Three Days Grace

He supposed the best idea was to begin looking for a new place immediately. The only downside was that he and Yuugi had quite literally spent their last cent that morning on food items.

Curled up in the only corner devoid of dust bunnies, Yami frowned. He needed to think dammit!

In such conditions as they lived in now, he knew they would only arouse one of two emotions – disdain or pity. Though far preferable to disdain, pity was the one that irked him most, because it implied whoever held it was in a higher position. Someone above them.

And Yami did not care for that notion.

Yuugi was asleep in the center of the room, wrapped comfortably around the Puzzle. Thank the gods it was summer, else the two of them would have frozen.

I can’t earn enough money to keep this shithole in three days, but we can’t find anywhere else on such short notice!

Sitting still as he debated with himself was not comfortable, but he didn’t want to wake Yuugi by pacing through the single room they shared. So, he levered himself to his feet as silently as possible and slipped out the door, making sure to shut it quietly behind him.
Job was out of the question. New place was, too. So, what in hell could they do?

Yami growled as he left the tenant building, stepping back out onto the streets, the abrupt transition from gloomy to over-bright stinging his eyes.

Cars buzzed as they whizzed by. Other pedestrians jostled Yami slightly in passing. No one went out of their way to avoid him, but no one was being a bulldozer and running him over, either.

Funny, he reflected, how two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to set foot outside without someone calling out my – or, technically Yuugi’s name – but now… A dark smile directed at himself. No one even knows who we are anymore. A passing fashion. A whim. Flight of fancy. Duelists are things of the past.

Two years ago… When he still had been dueling competitively. When he and Yuugi hadn’t needed to scrape a living off rocks. When people had known them.

Two years ago… When a team of duelists had died. When Duel Monsters had begun to lose its appeal to the fickle populace. When everything had changed.

He tried to remember those good times, but the recollection was hazy at best. So much easier to focus on the present. Simpler to recognize what was, what wasn’t and wonder what to do about it.

Faces stood out in the memories he did have. Yuugi’s memories, really, for the most part. But a few of his own.

Wild blonde hair on a slender, scruffy male. Neat-to-a-fault brown outfitting a more regal-seeming one. Chestnut mane hanging loose about the chin on a slim young woman.

Faces…names.

Jounouchi Katsuya.

Honda Hirito.

Mazaki Anzu.

He let his feet carry him with the crowd and mentally thumbed through the disgracefully short list. Anzu – she had moved. Dreams of being a dancer had fallen through and instead she’d ended up as the secretary for the CEO of some company or another outside Japan. No help from that direction. She hadn’t even left contact information.

Honda… The brunet had vanished just as effectively, leaving behind no clue as to his new whereabouts Yami had no suspicions, ideas – anything. Honda was gone, and that was that. After the last tournament, he hadn’t been too fond of the other, anyway.

They’d managed to grow apart.

Jounouchi though…

Even without having heard from either Jounouchi or his sister, Kaiwii Shizuka, Yami figured he could probably still remember where they had lived.

Possibly they still were there.

He stopped to get his bearings and set his feet on a new course.

Jounouchi, ready or not, here I come.

xxxxx

The alleyway was more dingy than he remembered it being the last time he’d been here…

Two years ago.

A barking dog startled him. The mangy cur leapt at him, snarling in frustration behind its wire fence.

Yami got over his surprise quickly and kept on, ignoring the furious howling that reverberated ominously among the close buildings. He walked at a sedate pace, just shy of slow. A deliberate set of measured steps, designed to dissuade anyone so much as thinking about confronting him.

Bluster, for the most part. A show of force he didn’t possess anymore, calculated specifically to intimidate.

Even if there was no one around to see it.

Now, which one was Jounouchi’s house?

Caved in porches, paint peeling, siding gone. Which wreck belonged to Yuugi’s one-time best friend? Some didn’t look fit to house worms in, let alone people.

Is this what we may be reduced to? Yami wondered, casting a quick glance down another alley-like offshoot stuffed with filthy scraps of cloth and cardboard patched together as a makeshift roof. He couldn’t imagine living in these conditions.
And I thought we had it bad now, he thought, delicately hopping over a puddle of stale urine and old alcohol. Compared to these, we live like kings.

Sobering thoughts. So much farther to fall than he had guessed. But knowing the trip to rock bottom was further than anticipated didn’t make the journey up look any shorter.

There it is. He recognized the chaotic front and the side, unartistically graffitied with various gang tag marks. The brilliant blue, red and yellows had faded to shadows of their former selves, and overlaid in some parts were white X marks and purple crosses.

Without hesitation, he stepped up on the porch, ignoring the threatening creaking. Let the structural integrity of the house sort itself out. He was looking for someone.

The doorbell was broken out of its socket, but an ugly brass doorknocker waited for his touch.

Yami lifted it and banged hard three times. Then waited, standing, feeling unaccountably foolish.

The door opened.

He had playful banter on the tip of his tongue, ready to escape and romp in the air. It died at the sight of a glassy-eyed man, slovenly dressed, giving head to a cigarette.

“Whatcha want?” the man drawled, pausing long enough to breathe and speak before going back to the little stick of drug.

Yami shook his head and backed up a step. The porch creaked. “I was looking for a Jounouch Katsuya or a Kaiwii Shizuka,” he said, holding onto is calm demeanor as best he could

“Ne’er ‘eard of ‘em.” A sly smile. “But there’s a couple o’ guys that migh, ‘specially if yer on yer knees when yer askin’.”

The lewd smile and suggestive roll of the hips was enough to convince Yami to leave.

Three people. Three places. Three homes now empty of them former inhabitants.
With a heavy sigh, he trudged back the way he had come. He wasn’t quite as careful on the return journey and was convinced he’d need to scrub all his skin off to feel anything like clean again.

xxxxx

He was quiet as he opened the door, but it seemed he hadn’t needed to be. Yuugi was awake and playing a game of solitaire in the middle of the room.

The smaller male looked up when Yami entered. “You’re back. I wondered where you’d gone to.”

So cheerful, even now.

“I went to visit Jounouchi,” he answered. Shutting the door firmly behind himself.

He had Yuugi’s full attention, then. Violet eyes were wide as their owner demanded to know more.

Yami tugged Yuugi into his lap, ignoring the other’s minor protest about being treated like a doll. He always thought better with Yuugi around anyway, so having the little one close at a time like this was necessity.

“He wasn’t there.”
Yuugi’s body twisted to level a mock glare at Yami. “Are you sure you had the right house?” his partner demanded. “You aren’t exactly famous for remembering directions to places, mou hitori no boku.”

Yami chuckled and ran a hand through Yuugi’s hair. “Quite sure, aibou. Jounouchi’s place was the one he tried to decorate himself. I can’t forget art that bad.” Even to his own ears, the attempt at lighthearted humor sounded hollow.

Yuugi frowned slightly, but made no reply to that.

“I’d love to get this solved before Friday,” the violet-eyed young man breathed.

Yami found himself in complete agreement.

“Aibou?”

“Hmn?”

One hand tugged Yuugi even closer. “Are you busy, little one?”

A joke, left over from their first time.

Yuugi tilted his head back and Yami nibbled on the smaller’s ear affectionately.
A tiny moan escaped the bubbly youth.

Yami smiled and leaned back, resting with Yuugi across his chest, the weight a comfortable foil to the problems that rested more metaphorically atop him.

“Are you just going to stop?” Yuugi murmured.

“Would you like me to continue?” Yami countered.

Yuugi’s nonverbal reply was a definite ‘yes’. Yami found himself smothered under his partner, lacking for air, but thoroughly enjoying Yuugi’s mouth ravishing his own, and the hand that was sneaking up inside his shirt.

The violet-eyed young man broke the bond between their mouths, letting Yami breathe as the black spots began to sparkle and die from his vision. Yuugi’s searching eyes always made him feel so exposed and vulnerable. It was a feeling he both relished and dreaded.

Fear of being inadequate, being found wanting in some way – no matter how self-confident he might appear on the outside, Yami knew he was much more fragile than anyone would suspect. All it would take to break him would be to remove Yuugi from his life.

“I want you,” Yuugi whispered, and Yami’s fear evaporated at those words, as it always did. Only to be reborn at some later date, the mutant offspring of a phoenix, but for the moment, all worry was vanished and he yielded himself up.

Warm skin and mouths met, gentle with each other, marveling over the slightest flaw – the proof that they were both human and could own one another.

Yami lay passive, letting Yuugi explore his body til the little one was content. Something of a ritual to both of them, though neither had an inkling where such a thing had come from.

With the exploration, Yami let Yuugi’s gentle hands undress him, drawing clothing gently away from skin – peeling away the cocoon to release the butterfly housed within.
And after the butterfly was freed from its confines, it floated, letting the wonderment of purple eyes draw across. Let trembling fingers run across wings that were unsteady, trace the ripples of a black body.

“You’re still wearing too much, aibou,” he remarked, breaking the silence.
Yuugi’s only reply was a laugh, soft and gentle.

Yami twisted up, capturing his aibou in his arms and swiftly divesting the smaller. “No time for games,” he breathed into a welcoming ear. “You want me. I need you.”

They lapsed back into silence punctured only by soft moans and the sound of skin sliding across skin.

Yami twisted onto his front when Yuugi went to fetch lube. He was in the mood for something hard and fast – a fact Yuugi would pick up on given the entirely submissive position he’d adopted.

Yes, once they could talk mind-to-mind, and it had been a close connection. But separated, having their own bodies, a code of silent communication without words had been established that tied them even closer.

Yuugi’s violet eyes lit up when he turned to find Yami waiting like that. The silent begging for pure domination. A wish to forget responsibility for a time – to let someone else be in charge.

Light hands on his hips urged them up. Fleetingly, he wondered if Yuugi was going to simply take him without any prep work at all. While it might be enjoyable in a painful sort of way, it could be a bit inconvenient to sit if that happened.

But then there was the cold, slippery sensation of a finger sliding into him, moving slowly, cautiously – and then beginning to tease until he was unable to think beyond the moment.

Forgetfulness born of raw desire.

“Please.”

Yuugi joined him, hunting that elusive evasion of reality, until it dragged both of them off on wings of ecstasy, before finally fluttering away, leaving them with one another.

And for that moment, just being together was enough.

_______________________________________________


Author’s Notes:
Differences from TCR: Kissing, for one thing. It EXISTS. Then there’s the less obvious distinction of both of them being HUMAN. Fully human. Yami isn’t brought up on the idea of being god-spawn and so while he still has authority, it isn’t the kind born of demanded deference. By now he’s earned every bit of respect offered. Yuugi clearly isn’t Moswen – someone remind me and I’ll do a backstory on the kid; it’s all planned, even – but he’s probably not the sweet innocent you remember from the anime or the mostly innocent from the manga. While a totally hardened Yuugi isn’t appealing in the least to me, one with great experience concerning the difficulty of everyday life IS. So, that’s my two cents on that matter. Oh, and I DARE you to guess where Jou is. TBS next chapter.
Yes, no mind-to-mind speak here. I figured sharing a mind was sharing a body which justified being able to discuss things with Yami. Like talking to yourself, really. (But if you answer yourself, there’s something wrong. :p) But without sharing a body, I have decided they no longer have access to a “mental link”.
Yuugi really hates peeping toms, so he’s keeping me as far away as possible. Yami doesn’t mind at all (actually I think he gets a kick out of it. XD)