Enjoy ladies!

CHAPTER 3: Where Coincidence and Fate Intersect

"So have I terrified you away from ever wanting to see me again?" Yugi queried as they leant into the frame of Yami's front door.

"I've had more fun tonight, with you, than I've had in yonks." He swore. "I don't even want you to go home."

"Well as wonderful as that is," he grinned, "unfortunately I have to go home. My bed's there."

"I've got one."

"Nope, sorry Casanova," Yugi retorted, "I don't roll into bed on the first date."

"Wouldn't ask you too, I just still want to cuddle you silly," Yami confessed and given Yugi's satisfied, cheeky, grin he must've sounded incredibly dorky.

"Still not happening," the smaller clarified, hands behind his back and utterly serene. Given his nature Yami would've liked to find Yugi a little frazzled, to make him blush, but that was evidently a statistical impossibility well outside Yami's power. Hopefully that would change someday.

"Can I get a kiss instead then?"

"Nope," Yugi answered immediately with just as much flippancy, "I don't kiss on the first date either. Besides you might give me an infection." He warned with a little gesture to his lower lip.

"No even a peck?" Yami rued.

"Not even." He replied brow twitching up. "What's the rush anyway? You think I'm going to run off to Cuba? I'm sure they don't extradite but…"

"No," Yami mulled, "I just really like you. I really want you around."

"Well I like you to." Yugi reassured smoothly without ever colouring.

"See, that's just it!" He sighed, shoulder against the door, gesturing over Yugi. "I have trouble reading you at all. You're so chilled. I can't tell if you're really into me or not. I know I'm into you and I think you can tell right away but I can't read you."

"Hey," the smaller scoffed, grasping Yami's collar gently in one set of lovely fingers and dragging him in close till Yami prayed they were about to kiss. "If I didn't like you you'd know. Trust me. I don't mess around. So relax because if you come on too heavy you might scare me off."

"I don't think an army could scare you off." He chuckled. At any other moment he would've taken Yugi's grip as an invitation to sweep his arms around him like a bad Disney movie but somehow Yami sensed Yugi wouldn't appreciate that unless it was explicitly on his terms so he resisted.

"Doubt it." Yugi conceded in agreement and for a second, Yami suspected or hoped, Yugi would relent to peck him on the cheek just teasingly but he was denied even that small mercy. Instead Yugi eased his grip on Yami's collar, hand sliding down his clavicle and falling from his body back to the slender hip of its owner. "Have a good night."

"We're going to do this again?" Yami questioned in his best attempt to seem casual.

"Pinkie swear," Yugi laughed hopping down the stairs of his front porch, "call me."

"Look after that lip." He called after him and, untouchable, Yugi swivelled flashing Yami one of those amazingly genteel sparkling smiles that must've been stolen right from Atreyu and played in his eyes before turning on his way with his hands confidently thrust in his pocket.

Yami sighed into the wood work of the door, turning his face into it, his heart didn't seem to know if should swell or shrink in elation or fear. He wanted Yugi back beside him already. This curiosity, the bubble of happiness Yugi magically formed, was going to be the death of him. He wanted to know what it was like to be given permission to do anything with the little creature because, truly, he was learning that nothing happened to Yugi without his permission. Nothing touched Yugi, nothing infected him, and he was his own source of light rather than chasing after others. Yugi was totally self-sufficient, totally mystifying when it struck him to be so, totally un-needing and dazzling for it.

Then there was the other thing, the biggest detail from tonight, Yugi was in every way an embodiment of the ethereal Atreyu. Yami it seemed had underestimated his preference for the character. Atreyu had always been a main character in his novels but never central, never totally necessary, and Yami had never really thought he had much of a deep attachment to the fiction. It must've been his dreams which gave Atreyu life and will all his own outside of Yami's conscious control. Atreyu was an idol character, something to aspire to but never touch, a beacon or a lovely aside that once brought into the primary focus of the text must surely lose some of his charm when the mystery was taken away. He was starting to reconsider that. Maybe Atreyu did have enough substance to maintain a more explored, developed, role in his next book?

Lord how did he even end up on this tangent? Why did it matter that Yugi reminded him so much of Atreyu? Sure there that fondness but in the grand scheme of a relationship in the real world it was irrelevant. Besides he didn't want Yugi insulted by the notion that Yami wanted him to live out some ridiculous fantasy he himself didn't understand. Atreyu had never, not once, in the novels been a love interest so now it seemed peculiar. Then again Yami, truly, had no concept of what would or would not insult Yugi. He didn't have many hard concepts of Yugi's likes or dislikes in general.

Yami turned himself more fully into the door, forehead resting across the wood, hands in his pockets and groaned. He was falling hard, stupendously hard at that. He hadn't longed for someone this bad since he was sixteen and learning love. It had been Anzu and they'd both failed to live up to each other's expectations miserably. He may not have ever been some heartthrob like Darcy but Yami was typically more sceptical, more reserved, more restrained and slow moving. Partners tended to rush him and not the reverse. He tended want that slow romantic waddle through life and he was usually competently smooth in delivering it. Yugi made him want to run and he barely knew the kid.

It was true, he barely knew him, he'd only met him three days ago and since then seen him once for a few hours. Enchanted time or not that was hardly anything to throw your pants off about and celebrate over. Had it just been too long since the last boyfriend? Was he getting old and clucky? Was Yugi his type or was he just fascinating and soothing? He beat his head against the door once, groaning for good measures, and decided he needed to pack it up for the night and clear his cottoned head.

Now that wasn't fair, he realized, Yugi was supposed to be his distraction from the wicked dreams and now Yami was looking for something to distracting himself from daydreaming about Yugi. Unfathomable cruelty the world knew no boundaries.

How Shakespeare…

"Sounds like he's not that into you," Joey decided as he helped himself to Yami's yoghurt, "sounds kinda cold too."

"He's not," he tried to explain haplessly, "he's painfully sweet. He's just…maybe he's just out of my league?"

"Well you're a dork," Joey added supportively, "and he's what? Super confident?"

"Thanks Jou," Yami scoffed, "really digging ya support here."

"Well he hasn't called you, right?"

"Hasn't been that long, two days," Yami shrugged. Two totally dreamless days as well for that matter and after no Atreyu or Yugi he was exhibiting a minor case of cabin fever. "I don't know. Let's ignore my love life and check in with yours. How's the asshole?"

"He's…" Joey struggled, exhaling breathlessly, "he's… weird?"

"Into kinky shit eh?" Yami teased.

"No!" The blonde snorted. "It just wasn't like I expected. It was kind of like hanging out with you for a night. It wasn't like a date with a girl."

"Of course it wasn't."

"Yeah but like…" Joey flailed exasperatedly for some sufficient explanation. "We hung out at his place, which hell might as well have been a restaurant, and we fought like scorpions and it was sorta fun but I figured that was it and then he asked if I wanted to go out again."

"Someone's a Bipolar-Bear." Yami whistled in sing-song as he threw his feet up on the coffee table. "Least Yugi's not that weird."

"Yugi's pretty fucking weird."

"True," he would concede "but not that weird."

"Eh." Joey mumbled in surrender to the issue.

"So did you have fun?"

"I think." He answered cautiously leaning into his knees as his hand worried the back of his neck. "I wanted to punch him once or twice but I can dig that."

"And he obviously had fun or he's a masochist." Yami felt it safe to assume. "Was it too weird that he was a guy?"

"Nah," Joey teetered loosely, "I mean it was strange but it wasn't like we were anywhere where people were staring or anything."

"You get a kiss?" He teased but it very quickly turned sour.

"Yeah," the American mumbled.

"Fucker!" Yami groaned burying his face in his knees. "Damn it."

"Heh," Joey smirked, "you're whipped and cock blocked Bro."

"You're a fairy Bro." He snapped back but really there wasn't much point hazing on Joey for his bad luck. "What was the kiss like?"

"Not used to being the bitch," he shrugged as his introduction to the issue, "but it was actually pretty hot. He's mildly terrifying but like-"

"Mildly terrifying?" Yami soaked that up.

"-Shut up," he retorted, "but like it was when he was the least pretentious."

"Sounds like a Heathcliff if you ask me." He replied comprehensively.

"The fuck's a heath cliff?"

"Lit reference, never mind," Yami chuckled. "What did you doin school?"

"Oh yeah!" Joey pepped snapping his fingers. "He said he knew you by the way!"

"Me?" He baulked. "What's his name?"

"Seto Kaiba."

"No," Yami shook his head mildly, he'd definitely heard of him but: "never met him."

"He was absolutely convinced you knew each other." The blonde insisted crossing his legs up on the couch.

"What he say?"

"Something like: that prat's always talking shit about me," Joey recited loosely, "not in those exact words but he said you should cast him as 'less of a dick' in your next book basically."

"He thinks one of my characters is based off him?" Yam frowned mystified. "What a weirdo. I have seriously never met him."

"Weird." The blonde quirked and neither of them bothered to take the matter further.

Yami wasn't a frequenter of the New Age market by any means. He wasn't Pagan, or Neo-Pagan, or Neo-Wiccan, or Modern Church of Satan, Indigo Child or any of those perplexing minorities that seemed three helpings hippie and another two confounding to him. Still they provided an interesting alternative perspective he'd summoned up once or twice in the first Trance novel and he found it helpful sometimes to reattach himself to those places and re-explore the vein. With no word from Yugi and currently gathering his courage to spark the conversation himself he had nothing better to do but research new plot options.

Besides, wandering through the punk rock record stores and the alternative jewellery parlous in town wasn't expensive by any means but it did force him to exercise. He found himself in a book store a street back from the main shopping district later on Wednesday afternoon that way and, to his surprise, serendipity decided if Yami was too anxious to come to Yugi it would throw the pair of them together like a poorly constructed plot device.

"You can't be serious." Yugi was chattering rather animatedly to the shop keeper. He was pristinely clean, as ever, but between the stack of books in one arm and the over-stuffed backpack he sounded haggard. "You're supposed to sell supplies."

"Well we don't have what you're looking for Sir." The girl chirped irritably across the glass counter.

"What supply store," the young man floundered in exasperation, gesticulating, "doesn't stock iron and rock salt? You're kidding me."

"I'm not." She deadpanned nastily. Apparently this had been going on for several moments.

"Yugi?" He called cautiously. "Is everything alright?"

"Huh?" He pivoted jerkily. "Yami! Hi!" he twigged bemusedly and twisted back to the store clerk. "Never mind then, thank you."

Pushing off the counter, Yugi lugged the books closer to his chest and forced himself to smile as he took Yami's elbow and led them from the store. He had them on the side walk before he sighed, moaned really, and ran his hand over his face.

"Are you okay?" Yami queried, offering his arms. "Here, let me take a few of those."

"Thanks," Yugi mumbled relenting the heavy stack of books to the other's care to run both hands over his face, "sorry. I'm not the best right now."

"You look dreadful." He conferred likewise. The split lip was mostly healed but the bags under Yugi's eyes were criminal and the scattering of band aids, bandages and bruises both perplexed and frightened him. "What happened?"

"I got knocked over by some stupid high schoolers." The smaller dismissed tiredly. "I fell on the cement. I've had a bad few days aside," he laughed thinly, "I'm not myself right now. How are you?"

"I'm fine," Yami answered, rolling his shoulders to shuffle the weight of the books. How did the boy carry all these? "I've been thinking about you but I was too embarrassed to call. Thought I'd let you take it at your pace."

"I was going to call," Yugi promised sympathetically as though apologising for failing to meet some obligation he had considered important, "I just lost track of time."

"No," Yami insisted, "don't worry. You want to sit down somewhere? I can get us lunch. You look like you need it."

"That'd be great." The boy chuckled though the sound was thin and he appeared close to failing at reigning in his veiled hysterics. "I'm starving."

"You tell me that a lot."

"I think I have a tapeworm." Yugi joked.

Yami did his best to veer them in the direction of a more hospitable location. He knew there was a café round the corner but they were only half way to it when Yugi grunted at the bench and begged his pardon to pause momentarily.

"Oh god," he heaved, throwing off the back pack to let it slump on the steel frame rolling his shoulders trying to work the kinks out of his neck. As he leant down and came back up Yami got a better look at today's accessories.

"Those are very nice." He supposed lamely gesturing to the bangle and the necklace.

"I made it in year ten art." Yugi demonstrated raising his wrist to flash the oddly glyphic bangle before twisting the pendent in his fingers. "This one's a pentacle, silver and iron, moonstone centre. A friend gave it to me. I don't usually wear them together. They tend to make me look a bit clichéd."

"They're beautiful." Yami assured him consolingly. "So it's been a bad week you mentioned?"

"Long story," the smaller groaned, "ancient history. I-"

His phone wailed in his pocket and he glanced apologetically back to Yami.

"-I'm sorry," he was apologising a lot today, "I have to take this. Do you mind?"

"No, go right ahead," Yami encouraged though Yugi needed little of it.

"Hello?" He sighed somewhere between relief and exhaustion. "Yeah… no they didn't have any either…I tried there already. Listen," he groaned gently, "it'll be fine. When you drop the kit off I'll just-" He paused. "What? In the hospital? How'd Bakura manage that this time?"

Yami frowned. What was worse was despite this, despite the rather grim expression on Yugi's thoughtful features, he didn't sound dreadfully surprised at this turn of events. In fact it was as if people dropped in and out of hospitals every day in Yugi's opinion like they were coffee houses.

"Crap," Yugi sighed eventually, pinching the bridge of his nose between his index and forefinger as he leant into one particularly strong leg kicking up the heel of the other. "He'll be alright. Knowing him it could've been worse. Drop the kit off at my place and I'll go with you to the hospital… already? But then how am I- Ryou I can't. I don't have a car!"

A note akin to distress began to creep into Yugi's syllables as his body stiffened.

"No, I understand, but Ryou-" His caller once more cut him off and Yugi tone wavered into panic when he finally cut back through the din on the other end. "-Ryou I need that equipment or I can't go home tonight! Bail? Well then Bakura's definitely not leaving the hospital till you get there! He's broke! Ryou, please, I really need you to come through with me on this…"

Another tenuous moment and Yugi's face contorted between amazement and disgust that Yami was sure border lined deeper rage.

"Fine," he hissed in surrender throwing his hand up, swallowing thickly as only Yami could see. Yugi's eyes were shining. It was bizarre, frightening, to picture him crying but what followed next was a picture of self-control. "Fine, don't worry about it then… Yeah, I am…I'm pissed because Bakura's not the only one who's got it hard. No, seriously Ryou, let's not even start. It's not worth it. I'm too tired. Just text me and let me know you're alright… Yeah, okay… no don't apologise right now. Tell me later… Of course I love you. You're family. I'm just not in the best mood, can you blame me? Alright, bye, love you."

Yugi's fingers curled as he snapped the phone shut in his fist, pressing the heels of his palms into his temples as he hunched over in a sound that, had his teeth not been so tightly shut, Yami was sure would've been a scream. Then he threw his hands down, head back, sniffing and his fingers seemed unsure what to do because they were over his face again ad he looked like he was about to cry.

"Oh Yugi," Yami breathed, he couldn't help himself. He reached for him but, rather sharply, the other pushed him back.

Yugi then appeared to realise what he'd done and blinked, eyes hot, up at Yami so apologetically it was almost heart breaking.

"I'm sorry," he whispered appealing, "I'm having a really bad day right now."

"It's okay." He swore still rather desperate to take the stubborn creature into his arms and comfort him.

Yet Yugi was persistent, batting at himself despite Yami's arguing, that he perfectly alright and he wasn't crying.

"Yugi," Yami breathed uncomfortably, "you're not involved with anything untoward are you? You're not in trouble?"

"No," the smaller answered shaking his head laxly, "nothing like that. That was a friend of mine. His boyfriend's a dick. Ryou's always cleaning up his messes and I get dropped every time something like this comes up. It's just annoying today. It… it sounds so stupid but I'm having a really hard time feeling safe in my apartment right now and I have this box of stuff I use to calm down when I'm being irrational. I leant it to Ryou and now Bakura's gotten into a fight. It's not pills or anything like that."

"You are going to be the death of me." Yami chuckled as his suspicions finally allowed him to exhale. "Let me hug you? Then we can figure this out together. I've got nothing better to do today. I'll help you look for replacements."

"No I'm fine," Yugi persisted, "I don't want to bother you. It's my problem."

The very idea of making the older man, of asking anyone, to help Yugi in picking up his messes was evidently quite a deplorable and shameful concept to the boy. There was some suggestion there, that Yami found himself discovering intuitively, that Yugi couldn't imagine damaging others collaterally where it could be avoided. The word 'shield' flew to the forefront of Yami's mind and Yugi immediately struck him as that sort of person. Yami knew, in that naturally instinctive way, that Yugi was the kind of young man to bear everything on his own shoulders rather than trouble others, the sort who shielded people from his personal hardships, so he could assist them in theirs without forcing the sense of reciprocity upon them. Yugi seemed perfectly the sort to see his disasters as something to protect his loved ones from, something to face alone, something he ought to handle himself.

"I'm not going anywhere," Yami repeated stubbornly to his own surprise, he found something depressing in the notion that Yugi considered his problems bothersome. "You might as well let me help. You can pay me back next time. I've got nothing else to do anyway."

"I'm going to be dreadful company today," he promised a little coolly but not at all unkindly, "and I truly appreciate it but I don't expect anything."

"Don't care," Yami shrugged, "I want to spend time with you. It's sad, I know, but I've got no life."

"So you are a glutton for punishment." Yugi decided oddly, like they'd had some discussion of if previously though Yami couldn't for the life of him recall it. Either way he smiled, pulled together once more, and sincere as ever when he relented finally. "Okay."

"You owe me a hug." He teased gently too winded from his victory to be exuberant.

"Later," the smaller redirected, "I need a little while to calm down."

"Okay," Yami was learning to settle for whatever inch Yugi would forfeit.

Yugi had this perpetual sense of purpose that strengthened visibly with every step. Yami had never been one for the remedial power of a coffee himself but the steady sips the other aptly forced himself to take appeared to be plied to some ritual in their exhibition. They didn't speak but Yami had plenty to narrate because Yugi, in the most curious way, silently put his wavering self all back together again over the course of the cup. His eyes settled on the window but appeared focused well beyond that and he evidently found something to console himself with after another sip.

Yami could've spoken, there was plenty of idle chit-chat he had stored away for these occasions, but it would've been grossly inappropriate when, voyeuristic as he was, he got to be privy to his metamorphosis. Yugi went through his bag, sent a very carefully worded text Yami assumed to this unlikable Ryou, put the little phone away and stripped himself of every bit of jewellery on his person from head to toe in the most disgusted and systematic way imaginable. When he had them all in a pile, the star, the bracelet, the earrings… he swept them inside the backpack and put them to rest with supreme finality.

The act of clearing himself off helped, reinvigorated, and was to Yami almost symbolically cleansing. Yugi evidently agreed because the next course of action he deemed appropriate was to strip his wounds of their coverings which Yami had to protest.

"You'll get an infection," his inner mother hen sobbed, hand outstretched.

"They're scrapes," Yugi cast off, "I'm just hiding behind bandages and they're making me feel weak."

"They're keeping your wounds clean."

"I'd rather be well in mind than in body." He retorted coolly bundling up the refuse of the medical rejects. "Call me crazy but I'm strictly for making matter reflect the mind."

"Well, that's all very good," Yami supposed, "but are you sure?"

"Positive." Yugi affirmed strongly. "I'm going to call an old friend of mine, cash a favour, and I'm going to have a whooping great dinner tonight, in my own home, when all this nonsense is done. I'll be damned if some nightmare is going to put my life in shambles. Fuck Freud."

Yugi may have been the only person Yami knew who could quite literally wage war on the subconscious. Maybe there was something to be learnt here?

"You really have that much trouble sleeping?"

"Don't you?" Yugi scoffed playfully but there was an element of knowing to it that perhaps Yami just inferred all on his own.

"No, not sleeping," Yami replied, "my subconscious just tends to beat me up."

"I love it when I'm asleep," he clarified, "I just hate falling asleep lately."

"That has got to be one of the strangest contradictions I've ever heard." He teased. "What keeps you up?"

"Freud and Vermin."

"Is that literally or metaphorically?"

"That's my secret." Yugi teased back weakly. "Now just give me a sec, I'm going to call in that favour."

Joey was right, oddly enough, Yugi was weird and Yami was beginning to think the little creature would edge Kaiba out of the top spot for that reason without knowing it. It was mildly off putting but more than that it was concerning. He could find legitimate reasons why Yugi would want to be private after such a brief relation but there was the distinct impression that there were much bigger things going on here than Yugi was portraying. Yami didn't like that twice now he'd found the boy distressed or injured and now involved intimately in the bizarre.

Then it got a whole lot weirder when Yugi pressed the phone to his ear.

"Hey, Kaiba?" He greeted mildly. "Yeah it's me, am I the ghost of Christmas past or what? Don't you know it… working on that… why do you always assume I want something? Maybe I just wanted your miraculous company? Okay, true, remember Mokuba 07? I'm cashing my pay check."

Yami frowned, it rather difficult not to tilt his head likewise, Yugi knew Kaiba?

"The usual suspects: rock salt, iron, a shit load of silver and whatever extras you can spare. Yeah well the economy's bad and I've got a serious rat problem these days since the printing press was invented…" Yugi snorted jokingly. It was an inside pun of some sort Yami didn't appreciate. "I cleared your whole fucking house last time. All six floors. If Mokuba had been over ten I would've chargedfor my services… well getting off your ass for once is good for you. Yeah. Can you drop it off this afternoon? Oh you're a champion, my hero, give Mokie a thousand years of love from me. Okay, bye sour puss!"

The clamshell shut and Yugi fell back in the chair alleviated and delighted with his lot in the world.

"Yes," he purred, "problem solved."

"You know Seto Kaiba?" Yami collapsed into asking and the young man blinked with unnecessary scepticism in response.

"Yeah," Yugi responded cautiously, "do you?"

Yami had the impression his answer would be dissected very carefully.

"We've never met but my friend's dating him."

"Yourfriend?" Yugi reeled with a kind of moderately restrained amusement. "Small world! Your friends with the infamous Joey Wheeler?"

"You've met?"

"No but I make it my business to know when a Hitler reincarnation like Kaiba's interested in someone," he grinned, "as far as I'm concerned he hasn't been in love since the Bronze Age so I have been getting all the goss I can on Mister Joey Wheeler."

"You don't say?" Yami chuckled yet something here unnerved him. "You know, it's funny, a couple of days ago Joey said that Kaiba was convinced he and I had met. You think maybe he got us confused?"

"Your friend knows you write the Trance books right?" Yugi prodded.

"Of course."

"Then there is no way Kaiba got us confused," he laughed, "Kaiba's almost a fan of your work which for him is pretty damn impressive."

"You sure?" He balked.

"Oh yeah," he insisted, "he and Ryou both read your books. Besides, Kaiba knows everyone I know, freakin stalker, you just wait till Joey Wheeler mentions we're dating. He'll have a hernia."

"We are dating though aren't we?" Yami felt himself desperate to check.

"Definitely," Yugi settled for the record, "stop worrying so much."

"Why would Kaiba care we're dating though?" He pressed. He was still struggling to find any moment he'd ever made contact with the man while pushing through the surreal realization that Yugi's world enfolded Kaiba's.

"Well because he has an opinion on everything, first off," the young man joked, "then because he reads your stuff and then because…"

"What?"

"Nah, it's ridiculous," he suppressed, "never mind. I've sounded enough like a freak for one day."

"No, come on," Yami chuckled thinly, "you've got to tell me now you've alluded to it. It's not fair if you don't."

"Well…" Yugi coloured, which Yami found disarming in itself, and struggled for the appropriate phrasing: "I've had a strict no datingpolicy for a while now."

"How long?" He blinked. Somehow that made sense given how closed and distanced Yugi seemed from intimacy at intervals. It was part of that untouchable Atreyu quality to him.

"Um," Yugi laughed, "since I was thirteen so…seven years?"

"Whoa." He exhaled sharply. That was commitment. It frazzled him. "Why? And why me now?"

"Long, complicated, private, stay-up-all-night-sobbing story," was his answer. Yugi spread out his hands in a silencing motion. "Really cannot bring myself to go into it today but I do like you. Like I keep telling you, even though you don't believe me-"

"I believe you I just don't get why." Yami laughed breathlessly.

"-and it's…I might as well. You know?" Yugi shrugged. "The stars aligned, the omens are right, and you're a really sweet guy considering how you dragged me out of my pit today."

"I didn't do anything." He rasped honestly. "I did nothingtoday. You dragged yourself up. I swear to God Yugi you…sometimes it scares me how little you seem to need people, or me, or anything. I envy that strength of character."

"Psh," Yugi dismissed, "I need people. I love people. I get desperately lonely without people to love and protect and be with. I'm just good at damage control. You did help though. You snapped me out of it. Made me shut up and pull myself together for a minute."

"Yeah but you did all the pulling together."

"Yeah but Yami," he became very serious as he pressed his hands between his knees and leant forward, "I don't let a lot of people see me when I'm down. You can take it. You ought to give your likeability more credit."

"I think you think you're more difficult to deal with then you actually are." He challenged. "I mean, you mystify me, but you're very self-sufficient, dignified and…radiant. Really, I don't feel like I'm ever going to get to do the whole ride-in-on-a-white-horse boyfriend thing to save the day with you."

"I like saving the day too much myself," Yugi confessed, "I'm a hero-hog. Just trust me though: I like you, I'm always as honest as I can be and when I'm ready to spill the beans you will get everything you want explained and then some."

"Okay," he sighed soothed, "but you are going to stop being so mysterious some day?"

"I'm not mysterious." He defended good humouredly. "I just have a lot of baggage that is not appropriate first date fodder."

"I can take that."

"That's why I like you." He smiled. An Atreyu smile at that, the kind of smile Yami was sure parted seas when struck by the urge to do so, the kind of smile that wielded power and found him entrapped as a resulting aftershock.

For a split second time could've diverged. Yami saw two possible options that hinged on his next sentence: revel in the pleasure of being wanted by Yugi without question or ask, like he desperately wanted to and was yet terrified to, if maybe his dreams were as real as they claimed to be. Was Atreyu real? Were the dreams astral projections? Was he really some fantastical hero who had betrayed the millennium old code of secrecy of the Reapers? Was it all true in a way Yami had always neglected to let himself consider? He'd written off that possibility, that they were real, as day dreaming and escapism in wanting his life to be more meaningful or exciting. Sure the dreams always presented logical explanations for how they interacted with the real world but dreams often seemed reasonable at the time…

It couldn't be real, logic dictated, but Yugi seemed to walk the line between the reality and fiction that Yami was starting to lose faith in. Everything seemed so aligned. If the dreams were real than Yugi was Atreyu and, if he had to guess, Seto Kaiba would be the Atlantean Watcher Cobalt who Atemu (Yami?) was so unfriendly with.

That would mean though…

If Yugi was Atreyu, if Yami pretended the impossible was possible for a moment, then did he know? Because he would certainly know Yami was Atemu if it was true but then why would Atreyu, if Yugi was Atreyu, date Yami? Atreyu belonged mind, body and soul to Jenzar Fraveous the Reaper Champion Yami couldn't hold a candle to. He would never stray like this, so playfully, given what Yami had always known about the Atreyu character. His love for his partner, Jenzar Fraveous, was immortally set in stone and as simply undeniable as gravity.

Was that why Yami didn't want to divulge? Not because he was afraid that every nightmare he'd ever had was real, that there was a big picture to face up to with demons included, but because if his books, his dreams, were in-fact real astral projections then Yugi Mouto/Atreyu Damestaire was either playing him or could never really be his?

No. Atreyu Damestaire would never play someone. He was too kind for games like that, too benevolent, in Yami's experience. So unless there was something he was missing Atreyu, if he was real, would only attempt a romance with him through Yugi (his reincarnation and conscious real world self) if Yugi didn't know, when awake, that he was Atreyu. Just like Yami hadn't ever thought Atemu Pheramora was his immortal self?

He sounded bonkers, absolutely bonkers, this was ridiculous and deluded. He needed to kill the parasitic thought. His imagination was running off with him…

"You still in there Dr Robinson?" Yugi teased.

"Huh?" He blinked. "Yeah, sorry, just having a little happy spasm."

"Well get ready for an epileptic fit because I owe you a hug."

"I get to cash it now do I?" Yami chuckled but his mind was still rampant with delirium as Yugi grinned.

"You better because I should probably go wait for Kaiba." He elaborated pushing his chair back from the table. "You want to go somewhere this weekend too?"

"Like where?" He answered dragging himself up.

"Botanic Gardens?" Yugi suggested. "I love em."

"Never been, sounds fun," he allowed because as he gathered up his wallet he still couldn't totally detach himself from the inane idea. Yami felt distant, lodged in his head with whatever brain tumour he must've had but he made himself come back to the moment to enjoy this.

Yugi was taking pity on his languid brain though when he hooked his arms round Yami's neck and squeezed him close. Yami fumbled, he wanted to hold Yugi but he couldn't fathom how. Part of him instantaneously jumped to the thought of embracing Atreyu who was too delicate, too pristine, for scruffy Atemu to imagine breaking with his foolish hands. Yami tried, arms round Yuig's taunt waist but it still felt fake, insubstantial, inferior and when they fell apart he could tell neither of them were satisfied.

Yugi didn't meet his eyes, he was looking somewhere more internal than external, his head titled down, frowning, and something uncomfortable seemed to play across his face as he played with some idea out of Yami's range of perception. In his own mind Yami was sure he'd failed to achieve a standard. Surely Champion's like Jenzar Fraveous had knowing hands to embrace fairy deities like Faens, like Atreyu, like Yugi.

Suddenly, like he was ruffling something off, Yugi came back to him again and there was a surge, something real, as the slender young man threw his arms round Yami's torso and clutched between his shoulders. Yugi's hands over his shoulder blades, his face buried in Yami's chest, Yami felt for perhaps the first time that what was hiding against him was the actual Yugi who he'd half spied through a veil till now.

He almost fell back in the rush of joy that ran through his bursting chest because Yugi felt real. He could practically hear the hum of real energy inside Yugi's taunt body and afraid it might vanish he clutched him back with intensity, a strength, which frightened him. Yugi didn't care, evidently, even if Yami was rather perplexed by himself. Instead Yugi nuzzled his clavicle, as if he was stubbornly trying to bury himself into Yami and hide.

Yami's chin found the top of his head, chin cradled by Yugi's skull, and half rocked them as they stood. Everything seemed very intimate at once in the coffee shop, which in itself had all but vanished away, especially as Yugi's fingers ran fumbling over his shoulder blades and between. He half wondered if the slender boy was looking for him to have wings, or some other secret, but then he caught, realized, that Yugi was more desperately tracing a familiar shape in the bone structure that must've somehow comforted him.

Yugi seemed small then, for an instant, he almost felt scared, lonely, and needy to Yami's arms. Yet by the same token Yugi felt tangible, honest, to him then and Yami had never thought he was more beautiful than now when Yugi allowed him to see this morsel. Yugi's face twisted to the side under his chin and the small creature squeezed him vice like. Yugi appeared to half want Yami to never let go and yet he obviously realized he should go.

Yami wasn't going to be the one to end this, not by any power under the sun, if he had a choice. He didn't however because, as always, Yugi had all the choices and in the next second was very quickly untangling himself from Yami as if he were embarrassed or ashamed.

"I better go," he whispered, that bubble of air back between them.

"Okay," Yami allowed gently, he shouldn't be ungrateful for what Yugi had just consented to show him of himself. "Take care alright?"

"I will," Yugi promised. "Thanks for today."

It was only then as Yami very carefully handed Yugi back his books he bothered to really take in the covers: LaVey, Crowley, Gardiner, Demon Possession, Myths of the BCE, The Exorcist's Basic Principles…. All that dread of his concern started creeping back as Yugi vanished round the corner of the cold grey street.

1. If you've ever read "Weathering Heights" you'll know Mr Darcy and Heathcliff are both heart throbs and yet utterly juxtaposed opposite. Gentleman vs. Asshole. Reserved vs. Insane. Still, Heathcliff enchants a lot of young ladies.

2. LaVey wrote "The Satanic Bible" (and a lot of other brilliant books), you should've all heard of Alister Crowley (who again wrote a mammoth of a book), Gardiner wrote a lot of what is considered traditional Neo-Paganism and the rest are entirely fictional. I do however have work by all three of them I've scrolled through so they are relevant in their special ways.

3. Let the theories on Yugi abound!

4. Let the theories on Yami's dreams abound!

5. Actual smut next time~

See you next time lovelies!