AN: Yep, this chapter is ahead of schedule! Please don't get too used to it loves, I'm just getting myself some plus karma for when my updates are more sporadic later (once I've got your all dreadfully hooked)

CHAPTER 2: The Complicated Romantic Subplot

Atreyu, beautiful Atreyu…

He couldn't even go there tonight. It was all mingled with his nightmare and Yugi's eyes. Gods, was he such a weak man he wanted to desperately apologise to a fictional character?

The Seers were just as Atemu remembered them. Sharp, bleeding black-blue, screeching, contorted bodies nearly female nearly spider…

No, he was worrying too much about the nightmares he might give himself tonight if that continued.

Jenzar Fraveous was…

He had no idea. No picture of Jenzar in his head that felt sufficient but he was sure he had to introduce him into the plot somewhere.

Coco wasn't at all amused he'd gone out today and despite his improved mood it hadn't done much for his writing either. He still had a good eighteen months to get the book completed. They'd just about finished release tours for the new one after all. So he had that he consolidated himself.

Doorbell?

Who popped in at ten o'clock at night? Joey Wheeler, his mind supplied, well that was true and sure enough wouldn't you know it:

"I have a date." Yami revelled on the couch.

"Fabulous!" Joey Wheeler teased with a drama student wiggle of his hands before breaking into cackles as Yami hit repeatedly him with the nearest magazine sprawled on the side table. "Sorry bro."

"You're deplorable," he dismissed, "how have you been?"

"Trying to get a job." Joey groaned. "Want to include me in your rich will?"

"Not rich," Yami clarified, "just mildly successful."

"Rich eventually then." Joey clarified back.

"Just more responsible than you." He retorted exasperated. "Why on earth did you do a course with physics and astronomy?"

"I wanna work at NASA." The blonde shrugged dumbly.

"You suck at math."

"Yeah, I'm realizing that," he cringed.

"How are the card tournaments treating you?"

"Pretty good," Joey perked vaguely reminisce of a half-conscious Labrador, "most reliable source of income at the moment sadly."

"That is pretty sad."

"Oi!" Joey snorted. "Few years ago you had four dollars and fifty two cents in your account."

"Would've been lower if the damn ATM gave change." He grumbled.

"I'm not starving yet. That's the important thing. I really need a job though."

"Amen," Yami chuckled, "especially when you eat like a pig."

This time Joey was the one wielding the rolled up magazine bouncing against Yami's skull as he cackled.

"You should enter one of the Duelist tournaments," Joey announced, kicking out his legs to slouch so far into the couch he reminded Yami all at once of Stephen Hawkins and a drunken frat boy. Lord if he didn't have back problems by the time he was fifty…

"God no," he snorted, "I've got a gambling problem. Seriously, start me off and I can't stop, I'd be clearing bitches out."

"Yeah but that'd be half the fun!"

"You remember when we were eighteen and you took me to that casino?" Yami recalled inciting an immediate cringe. "Yeah, that wasn't fun, was it?"

"Was for you!" Joey hollered, "You won ten grand!"

"Yeah and you had to wait around for me," Yami recounted, "and I was too distracted to drink or engage in proper conversation."

"Yeah and you got us kicked out."

"House doesn't like it when you win too much." He shrugged. "Really though Joey, better for everyone if I keep my ass out of competitive gambling, or else you'll never see me again! It's not one of my shinning areas of self-control."

Wasn't that the truth? Really, perhaps it was better his Muslim father was long dead and his mother had immigrated. He had a suspicion he'd be something of a disappointment given his two career options were writer and professional gambler. Selling himself was a homosexual prostitute was a close, even more disappointing, third but his mother was much more forgiving about these things. She'd been born and raised in Japan, not Cairo, nonetheless what boy doesn't miss his father?

"So what else is new?" Yami didn't assume there was anything seriously wrong in Joey's life. The American did so much wandering it was more a matter of chance that he tended to show up late at night rather than intentionally or driven from some purpose.

"Well," Joey grunted thoughtfully and there was, surprisingly, some topic he was thinking over Yami could now see. "There's this guy…"

"You beat him up?"

"No!" The blonde snapped, elongating the syllables, "why is that your first question?"

"Because it's you," Yami shrugged sceptically. "Seems pretty reasonable to ask you is all."

"Well I didn't beat him up!"

"What then?" He sighed exasperatedly, now Joey had a bee in his bonnet, silly creature.

"He's a jackass," Joey began as a qualifier, "I know him on the circuit and he beats my ass to second. He asked me out all of a sudden."

"So?" Yami blinked.

"Well…" Joey floundered, "I…I don't know what to do."

Yami's lung came out through his nose and then he broke into amazed cackled immediately.

"Oh my God!" He cried awed. "Oh my fucking God!"

"What!" Joey groaned in a screech. "What's so goddamn funny!"

"Oh my God!" Yami still couldn't stop himself laughing. Sweet mother of Jesus this was priceless. This was going on the memory wall. "You give me so much slack for being queer!"

"Nah I don't!"

"Yes you do!" Yami snorted. "Now you're seriously hot for a guy? You? Joey Wheeler the man among men? This fucking rocks. Karma motherfucker!"

"Shuddup!" Joey ordered magazine in hand again. "Just tell me what the fuck I should do!"

"Alright! Alright!" He chuckled. "He's a jackass right?"

"Yeah."

"Then fuck him." Yami answered to Joey's increasingly bemused face. "Not literally!"

"Yeah but…" Joey mumbled worrying the back of his neck, almost blushing, "he ain't that bad I guess."

"Then date him."

"You just told me not to!"

"It's your love life!"

"Yeah, but," Joey slouched impossibly further into the couch, "you're supposed to make all the hard decisions."

"As of yet I'm not contractually obligated."

"We could make a dare out of it?" He suggested. Trust the American slacker to think that was the solution capable of plucking up his courage.

"Oh no," Yami insisted, "I'm not turning my love life into a romantic comedy. I want it to be like one of those charming artsy flicks with the pixie-esque super-deep love interest. I am not becoming a Zack Effron or Seth Green or whoever the hell acts in those movies cause it totally ruins my fantasy."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know," Yami sighed, "if you want to date him then try it. If he's a jackass make him work for it."

"You think?" He blinked cautiously hands shoved into his slack pockets.

"No I'm lying." He deadpanned tartly. "Yes."

"You think you've got a good chance with yours?"

"I honestly don't know." Yami sighed wistfully. "I could really fuck this up being awkward but he's cute."

"Alright," Joey decided in a grumble, slapping his hands against his thigh. "We're gonna do this!"

Atemu, Yami, phased right into the scenario. No warning, no prior explanation, no distance between him and his starting position rather he'd come In-Medias-Res to the mission.

He found himself in a locked school room, on an upper level over-looking the rolling grassy slopes of the grounds and suburbia beyond, a Supernatural realm that had taken on a physical manifestation much like Earth. Atemu hated phasing into any building that took on the appearance of a school. They were so often halfway places, living mazes that changed by the minute where physics fluctuated. He was already in uniform, the children around hadn't noticed he was any different, because physically he must not have looked it in his disguise but this was no time for a mirror.

"Good you're here." Atreyu gave Atemu some idea of how he must've looked. He was dull, mousey and utterly unlike himself to Atemu but Atreyu's eyes were still brilliantly deep even if no trace of his immense power could be sensed. He was in uniform with the blazer, the boots, but he somehow looked more ready to fight than study. I must've been his stance.

"What's going on?"

"Building a child army," Atreyu answered in a feverishly curt whisper, "we have to get this group out. When the Militants arrive an escape door will open simultaneous in the dimension. It'll be our only chance to get them out of here and take them into the jungle."

"Jungle?" Atemu blanked glancing back over his shoulder to the windows. It was always possible the image of suburbia beyong was an illusion. Nothing in these worlds worked on certain reality. Everything was fluid.

"You'll know it when you see it."

"What if we fail?"

"Then they're destroyed," Atreyu answered simply gesturing to the unawares children in question, "there won't be another chance to send another team in."

"Are there more children in the building?"

"These are the only ones we're saving."

"But-"

"The how and why don't matter," Atreyu ended pointedly smooth, "it's not our job to fix everyone's problems. It's our job to keep balance, order, so things like goodness and wickedness get time to work themselves out. Focus Atemu."

"Of course," He conceded to the passion. Atreyu was not an un-loving being, quite the opposite, so if he could distance himself surely so could Atemu. They would still help, he decided, still save a few innocent fragments as he glanced over the children.

Atreyu was quick, efficient, but Atemu knew that there was joy lingering under the very calm surface. It was like the reverse of a shore: smooth, slick, sand over bubbly froth. Atreyu had purpose and intrinsically knew, somehow, from resonating with the very fibre of this dimension and everyone in it exactly what was going on before Atemu could guess from the clues. So Atemu had no choice or inclination to do anything but follow Atreyu's cues. Faen knows bestboth Champion Amar and Watcher Cobalt had joked.

"Get the door, hold them back," he ordered lowly. "I need to find the escape point. I can't until they come in. We've only got a minute or two."

Atreyu was rushed, quick, but not panicked though Atemu considered himself to be so. He had no idea what he was about to encounter. These Militants were part of this realm, this world, not transient entities who lived solely to cause chaos like the Seers but that did not mean they needed to have human-esque shapes or that they would have similar abilities.

'The physical counts for nothing. Your wits will be what save your life and others.' Amar Seirramoura had informed him knowingly once during a training retreat. So Atemu steadied his stance about ten feet back from the door as Atreyu mounted the raised platform which served as the opposing side of the classroom.

"Everyone back up!" Ateyu called stoutly beckoning the other children with both hands. "Up here!"

They mingled, they whispered, but sheepishly they complied to the sudden flourish of authority. They were sacred, untrusting, but they weren't real children, Atemu reminded himself, they were different beings who somehow appreciated that Atreyu could be trusted.

Atreyu just had them up on the platform, Atemu watching over the crook of his shoulder, feeling along the wall just the first inch when Atemu caught the sound of approaching feet and the signal of approaching powers in his senses. It was like radar really. He steeled himself. Atreyu continued to move, smooth but brisk, running his fingers along the wall, half muttering, tracing the resonances in the energies.

"I won't have time to come back for you," Atreyu called briskly as the footsteps pounded closer just as an aside to Atemu, who's heart sunk through the floor of the level, "I'll leave the door open. Follow when you can."

"Right!" Was the only strangled sound he managed to get out before the rim of the doorway lit itself and sprang open.

The Militants looked human at least, somewhere between soldiers and suits, and when Atemu's vision whipped back round to them and eye contact was established there was an automatic understanding between they that Atemu was up to something they would not like. Then they screeched, like howler monkeys really, and it was all the more uncomfortable to watch human faces stretch their jaws like that.

"DISARM!" It was instinctive for Atemu now.

The rush of adrenaline compounded into the thrill of action as he let loose a spell. The concept of putting thought into action through energy repeated itself over his conscious. The checklist scrolled through his head: the more complex the word the more complex the counter needed to be effective, the more strength of will focused into it the more effective the spell, the firmer the confidence the more reliable the result. The shouting? Well that wasn't needed but it gave Atemu a rush of certainty in himself that was only doubled when the Militants skidded back into the walls and the door frame as if under assault from a typhoon.

He fell into the pattern, the thrill, of: attack, counter, attack, counter… He found himself cycling familiar favourite words and gestures that proved powerful combos. Displace, Rebound, Oblivion, Decimate… those O and E sounds, the sharp constantans and long syllables that now fell so readily out of him. Thank god Yami had a flourish for the written word to supply him with a large vocabulary which was as good as an armoury here. After all this wasn't about making magic it was about making it take the shape you wanted, commanding your own and that around you.

"RUPTURE." Atreyu had apparently found the exit point and, evidently given the sound, blown it open. "Move! Move! Move!"

Atemu lost his focus for just that second as Atreyu began shepherding the children. The hand that clamped down on his upper arm burnt. Atemu twisted on reflex, will surging in distaste, and the manifest force of his desires whipped the Militant's hand off him without Atemu having to open his mouth.

"BACKLASH!" He raised his hands and thrust in the immediate following seconds to put at least six meters of distance back between he and said Militant as a secondary precaution. Atemu didn't like close combat, physical fighting here, it was fun but it was gloriously messy.

Atemu struggled, he needed to follow Atreyu, but any lowering of his guard to run would bring them after or get him killed. He needed another word to fit his intentions better, a better spell, but you never thought of the best ones under pressure.

"SUPPRESS!" How he managed it was mysterious at best but he imbued as much intention as he could and was sure he'd shouted himself hoarse in the process. The Militants crunched in on themselves writhing.

Atemu twisted, ran, he found Atreyu's rupture easily enough but hardly had the time to look back to check if his spell had worked in buying some time. All he could do now was run. You got used to the running, the body was so light here, but the burning of his lungs and the surge of his feet was still vividly real as anxiety drove him on.

Atreyu had made a passage through the back rooms of the space, the school, through storage rooms but the continuity shattered when from one storage room he ran into a raised warehouse like space where the wall was split asunder onto the open world. Through the tear in the steel Yami could see the streets of suburban houses in a valley, sloping up on the other side to a vast mountainous jungle, he didn't bother skidding to a halt instead he jumped, typically, and found himself well footed a storey down on the grass with a thud. God he was sturdy here, his calves didn't even ache.

"SANCTIFY," Atreyu ordered, he was a good ten feet before him in Atemu's line of vision and he raised his flat palm up to where Atemu had leapt from to seal the tear in the wall he had created. "Come on. That'll only buy us so much time."

"Right," Atemu was painfully hoarse, his energy wavering but the pace had set in fully now and he was lost in that funny place between combat mode and euphoria. This was what his soul was built for, this was what he was immortally regardless of the life time or the planet, and so he kicked up his heels and carried the trail behind Atreyu.

They packed the children between them, Atreyu at the front Atemu at the back, and with a wordless kind of experience Atreyu ran them while Atemu herded the back on through the quietest of the back street and out of view. The city itself seemed empty, devoid of life and fake, but the sun moved abnormally fast being unbound by strict time and in what only felt like twenty minutes it had set.

"Trap," Atreyu mumbled, pulling the nearest child closer to his back. He crouched and the children followed like mice in a game along a bright red fence through the darkness of the street.

Atemu brought up closer to him, making their line a cluster, and tried to whisper.

"What now?"

"Through the park," Atreyu ordered, beckoning him up to the front of the pack. The darkness, the ever increasing darkness, had scared the children to glue to them shaking.

The park was a vast, devoid, little square between the streets crisscrossed by another red, aluminium, fence with broad gaps between the bars round the children's play equipment. There was a little light now but only from the moon and Atreyu hushed them repeatedly. They pressed into the fence, Atreyu grasped his forearm, held Atemu still and they waited. Nothing, crickets, chirping, Atreyu shuffled them again another ten or so feet.

Click.

They froze. Atreyu's hand behind his back, fingers spread on Atemu's chest, keeping the Reaper held off from progress. The children were too frightened to breathe and through the large gaps in the fence Atemu found himself struggling to make out detail in the inky black void settled to almost mist thick consistency about them.

Click, clop.

He twitched in the direction of the sound on the other side of the bars. It wasn't metallic or gun like, more like hooves, and straining eventually his eyes adjusted securely enough to make out the rustling figment under the yellow painted slide.

"Antelope?" Well that was its shape. Really it could've been anything. Still there was nothing untoward about its vibe. Atemu eased, snorting, leaning more into Atreyu's back as he whispered. "Let's move on."

"No." Atreyu countered sharply, voice so soft and wispy Atemu half mistook it for the breeze that rolled over them and rustled the full trees. Atemu pushed his way closer, making Atreyu lower his arm, his chin on the other's shoulder and the petite finely formed Faen held one tiny finger aloft into another corner of the darkness.

Beyond the slide, further back, under the jungle gym Atemu could barely make something out. He'd missed it a moment ago. It was hunched, roundish, like an abandoned school bag. Or at least it was until the Antelope thumped its leg carelessly and the creature- jaguar? Cheetah? No something similar but sharper- bolted from under the structure and lunged at it. It screeched too, high but grunting, and had enough strength to snap the animal's neck and carry it off into the obscure left field in one superfast gesture that flowed beautifully.

Atemu's heart lurched but Atreyu's shoulders fell.

"Now we move," he complied and scampered off ahead on light feet. Atemu dismissed his shell shock to make himself follow but fell into the back again to insure they didn't lose any little feet in the dark.

Under Atreyu's lead they somehow kept their footing down the next alley on the opposite side of the park. A moment they were on a gravel driveway falling steeply down and the children picked up speed in front of Atemu with a newfound relief, certainty, and glancing up Atemu could obscure the sheer wall stretching up to the sky, moonless, must've been the mountains. He need not have looked up because another ten or so meters and they were between the trees. They towered tightly around them, the cement was suddenly pungent undergrowth, and a million little senses and sounds came towering around Atemu with an immensity that was living.

"Will you be alright from here?" Atreyu muttered gently turning back to the children who pressed tightly to each other.

"Yes thank you." They droned it, together, with one bizarre voice that reminded Atemu of auto tuning. Their eyes were reflective as they spoke, gathered all the light, like cats but that effect, that reveal, faded as they ceased to silence.

The floor left Atemu's gut in bemusement. He was never beyond amazement these days. Atreyu nodded, kindly, hand brushing over the scalp of the child who had kept closes to him and which must've been the heart or mind of whatever creature was masquerading as children. That had to be it. Something pretending to be something else was not unheard of in the Natural world. Just like a stick bug this entity had impersonated a gaggle of little ones. Atemu was breathless at the humour and bizarre thrill it provided in realization.

Atreyu glided to stand beside him, still undercover in his blazer and mousy hair unwilling to let the disguise melt of just yet, and they waited another moment or so as the children darted off out of sight into the jungle amongst an endless cacophony of strange sounds.

"Will it be safe out there?" Atemu whispered.

"Oh yes," Atreyu promised him, "much safer."

"You knew."

"Of course, I felt how chained together it was, limbs of one big entity. You would see if to if you had your memories." He murmured arms folding as though he felt the cold of the air but that was more a human instinct than a necessary practicality here.

"That's why they were the only ones we saved," Atemu concluded, "because Itwasn't really children."

"It would've complicated the ecosystem if not."

"Was that a hard Hunt?" he found himself snorting as his tendons relaxed.

"Did it feel like it?"

"My nerves are shot."

"No, it wasn't," Atreyu revealed softly. "Goodnight."

That was all he got. A little raise of Atreyu's hand, a delicate brush of his fingers on Atemu's arm, and then he phased, faded, out entirely leaving Atemu abandoned in the thriving jungle. He'd felt something, Atemu knew, he'd felt some proud camaraderie running alongside Atreyu which the Faen had now entirely brushed off with the curt gesture. Atreyu was still upset with him and that guilt, that fear of what might come, fell back over Atemu as if he was exhaling for the first occasion that evening. They understood, roughly, how to work together true but Atemu was still insufficient, clumsy, and Atreyu was still wounded by his anger towards him.

Atreyu had sworn, in his kind way, that he would forgive Atemu but the Reaper was beginning to consider how long was a 'short while' to a Fean whose memory stretched back to the dawn of time? Atreyu may not forgive him til the slate was wiped clean and they were reincarnated into new lifetimes.

Atreyu might not forgive him for a thousand years…

Monday was God's little joke. A blight on humanity conceived as an eternal punishment for original sin. Even if Yami didn't have a nine-to-five job Monday had expectations. Monday wanted him to achieve things. Monday made him feel generally bad for himself. Monday made him get up early, shower cold, sit in his office chair and rue why he was psychologically guilt tripping himself every night. Had Yami killed a puppy on some drunken bender he didn't remember?

"Mother fucker," Yami groaned because somehow it helped, just to force out a swear word. It was satisfying. Arm thrown over the back of his desk chair, legs straight under the desk, neck slack, head back to stare at the ceiling through his sunglasses because living was too bright for him at the moment Yami couldn't fathom the concept of motivation let alone the practice.

"Argh," he made the sound long, grunting, like a dying animal because that helped too.

Why did it always seem like his house was full of dirty dishes and unfolded laundry on Monday morning? The sink had looked reasonably empty last night and the pile of clothes hadn't bothered him then but now Monday was judging him.

He might have to face up to the fact he had squat but an angry subconscious. That was fine, brainstorming was fine, he still had eighteen months but really nightly self-crucifixion seemed like something he should get checked out. It was a little scary Freudian.

Now Yami was buzzing. He hadn't gone out to dinner for months. The street was busy for the hour, frigid too actually, and he'd been approached once, awkwardly, by a waitress asking if he needed something. Funny looking men standing outside a restaurant was off-putting for patrons perhaps and he would've taken that as his cue to clear off but he'd pay her back for it later when he footed the bill for a meal inside. He huffed, shuffling on his feet, it was burningly cold on his nose out here but anticipation was probably responsible for the majority of the uneasy shakes.

He was glad telepaths didn't exist, for many reasons, the main being that if Yugi could read his mind he probably would've sounded creepy but frankly, at the moment, Yami was hooked on anything with remedial powers on his mood. Yugi was an upper, a distraction, in spirit and body that he might get addicted to if his dreams persisted in this vein much longer. Might not be a bad thing but Yami wasn't traditionally this enthused about dating. Still if Yugi had been a younger woman he would've felt positively diabolical for being so dire to see him again.

"Hey," Yugi made him start with a patter of his fingers against Yami's shoulder that made the author start, lurch, and then spin.

"Hey!" Yami croaked, his voice was unnaturally hoarse, he put it down to an impending cold which was a thought swept right out the window when he got a good look as sleek little Yugi. "What happened to you?"

He had no voice to cry out but his horror was evident to everyone at the outside tables (crazy lot they were. Who ate out, literally speaking, in this weather? Madness!).

"Hmm?" Yugi twigged, fingers rising curiously to the bloody split of his lip as if Yami's notice of it had just revealed it to him. "Oh this? It's nothing."

"Nothing?" He repeated bemusedly. "It looks dreadful! Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Yugi beamed but cringed with a little sound as the motion spread the cut and softened his expression. "Seriously, happens all the time. I'm a walking accident. I don't even know how I managed it."

"If you're sure…"

"Positive," he dismissed casually, grasping the elder's elbow in his hand to thread his arm through Yami's. "Let's eat. I'm starving!"

"Me too," Yami relapsed; it was so easy notto argue with him it was astounding. Especially when Yugi so casually brought himself close.

There were a lot of reasons Yami preferred dating members of the same gender, some of which Yugi showcased, but generally because in many ways it was easier than dating a woman. Call him a slacker but he had a better understanding of the problems of his male partners, a better appreciation of what mystified them, and because of the beauty of culture most young men shared around about the same standards. Neither of them for example was going to get their period and become a temporary bitch, neither of them thought of porn as cheating Yami would guess, and neither of them was afraid to have a big meal and look like a pig. Fuck diets. Now this wasn't to say women weren't marvellous creatures, they were, but Yami liked the ease of same sex relations.

To demonstrate in this case: Yugi picked a table, flicked through the menu appreciatively, and ordered exactly what he wanted, expecting to fork out half happily, and probably had every intention of eating it with his fingers. Yami loved it. It gave him license to act less like the perfect gentleman himself. If he had to guess he would suspect that, as men knew from personal experience that they themselves could never completely be a woman's 'Prince Charming' they never expected their cohorts to be either. Amazing, an absolutely amazing bonus of being homosexual, thank God for the Romans!

"Aw fuck yeah," Yugi purred, feet slipping out from under him beneath the table top as he took a hardy bite of pizza. "This place is great."

"They have desserts." Yami grinned.

"No way," Yugi perked eyes scanning for the glass display housing the cakes and ice creams, "oh sweet Mary mother of God in Heaven… Okay," he concluded decisively, "well this is the end for my self-restraint, been nice knowing you."

"Busy day?" Yami chuckled over his own meal.

"As much as ever," he shrugged, "you?"

"Got nothing done," Yami sighed, "what do you do?"

"Study, work, perpetuate an overwhelming social life and fix people's problems." He laughed. "I work from home online."

"Ah, so you're a Nigerian Prince then?"

"I wish!" Yugi snorted. "I do data entry: entering results, maintaining records, really boring stuff."

"Yet you still manage to get into brawls." Yami joked with a gesture to the split lip which still mildly horrified him.

"I didn't get into a brawl." He assured him again with a sigh. "I'm okay, really, but let me guess; you stay home trying to write all day?"

"Trying being the key word here," the elder groaned, "I don't even want to think about it right now. What about your writing? Anything new and exciting occupying your time?"

"Muslim slave trade pre 1500s," Yugi answered merrily, pizza disappearing at an alarming rate. Where did he hide all those calories?

"Didn't the Brits steal the slaves from Africa?" Yami frowned.

"Not really," Yugi teetered, "post 1500s the Brits, Portuguese, French and Dutch were sold slaves by the Africans, which they traded, but they were more interested in sugar to begin with. Pre 1500 though the Africans, who were complicit for the entiretyof the slave trading golden years, sold slaves to the Muslims in Spain for centuries. Mostly the Muslims used them as concubines and domestic servants, they were status symbols, but they also got slaves from Eastern Europe as well mostly Russian kids."

"Wow." He muttered softly. "You learn something new every day."

"That probably made me sound deliriously racist," Yugi reconsidered. "But the African nations were totally complicit! I mean, they had different terms and conditions on slavery in their countries and the Muslims didn't make it a permanent lifelong thing either, but they still sold to the Europeans for centuries even when half their people thought the white men wanted to fatten them up and eat them."

"No! No!" Yami laughed. "You don't sound terrible, it's just…wow…" he gesticulated. "I have nothing to contribute. I feel kinda dumb. I sit around with my disapproving cat all day."

"But you do research right?" Yugi supposed. "For your books?"

"Oh yeah, loads," he retorted, "but I have such a narrow window of understanding comparatively."

"I'm an idiot." Yugi announced in response. "I just happen to be a vast wasteland of useless trivia information as a result. I swear if I lived in one of those American Treasure or DaVinci Codestyle movies where being an expert on generic trivia info or something stupidly obscure and irrelevant makes you a superhero I would have my own religion."

"All I've learnt this past two years is about religion and evolution," Yami cringed as he chuckled, "makes every conversation into a debate."

"How come?"

"I tried to consolidate both as part of world logic for my books. The why and how stuff happens is based on science and religion's bastard baby."

"So logical next question: what do you believe?" Yugi asked curiously. "Honestly, outside the books, what do you think?"

"Well…" he teetered cautiously. He wasn't one to stir up a meaning-of-life argument over the first date. "I don't know. That's a bit deep for so early in the night."

"Oh come on," the smaller snorted bravely, "don't be a pussy. Own it. I don't care what you believe, really, as far as I'm concerned we've got two options: the first is that I think everyone's technically right and the second is that nobody's right, there's nothing more to this existence, and if that's the case then as far as I'm concerned people can live however makes them happy. I don't want convert you and I don't mind if you think I'm totally bonkers or not. So go," he encouraged, "I'm not going to bite. I am the safest person alive to have this conversation with."

"It's not that I don't have belief," Yami ambled mumbling, "I just…I don't think everyone should be bound to explain themselves or take a stand on it or… I don't know."

"I'm not asking you to have the answers or to defend your opinion to me." Yugi elaborated gently lowering his meal and leaning in closer. "I just want to know what you think. I want your opinion. I want to know you have opinions. I want to know you've got the balls to voice them."

"You…" he laughed, Yugi lifted him while terrifying him by demanding something people avoided so politely so brazenly. Yami was used to playing nice and skirting the issue, he was fairly sure most people were, but Yugi was apparently so settled in facing it that he had no interest in running away from it. "You're very passionate about this."

Yami wasn't quite sure what he wanted to say.

"Maybe," the smaller shrugged, "but I mean it: I'm not asking you to defend what you feel. I'm just always interested by what people think their purpose is. How people put meaning into their lives and their world. I don't want to have to prove what I feel and I don't want to make you. I don't think you should be afraid to be honest though. We're going to come to it eventually."

"I think…" Yami sighed. "I do think there's more. I think there's purpose, something after, someone outside us, things that aren't explainable but I don't know what that is or who that is yet."

"That's a completely legitimate answer," Yugi assured soothingly and at once Yami felt he could breathe again, "see? Was that really so hard?"

"It's just not something I'm asked to discuss a lot. Not seriously." Yami found himself mumbling weakly because he did, indeed, feel weak. "It's important to you though?"

"Yes and no," the smaller confessed. "I know what I feel. I don't mind if someone else believes something different but I want to be with the man who is brave enough to stand up for what he holds sacred, whatever he thinks is goodness, whatever it is."

"You must think I'm a coward," Yami supposed, and it was a suddenly devastating idea to him. He liked Yugi and he, without really knowing him, valued his opinion. Yugi didn't seem flippant about praises.

"No," the smaller sighed sweetly, barely smiling. "I just think I freaked you out. I'm sorry."

Yugi was so soft in his voice, permissive and gentle, but the soul flowing into the emphasis was intensely passionate. There was a force there that, for the first time, Yami found intimidating in the slender, petite, thing that was Yugi. He was a much younger man, gentle and very polite so Yami shouldn't have found him any inch off putting but for that moment as Yugi sighed, gazing off, deeply entrenched in thought evidently intimate to his sense of self Yami found him unfathomably vast and unknowable. Little Yugi was an ocean with all its strangeness, all it's moods and all its unknown entities to discover. Yami had a sense that he might never, ever, know every inch inside Yugi and that reaching the bottom of the other might crush him before he found it just like a diver trying to find the floor.

He reminded Yami…

Yes. He reminded Yami entirely of Atreyu but not in any way that Yugi seemed conscious off or calculating about. He didn't think for a second that Yugi was some mad stalking fan playing him, oh no it was too genuine, but he had this frightful feeling that if Atreyu had ever lived or breathed real air he would've been Yugi. That in itself was terrifying especially when they overlapped, so acutely identical, in Yami's imagination.

The entire scene, sitting in the restaurant, suddenly felt like a surreal out of body experience. Yami had stumbled onto his living character.

"I haven't totally put you off me have I?" Yugi mumbled weakly that intense power retracting to make him very small.

"No," Yami swore to his own surprise, "I think, if anything, you…"

Yami knew what he wanted to say but it would scare Yugi off, vice-versa, if he admitted that it made him irresistible.

"I like you even more for it." He settled on lamely but Yugi took it with that perfect grace of a smile Yami would've intrinsically expected of Atreyu. Gods, suddenly everything about Yugi seemed more revealed and devastatingly beautiful. Yami had the vague awareness he was falling too much too fast but Yugi was so perfectly there he couldn't stop it. Right time, right place, right details all condensed.

"Dessert?" Yugi croaked half laughing at his own suggestion and Yami chuckled.

"Let's do it."

Somehow they fell back into more mundane, more diluted, forms of conversation that gave him a fuller picture of Yugi without making them face each other so directly again. Yami found himself taking about movies, comics, Yugi had a wicked sense of humour but then he fell into saying:

"I just can't take it seriously," he laughed, "they're not vampires they're fairies: all cute and sparkly and angelic."

"Oh no," Yugi clarified appalled, "Fairies are tougher than the Cullens. Fairies are not kiddy creatures. In old mythology-" (once again Yami was sure he was about to marvel at some obscure tid-bit only Yugi seemed to have the mind to store) "-fairies come from 'beyond the Veil' but over the course of human history their realm gets more and more restricted. In early mythology they rip apart whole countries for fun, in later mythology their realm is dying so they're driven to secrecy and steal humans to help them propagate because they're dying. Our stories of them, over time, form this whole logical narrative."

"Fairies are evil?" Yami balked. "You're killing my childhood here!"

"No!" Yugi laughed. "They're not evil but they're dark. Sure they create illusions of light, they shine, they're radiant but they're much darker in how knowing they are, how powerful they are, their motives, their calculation. Besides that they're darker in the sense they draw power from the night, from the moon, from the elemental, unknowing, they're foreign and alien. They don't draw strength from or live in some world of sunshine and endless daytime."

"I'm still not following you," Yami wavered, "I get what you're saying but I'm still not getting how this makes them notevil."

"Evil and Good are like a line," Yugi elaborated helpfully, "you have Good at one end and Evil at the other right? And there's gradients in between those two ends. Light and Dark are just like that, a separate scale, so Light doesn't automatically equal Good and Dark doesn't automatically equal Evil. We just tend to write them off as synonymous. Fairies, or Fae or Fays, are Dark but they're Good creatures mostly. They're not out for anything dreadful in the stories they just want to survive, revel in endless fun and romance, they love Love for the most part."

"You know I totally have to reconsider one of my characters now," he sighed easily, "I'm just going to call you from now on any time I have a question about mythology. Do you have a favourite? Creature or myth I mean?"

"Um…" Yugi groaned tossing one leg over the other as the tip of his fork worried the chocolate on the plate. "There are so many… the fact King Arthur is supposed to come back, the Book of Ezekiel story about the three boys who raise from the fire, the mermaid queen of France, Zeus as the Swan, Gods… Um…I don't know really." He surrendered with a pleased snort.

"Okay, then how about your favourite fictional character of all time?" Yami teased. At this point he was just content to listen to Yugi talk, watch his mind fly off in tangents, watch him fail to ever tell Yami anything really intimate.

"Dean Winchester, if I don't overthink it," Yugi replied immediately, "he's not perfect but he pulls himself together to get shit done and I respect that. You?"

"Mister Darcy." He cringed.

"Wha?" Yugi cackled throwing his cutlery down.

"He's just such a good guy, even when everyone treats him like an asshole, and he's so socially awkward." Yami laughed. "I think the ugly duckling part of me relates and the rest of me wants to be that much of a heartthrob."

"That is not what I expected you to say."

"Somehow Dean Winchester is exactly what I expected you to say." Yami grinned.

Yugi drew both his elbows onto the table, laughing, with his face buried in his palms as he pulled himself back together.

"You're so cute," Yami admitted, "so damn cute."

"Shut up," Yugi snorted, "you're freakin' adorable."

"It's a good thing!" He swore. "I want to drag you onto my couch and watch old movies with you and cuddle. I haven't wanted to cuddle since I was sixteen!"

Oh now Yugi laughed but Yami couldn't quite tell if he was embarrassed for him or because of him. Either way it wasn't exactly cruel disapproval but Yami certainly felt dorkier, more naïve, than Yugi.

"You're a spaz." He rued cheekily. "Am I your first boyfriend or something?"

"Nope," Yami grunted, "you're not my tenth either."

Cue the wolf whistle that brought them a little unwanted staring which turned Yami pink and didn't faze Yugi, confident little spite, at all.

1. Joey's American, yes, if he wasn't it would make no sense for me to use his English dub name where everyone else had their Japanese names. As for the story itself think of it like the dub: it's not in America, or Britain (as my mind keeps thinking it is) but it's never really specifically called Japan (even though it is).

2. This definitely isn't the last time Yami/Atemu will go hunting! Hunts give you clues~

3. Keep an eye on Yugi's references in the chapters they give you little clues about him too. Especially in regards to what he likes.

4. You can check up all the myths and history details too. In this chapter they should all be accurate references to real stories (just let me know if you can't find something). I'm sure 2Teennovelist knows exactly what I mean too when I say fairies are dark.

5. The restaurant they're eating at is modelled off this lovely Italian place I live down the street from

6. I just want to clarify a point on Yami's little ramble about why he prefers being a homosexual. I'm not trying to 'bash' (Lord I hate that word) female characters or heterosexual ships or anything of the sort, promise, but I'm a lesbian and when my lover (of many years) and I go out I think those sort of things. So it felt right to apply it to Yami because when I think about my sexuality I think about some of the advantages of being gay even though it doesn't matter to be one hair either way.

Always love to know what you think, always happy to get favs or alters or anything of the sort and please don't be shy to drop me a line! Have a lovely week guys.