Forever Is A Day in Your Arms

You once heard someone say, though you would be lying if you said you knew who had said it, that sex complicates relationships. You remember dismissing the advice from your conscious mind rightly assuming the very moment that it passes you it is one issue you will never have to deal with. Not personally at any rate. With no physical body of your own to do as you please with (as the one you share came with a set of preestablished, undisclosed but mostly honored 'ground rules'), you assume you would be dispensing advice, if you were sought after at all for it. Never do you dream you would be – that both of you – would be put in this position.

There begs the question, of course, if what you are both doing can even be called sex in the conventional sense. Neither of you can actually physically touch one another; not in the tactile person-to-person sense, though it is something you have always ached for. It seems silly to want that… You both already connect on so many other levels that most people cannot connect on. You can meld minds together, spirits together, and those moments where you cannot tell where he leaves off and you begin are orgasmic in them of themselves. Sometimes when both of you have done nothing more than commune together as one, Yugi's body reacts the same way as if both of you had been doing much more than simply trying to blend each other's feelings together. You tease him, gently, about it, "That is quite the compliment, aibou!" just to see him blush and give you that little smile he's only ever given you. When he says, "You're welcome?" it sends you both laughing.

Only Yugi can make you laugh when you're alone together. Even when he's still confined to his room after coming home from the hospital (no school for another week, doctor's orders), he cracks wise about everything and nothing, and you swear if you had the breath to breathe with, you'd have been dead from laughing so hard long ago. He does it just to make you laugh – nothing lights those eyes up the way they do when you start chuckling over some inane remark he's made over a Duel Monster card. Goodness knows he puts up with your snark when you're amongst your friends. They think he smiles like he does because that's just his personality… it's actually his way of trying not to laugh his ass off because you've made some wayward remark about the amount of skin Anzu is showing today. Or when the hell was Jounouchi going to discover the fascinating properties of proper hair care, seriously, look at that mess! There have been times Yugi can no longer hold it in behind a simple smile. Once he started laughing so hard at something you'd muttered his friends were concerned he'd suddenly lost his mind.

The question of what both of you had done in the hospital comes up a few days later. You've taken to lying beside Yugi in bed, one arm draped over his waist, often with his back pressed up against your chest. You like it… you like being able to surround Yugi with your presence, and feel his warmth relax into you. You like that you can smell his hair, the only scent you can smell when you're in spirit form, and you take it in with heady satisfaction. Maybe you are already in the afterlife, you think then, because you cannot imagine there being a greater bliss than this.

Yugi elbows you gently. "I heard that."

You chuckle. "I wasn't exactly keeping it from you."

Yugi blushes. You can't see it, but you know he is. "Mou hitori no boku?" he begins hesitantly, turning over to face you, touching your arm when you move it to keep it where it is. "I've been thinking… about… you know. I…" He trails off, looks away uncertainly, his blush growing to his neck as you smile and trace his cheek with a single finger. After a moment, he raises his eyes to yours again. "I'm a little confused. About it."

You stop your caress. "What confuses you, aibou?" you ask softly.

"It's just… we never actually… I mean, it, you know, happened in here," he touches the Puzzle lying on the bed between yourselves. "I mean, we're both spirits when we're in the Puzzle, right? Spirits can't have sex, right?"

"How many spirits have you met?" you ask quietly, lightly running your fingertips up and down his arm, tracing here and there.

Yugi smiles. "Just you, so far. What… What do you think?"

You smile back. "I think you're overcomplicating the matter. Your body and your mind were telling you what it was you were feeling."

Yugi's blush is probably taking over his entire body now. You bottle the urge to check to see if that is actually true. "What," he struggles to keep looking you in the eye, "do you think we did?"

You lay your hand fully on his cheek, and he smiles, and thinks for a fleeting moment how wonderful you are simply because you make him feel so much with one touch. "We made love, aibou. No, it was not the way you would have expected, with whom you thought it would happen with, but what we did was no different than what making love implies. We are already connected mind, body, and soul."

"But," Yugi starts and stops, and starts again, "why was it different from all the other times we connected?"

"You know the answer," you whisper close to his ear, because he loves it when you speak so softly, so intimately, and because you cannot keep yourself from being so close to him. Your voice reaches him deep inside and he quietly lets out a light shudder. Without opening his eyes he leans forward and kisses you, and sighs again when you both part again. He moves your hand below his waist and murmurs, "Touch me."

You do and as he squirms under your ministrations, he blindly reaches for you. He wants to return the favor. You catch his hand, and gently chide against his parted lips, "It's okay, you don't need to do that. This is for you."

Yugi accepts that, if only because he cannot speak or think right now when you are touching him like this. No one is home right now, and you tell him so. Then you say something to him that prompts the response you desire from him. "Let go. Let me hear your voice, Yugi."

He does, and it's beautiful. You link your minds so you can feel his pleasure with him, and he happily reaches back, and touches you with his mind. His coughs start to increase, unfortunately, so by the time he reaches his end, you both silently agree that is enough until he's fully recovered from his illness. But he is smiling again, and wiping tears from his face, quickly and discreetly. He hates that he cries when he climaxes though you chide him not to be ashamed of it. He's a little miffed by this assertion. "Would you like it if I made you cry?" he mutters moodily.

"Aibou, I would love it if you made me cry."

He sits up and stares down at you, unblinking. "Really?" he breathes.

You cross your arms behind your head, keeping that lazy smirk of yours in place. After a moment, you sit up and scoot behind Yugi, and gently, lightly, nuzzle the shell of his ear, brushing your lips against it now and again. Yugi leans against you and revels in your light touch, eyes drifting shut softly, as you close your eyes.

"Is this wrong?" Yugi murmurs, almost dazed.

"It doesn't feel wrong," you murmur back, too caught up in the drug-like sensation of being so close to him.

"No." Yugi tilts his head back and you press your mouth against his for a deep kiss. It is not meant to arouse or excite, and neither of you wants to push it any further. It is better sometimes that a kiss just be a kiss, the simple aching beauty of it almost overwhelms both of you. Parting slowly, slowly, Yugi sighs. "Can I love you?" he whispers.

"If I can love you."

He smiles again, that smile that reminds you that you are lost to him, lost forever, no matter if you are here on earth, or living in the Field of Reeds.