right now you are my friend. And as your friend I think you are acting like a little kid. Do you even realize what this puzzle could do to you?"
"Yes."
Yugi made an about face. He picked up Yami's deck of cards and slipping them into his pocket before stepping over the moping CEO who was still lying in the floor. "I expected more from you."
"I don't know why. I'm only twenty-five and I dyed my hair lime green through all of high school."
There was nothing Yugi could argue with. He sometimes forgot how young Kaiba was. It was the scowl and the height, it sort of masked that he wasn't any older that Yugi, but as evidenced by today…not nearly as mature. "I need to be alone with Yami," he told Seto even though he didn't think the man deserved an explanation.
He stalked over the floor littered with cards—snatched up the Speak & Spell—and continued out of the spare room, carrying the Puzzle and the toy computer into his own bedroom. Then he shut the door with an air of finality. Shutting out everyone else still in the apartment.
Yugi pressed his back into the door, sucking in a ragged breath, before he just sank to the floor clutching his Puzzle to his chest.
It's my birthday today, so you get an update to this fic! please enjoy. And leave a comment if you could. Comments are much appreciated.
Love you all.