(A/N: First of all, YAY! I got a new chapter within a week from last one! I FEEL PROUD OF MYSELF FOR THIS ACHIEVEMENT! Second, this wasn't supposed to be this long, it was supposed to be only the half of what it actually is but my brain likes to make me struggle at ungodly hours of the morning. (It's 5 am right now, actually.) Third, and THIS IS IMPORTANT: Uh... I'm gonna leave on Monday for two weeks to sort out some things about college (I'm going next year) cuz, well, it's another city and I'll be living absolutely by myself. While still being 17. Which scares the shit out of me, but the point is, I'm not coming back till the 17th. And I don't know if my mom will allow me to carry my computer along or if I'll even have the chance to get online OR if I'll even have internet. But I. WILL. WRITE. I'll take notebooks and write. A lot. If my mom thinks she can keep me from writing, she's WRONG. Still, you probably won't get updates, and I wanted to leave you this before I left. GODDAMMIT, STUPID CATS, SHUT UP!
... Sorry, I got stray cats unwillingly living outside my house. Anyway, NOW to the chapter: OH MY GOD I LOVE IT. I DO. I really REALLY LOVE IT. I HOPE YOU DO TOO. WARNINGS: FLUFF. A LOT. 'Mini-me' makes no appearance here (sorry, folks!), and I'm kind of angry that I didn't include him but I wanted the chappie to be sort of serious, y'know? And he always makes me laugh, so... I also wanted to have them dancing (you'll see where, I swear), but I really wanted to end this CUZ I FREAKING WANNA GO TO SLEEP. Um, um, sorry about that, um... FLUFF. Seriously. The first sentence gives it away. Please, PLEASE notify me if there's too OOC-ness, or if there's a typo in there somewhere, or if you simply liked or hated this.
ENJOY, PEOPLE! We already know the disclaimer, so please read on! LOVE YOU ALL! :3 :3)
Chapter 12
The first time Yugi and Yami actually kiss, it's really kind of perfect.
They've been dating for one month now. It's funny, really, because everyone around them sort of thought they were already dating before that. There was this sophomore girl that approached them at school when they entered holding hands and asked hopefully, "So, are you two like, official now?"
They both looked at her, at each other, and back at her. "Official?" Yami repeats.
She looked truthfully confused. "Yes, I mean… weren't you two dating?"
They repeated the staring they'd done before and Yugi told her, "Um, n-no, we—we weren't, you know, dating. He just—he recently asked me out."
"Oh," she said, embarrassed all of a sudden. "S-sorry, all of us… we… um, never mind. You—um, you look really good together."
And then she walked away.
The rest of their first day as an "official couple" (as everyone suddenly began to call them), they kept getting glances from other students. Both guys and girls fixed their eyes on them, and they caught quite a lot of the girls giggling and a lot of the guys paying money to each other for some strange, awkward reason they didn't want to know.
"How come they all knew this would happen but us?" Yugi asked Yami, leaning against him at the same time he let out a laugh.
"It was apparently inevitable," Yami answered him, squeezing the grip on his hand. "Either that or we were terribly obvious to everyone yet oblivious to ourselves."
"I like both options," Yugi said, smiling kindly.
The next month is pretty much the same as when they were just best friends, except now they allow themselves to sit a little closer to each other, to smile a little more, to hold hands a little longer. Their "dates" consist of them cuddling in either of their couches (depending on what house they're staying at) and watching movies, especially Disney ones—they're both of their favorites.
It feels, at least to Yami, like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Now he doesn't have to worry about getting caught staring, and if he wants to kiss Yugi's cheek, he can. He actually does it a few times, when the movie is so emotional that Yugi has small, tiny tears falling down his eyes; all he has to do is lean in and press his lips to the skin of his boyfriend's cheek and it's done, Yugi smiles at him and leans his head on his shoulder.
Oh, God.
Boyfriend. Boyfriend.
Yami's not sure he's ever going to get used to using that word to refer to Yugi, who was his best friend a month ago.
No, scratch that. It doesn't matter if now they're a couple. First of all, they'll always be each other's best friend, regardless of where their romantic relationship ends up.
The day of their first-month anniversary, it's a Saturday, and Yami has a whole date planned out. His mother has often told him that he's a romantic, and he's not going to argue that. But before he sets his plans into play, he goes to the graveyard to visit Rebecca—he has the need to tell her what he wants to do. He picks up some flowers from a nearby flower shop (tulips and roses, because they were Becky's favorites) and heads to his sister's tomb. Hers is one of the prettiest ones ever since he began to bring her flowers.
"Hey, Becky," he tells her, sitting down at the ground in front of the plaque. "Today's my one-month anniversary with Yugi," he says, blushing because, seriously, who gets all worked up because of one month? "And I planned something really special, and I really wanted you to know what it was. You would've probably been nagging me about it, huh?"
So he stays there for a while—nearly three hours—babbling on and on about his day, and his heart feels lighter, feels like a feather flowing with the breeze. And then he leaves and drives to Yugi's place to pick him up.
"Hello, dear," says Mrs. Amelia Mutou as she opens the door. "Yugi will be down in a minute," she adds, turning to look back. "Yugi, Yami's here!" She invites him to come in, but Yugi's already at the door, waving 'hi' at his boyfriend.
"Bye, Mom," he says, kissing her cheek. "We'll be back later!" Yami takes his hand in appreciation and drags him to his car.
"Drive safely!" she yells at them from the door, and they both wave at her before the engine starts running and they drive off.
"So, where are we going?" Yugi demands playfully, a cute smile at his lips. Yami tries to help it, but he really can't avoid thinking about the day he met Yugi, which seems ages ago, and remembering how he was so mesmerized by his eyes, by his smile, by his mere presence.
"Oh, you'll see," Yami responds, holding Yugi's hand even though he's driving. Yugi's smile grows wider, and he tightens his grip. He looks out the window, and he's so happy, so light-headed, that he grips Yami's hand even tighter, as if that's the only thing keeping him anchored to reality, the only thing reminding him that yes, this is happening.
This is real.
The first place they go to is a park. A park Yugi's never seen before, but it's beautiful: the trees, the grass, the benches, everything is amazing! Yami leads him to a special spot on the grass, right beneath the shadow of a tree, and he tells Yugi to wait for him, "I'll be right back." When he returns, he's holding a picnic basket, and Yugi's jaw nearly drops.
"A picnic?" he asks, laughing. "We're having a picnic?"
On one of their recent dates, they'd shared a few more secrets with each other; stupid things, actually, which are kept secret for that exact same reason, and one of Yugi's secrets was that he really, really wanted to have a picnic at a park someday. He'd seen it countless times in movies and TV—he wondered what it was like.
And here Yami was, giving him a freaking picnic basket.
"I've decided that from now on," the crimson-eyed says, "my mission in life is to make your secret dreams, and not-so-secret dreams, come true."
Yugi suddenly wants to cry, because this guy is too perfect a human being to be true. But he doesn't. He just grins and helps Yami spread out the blanket, unload the basket, and they lie down and eat and talk of things that don't matter. They glimpse at the sky, pointing out clouds and their shapes.
"That one looks like a CD," Yami says.
"Yami, I don't think a cloud can—oh."
"Uh-huh."
"It does look like a CD," Yugi says, and they both laugh. He points to another. "That one's a cat."
"I think it's missing the tail, no?" It is, but then another cloud joins the cat-shaped one.
"No, look, there it is!"
"Oh, hey, there's a heart!"
They keep watching the clouds, laughing and goofing off, but they also hold hands and keep talking and eat the delicious lunch Yami helped his father prepare and this day couldn't be more perfect. Or so Yugi thinks.
The next place they go to is the ice-cream shop where they hang out during one of their first hang-outs. Yami orders for them both, because he clearly remembers Yugi ordering a strawberry-vanilla double cone, and when his boyfriend (oh, sweet heavens!) raises an eyebrow at him as he comes back with both of their cones, he shrugs, saying, "Lucky guess, I think."
Yugi doesn't believe him, and Yami knows it, but he doesn't mind. They eat their ice-cream and laugh at old jokes together. They talk about the recently legalized gay marriage in New York, and how it's a great step and an enormous deal for… people like them.
"It shouldn't have to be such a big thing," Yami says a little angrily. "It's still marriage, isn't it? Love is love; it's about the person you love, not their gender. It should be legal from the beginning."
Yugi agrees, but he realizes that nothing he says will make Yami feel better about this. They've talked of it, yes, because it's huge for them and for a lot of people. Yugi's found that Yami defends the issue of equality with his life, and he can get so pissed off sometimes that the boy is left with no idea of what to do to calm Yami down, to make him see that someday, someday, it'll be different—that someday, they'll look back and say, "Remember when gay marriage wasn't legal everywhere?"
Instead, he holds out his free hand and interlaces his and Yami's fingers together across the table.
"Soon it won't be a big deal," he says, adding a shy smile. "We just gotta keep working on it."
Yami smiles at him, one of those smiles that sincerely show gratefulness and appreciation, and he squeezes their locked fingers. "One day," he agrees.
They finish their ice cream cones between silent glances.
The last stop of the night (it's dark already) is a secret to Yugi, because his boyfriend actually covers his eyes once he gets out of the car, explaining that it's a surprise he doesn't want to ruin. When Yugi is finally able to see what this huge surprise is all about, there's the same blanket from their picnic spread out in a small patch of grass on the ground, and there's an old battery recorder beside the blanket and the starts in the sky look wonderful and…
The amethyst-eyed's jaw drops this time.
"So, you like it?" Yami asks behind him.
He has no time to react before Yugi throws his arms around his neck, hugging him close. "I love it," he replies happily, tears threatening to spill out of his eyes.
Without more words, Yami presses the "Play" button on the recorder, and the soft sound of a piano starts to fill the air around them, the notes dancing in the warm breeze. Are those… are those Disney songs notes? Yugi recognizes a few of the tunes; but that's all they are. Tunes. There are no lyrics to any of these songs.
"Instrumental versions?" he wonders out loud, sitting down on the blanket.
Yami blushes slightly, rubbing the back of his neck. "They, erm… I, uh—it's me, actually. It's, um, me playing them."
Yugi looks at him, completely stupefied. "You played them?"
"Well, yeah," Yami admits while he sits down next to his boyfriend. "I wanted us to have music, but I also wanted it to be special, so I looked for some sheets and… there you go."
They lie down next to each other, holding hands, staring at the stars. Yugi rests the back of his head on Yami's shoulder, pointing out a few constellations his dad taught him as a kid (because he's always been really into astronomy) as the Disney piano keeps playing—he notices that all of these songs are his favorite Disney love songs: Beauty and the Beast, Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, A Whole New World, You'll Be in my Heart…
Yugi wraps an arm around Yami's waist and leans his head on his chest, hearing the ba-thump, ba-thump of his heart. It's a super soothing sound, and he sighs contently. "Thanks for doing this," he says, giggling a little when one of Yami's hands comes to rest on his back.
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," the crimson-eyed says.
"You made it perfect," Yugi adds, smiling. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Yami responds, caressing the back of his hair.
Then they turn to look at each other at the same time, and the slight awkwardness of the moment makes them laugh nervously, but they keep the eye contact, as if they can't take enough of the other one. They start leaning into each other, and suddenly they're less than two inches apart.
And then it just happens.
Their lips are pressed together.
They kiss.
It comes extremely naturally, and it's soft and long and nice and sweet and it's pure bliss and perfection.
They pull apart, breathless, and they smile at each other. They say nothing—they don't need to. They go back to listening to the soft piano playing on the background, to gazing at the stars, and they go back to kissing. They peck each other's lips quickly, then slightly longer, and they giggle and laugh and hear each other's heartbeats.
For both of them, nothing could make this night better.
(A/N: CRAPPY ENDING IS CRAPPY ENDING, I JUST REALLY WANNA GO TO BED AND THIS SEEMED TO HAVE NO ENDING. Like I said, I really wanted to have them slow-dancing before they lied down to star-gaze, but I didn't want to add in more cuz that would just make me take longer to finish this...
And O.M.G, YOU GUYS, YOU ARE THE BEST PEOPLE EVER, I SWEAR. Thank you SO MUCH FOR YOUR EPIC SUPPORT ON LAST CHAPTER. I'M SO GLAD YOU ALL LOVED IT! YOUR REVIEWS MADE ME CRY TEARS OF SUPER JOY, I SWEAR! I. LOVE. YOU. ALL! Hope you enjoy this as much as you did with the last one! GOOD NIGHT, MY DEAR PUZZLESHIPPERS! I will miss you dearly! -sends a kiss and hug to every one of you-)