Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is the creation of Kazuki Takahashi. This is a not-for-profit fanwork and I do not own any of these characters.
Dec. 15 - Scent of Home
It had been a crappy couple of days. Forty-eight hours had passed since Kaiba Corp. had suffered a worldwide outage on their Duel Disk system, and although twenty-seven minutes didn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, to playerss and investors it was an eternity. Customer service had been busy fielding complaints since then. They'd had to release a special message to shareholders, as millions of dollars rode on every minute of every day.
Seto got out of his last meeting later almost an hour later than intended. He was irritated by the commute, irritated that something as simple as someone pushing the wrong update onto the servers had caused such an issue, irritated because it was Friday and that meant Yugi and the rest of his noisy, merry band would soon be infesting his house.
He left his car next to Noa's under the porte-cochere and stomped in through the front door. Security could relocate them later. Even Kuriboh knew better than to approach while he was in a foul mood.
He dropped his briefcase in the foyer, intending to pick it up later; his trench coat got tossed on a coat rack, also to be moved later. He was just about to head up to get changed into something more casual, when a familiar scent wafted into his nostrils. Spiced tomatoes and sausage, warm cheese... his mouth started watering on its own, even though it wasn't dinnertime just yet. He followed the fragrance into the kitchen, to find Yami washing dishes at the sink.
"Lasagna?" Seto identified, giving the air one more sniff. The smell of it immediately invoked memories of sitting at the kitchen table with Yami and his brothers, arguing over whether or not he was allowed to take work calls in the middle of dinner. He'd had his doubts that anything a former spirit could cook would be any good, but a single bite had changed his mind; he'd given Yami carte blanche to buy whatever he wanted to outfit the kitchen after that, and Yami had been feeding them all ever since.
"Yup. Along with some cauliflower salad, garlic bread, and I baked up praline brownies earlier too. If you're hungry, go ahead and grab one - I won't say anything," Yami said slyly.
Seto didn't care about all the extras - not that they wouldn't be good, but this particular lasagna was his favorite, and Yami knew it.
The shorter man dried off his hands and sauntered over, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend's neck and pulling his head down for a quick kiss. "I know you've been having a bad couple of days. And I can't fix that. But you love my lasagna, so I changed course on dinner. I thought maybe it'd make your day just a tiny bit better."
More than the lasagna was the thought behind it. Seto hungrily leaned down for another kiss, prolonging it, enjoying the feel of Yami's tongue against his. One hand slipped to the small of Yami's back as Seto practically dipped him, as if they were tangoing.
"Well, that's a fine thank you for my efforts," Yami murmured after they broke apart.
"I do enjoy your lasagna," Seto replied, his hand starting to slip further down.
"You can show me how much you appreciate me later," Yami said with a laugh, slapping at his lover's hand. Yugi and the others will be here soon, and I have to finish dinner, you cad. We're not doing dinner AND a show.
Seto frowned playfully. "Be that way," he huffed, though the promise of lasagna and "dessert" later on did a lot to mollify his bad mood. Maybe he'd even be able to tolerate having everyone over at this rate. "I'll go get changed." And he turned and left, the scent of lasagna curling around him, following him down the hallway and up the stairs.