Chapter One:
"You kissed him?!"
Yugi nodded, his eyes downcast, head bowed. Joey flexed his fists, trying, and failing, to keep his temper. He looked at Yugi, hurt, angry, and frankly astounded that Yugi had cheated on him. Yugi! Except…
"Well, it's not like you and me were officially together," Joey reminded them both coldly.
They weren't, really. They hadn't ever discussed it. In fact, all they'd done was kiss. A few kisses starting at that one night that had changed everything.
Yugi raised his head and his eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them back. "Joey, I-"
Joey shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it. See you in class."
He turned and headed down the stairs from the roof, leaving Yugi standing in the light of the blazing sun.
Yugi respected his wishes. He said nothing at all to him from the time class resumed to when it let out, though Joey could see him shooting him furtive glances. After class, he grabbed his book bag, got on his shoes, and headed home without a word.
What really could Joey say about it anyway? He knew what Yugi was thinking. Ever since that Oracle had explained their lives and their bonds, how their souls were connected for eternity, reincarnating over and over to be the world's saviors, how they'd always end up together somehow, well.
But, still, it had to be Kaiba?
Joey flopped face down on his bed and wrapped his arms around his pillow, staring morosely at the faded, chipped drywall.
It was still so hard to wrap his head around. The three of them as a triad for eternity, the supposed Three Souls of Fate, capitalized emphasis the Oracle's. The Soul of Mind, Kaiba, the Soul of Spirit, Joey, and the Soul of Heart, Yugi.
Supposedly it had started back in Atlantis, their first lives, when the great evil of the Leviathan had been released, a dark god. A fight that had come off more or less a draw, with the three of them imprisoned in dragon form and the Leviathan imprisoned on the other side of the veil between worlds. The Oracle had stated their souls hadn't been fully released despite their technical deaths, existing in part inside the cursed crystal and in part outside, tied to the Leviathan. The dark god still influenced their world, attempting to destroy and consume it, taking several forms in an attempt to free itself, which prompted their reincarnation to stop it. Atlantis and Egypt, which they all knew about, but also Indus and Viking, which they didn't know about. Basically every 2000-3000 years, the Leviathan made its play and they stopped it. All of them cursed to repeat this cosmic dance.
Ever since the Oracle had revealed this to them, they'd all been slowly filled with memories of their past lives. It was crazy, scary, and disquieting. Joey was definitely starting to have a crisis of self. Yugi accepted it a lot easier because he'd already had that in his head for years, literally in his head in the form of his past life, Atemu.
Joey hadn't even had any idea he was really a part of this. He'd seen Hermos, sure, but he must have missed some details when his soul had been stolen. He hadn't even known he'd been a part of the whole Egypt thing, but they'd only seen a tiny portion of the last few months of the Pharaoh's life, and it turned out he, then known as Khasekem, had been there and died a couple years before, the keeper of the Millennium Spellbook and murdered by Aknadin to gain possession. All part of the dark god's plan to forge the Millennium Items and come into being in a new form, Zorc.
Joey dug his face into his pillow and shuddered. Every time he closed his eyes, it seemed he was flashing onto a new memory. He could smell the jungles of what was now India. He could feel the blazing heat of the Egyptian sun. He could see the sparkling Northern Lights in Greenland.
If he was having a hard time coming to terms with this, it was nothing on Kaiba's reaction. The brunette had had a fit, and none of them had seen or heard from him since.
Or so Joey had thought.
That Yugi had fallen in love with Kaiba was supposedly predestined. Just as him falling in love with Joey. And apparently Joey and Kaiba were going to love him and each other back.
No way.
Joey rolled onto his back and glowered at the ceiling. That was never going to happen.
Joey woke up with a start. He sat up, breathing hard, shivering all over. His clothes clung to him with sweat and his thighs were sticky.
A sex dream and a memory rolled into one. Khasekem and Seth in an ancient temple of the Millennium Spellbook. A passionate tryst in the moonlight on the balcony. Joey's skin was still tingling with the echoes of pleasure from centuries ago.
And what was more, he could feel how much Khasekem had loved Seth.
It had felt like destiny.
...
A/N: So, this story is just a snippet of a larger, disjointed, incomplete AU that will never be written. Sort of a fantasy/headcanon junk of mine that I have fun with that I felt like writing part of it down just for Valentine's Day smut.