Chapter Text
The private deck outside your bungalow, facing the tranquil ocean and the countless stars above in the sky, makes for a peaceful temporary office.
Atem might claim otherwise, but you truly aren’t working—it’s only that your personal inbox requires nearly as much upkeep as the KaibaCorp one. An every-two-days message from Mokuba talking about everything and nothing in particular, a daily digest from Isono on important matters. Well-wishes from the select acquaintances who heard about your very private wedding, and a note from the wedding photographer with ten previews. You flag that email to peruse again tomorrow with Atem by your side.
The thought of your wedding, three weeks ago now, makes you twist in your lounge chair to peer inside. Your husband (yours, now and forever, even his gods couldn’t take him away from you permanently, the greedy dragon inside you hisses) has the TV on, but it’s easy to see from this angle that he’s dozing, sprawled in the middle of the king-sized bed after his shower.
Atem is the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. So, despite the tempting view, you turn back to your laptop to finish your reply to Mokuba. The sun has set, but the breeze is warm, and underwater lights attached to the deck illuminate the crystalline sea and its nocturnal creatures.
It takes another half-hour, but you finally venture back inside; once your laptop rests safely on the coffee table next to the resort’s floral arrangement, you take a moment to pull the curtains across the glass door. It hides the faint light shining in across the ocean, but the bedside lamps are enough for you to see by.
Atem grumbles and shifts over when you turn the TV off and get into bed with him, but doesn’t awaken. Good. He deserves this break—both of you work hard enough to wear yourselves out to the bone. He duels on the tournament circuit under KaibaCorp sponsorship, but the rest of his time is spent as a consultant with Ishizu Ishtar. Something about language translation and deciphering a never-ending stream of artifacts and preserved papyrus that makes even your head hurt when you think about it too long. You may be one of the few other people left who can read the ancient texts fluently, but that doesn’t mean you want to subject yourself to the headaches of unnecessary archaeological translation.
Atem: once your rival, now your husband. Years have passed between when you brought him back to the world of the living and this very moment as he dozes next to you, a linen shirt acting as a protective blanket against the bungalow’s air-conditioning. You’ve stopped giving him a hard time about looking into the past too often, but in the familiar darkness of too many late nights in your lab, it still worries you.
Is he truly happy here? Did he want to come back with me or did he view it as another challenge he couldn’t turn down? I dragged him out of his eternal paradise, back to this imperfect world, so I wouldn’t have to be alone— but I don’t regret it.
Should I?
Atem reaches out and pulls your arm across his waist. “Turn that brain of yours off, Seto.”
Perhaps it was too much to hope for, that you could wallow in peace. “I still need a shower,” you grumble anyway. Surely you could wallow in your thoughts in the shower.
“Later,” the former pharaoh of Egypt tells you—not a request, but a royal command. The majestic tone still comes naturally to him all these years later. He pulls on your arm again, holding it tight against his chest so you don’t have a hope of slipping away. “Don’t think I can’t see you answering your emails out there.”
“Personal ones only,” you protest, but you accept the forced spooning as your punishment.
“They can wait too. Mokuba and Isono are perfectly capable of running things in your absence.” Atem stifles a yawn, then grabs your hand and brings it up to his lips. You can feel his smile across your knuckles. “I’m feeling neglected.”
You huff against his hair. “We’ve spent every waking hour together these last two weeks. That’s not enough?”
“Incredible. Three weeks married and the romance is already dead.” He drops your hand, but you leave it where it lands, where you can feel his heart beating clear and strong. Reassurance that you tell yourself you don’t need anymore. “But I guess I can forgive you. We’re not in Iceland.”
“Not all of us are creatures of the desert who need twenty-two hours of sunlight a day to survive,” you sniff. Not that you hate your current honeymoon destination—far from it, but losing that duel, when one more move would’ve changed the outcome… it’s the victory snatched away that stings, not so much the wager itself.
Atem rolls over to face you, peace radiating off his brilliant smile and in his bright, beautiful eyes. Earthly paradise seems to suit him as well as Aaru did. “But you chased me all the way to a different dimension, so I guess we can go to Iceland eventually.”
You can’t help rolling your eyes. “International travel on the KaibaCorp jet anywhere in the world is definitely comparable to inter-dimensional travel in a prototype rocket meant for one person that had a fifty-fifty chance of killing both of us. Might I remind you that you had to sit in my lap for the entire journey?” Mokuba has always called your return a miracle, with a scowl on his face and no respect for the new field of physics you managed to invent along the way. Though you resist the label whenever he brings it up, you’re more willing to admit now, years later, that there was some luck (or perhaps divine intervention) involved in your safe and successful return to the land of the living.
“Relationships do occasionally involve sacrifices.” But Atem beams at you, already leaning in for the kiss that he knows you'll grant him. You want to roll your eyes, tell him to knock it off. Your teenage self would have. But you don’t, not anymore, because you also want this warmth and this love. You’ve now had years to grow accustomed to the thought that there’s room for one other person in your life. That he’s already made himself at home in the rooms of your mind and heart without you realizing it. That it took death for you to consider the thought in all seriousness.
If it’s going to be anyone, it has to be him.