Chapter Text
“The Silk Roads were indeed key to the development of ancient societies. They were the hub of culture and trade between the northernmost points of Africa and the Asian and European continents-”
Crunch.
“As a matter of fact, these roads were not only responsible for the trade of spices and silks, but were also the keystone of the spread of Hinduism and even Buddhism throughout Asia and Africa-”
CRUNCH.
“Eventually these roads would lead to the rise of Christianity, though this model of Christianity was far different from-”
CRRRRRUNCH.
“Joseph Wheeler!”
“Ehh?” Joey paused, a fist of potato chips halfway to his open mouth. Beside him, Yugi stifled a giggle into his hand.
“Don’t ehh me, young man,” snapped the stout woman at the head of the room, threateningly brandishing a laser pointer in the boy’s direction. “You know we have a strict no-food policy in this classroom!” This time a few more giggles rippled through the classroom, mostly from students looking for any excuse to pay less attention to the Ancient World History lecture on the development of the Chinese economic system. Yugi actually thought it was pretty interesting.
Not everyone seemed to share this opinion.
“Awh, c’mon, Mizz P!” Protested Joey, still holding the chips in a half-raised fist like a noncommittal rally cry. “I’m hungry! Lunch isn’t for another hour!”
“Then you shouldn’t have slept through breakfast and all of first period, Joseph. Detention! And put those chips away or they’ll become mine!”
Joey pouted, slumping back into his chair and shoving the plastic bag down to the bottom of his backpack. Yugi caught his eye and shot him a sympathetic smile, lifting a shoulder lightly as if to say, What can you do?
Joey’s pout deepened. Yugi bit back a snort, hiding his smile by turning back to the front of the room.
“As I was saying,” continued the professor, “the Silk Roads were a turning point in the rate at which ancient societies developed-”
“I don’t get it!” Joey threw his hands up in defeat. “I’m tellin’ you guys, that teacher has something out for me! She knows if I get one more detention, Coach won’t let me play in the homecoming game. I swear, she’s tryin’ to screw me over.” The lunch hour had started, and the outdoor courtyard was buzzing with conversation as students excitedly chattered about their first week of classes. The four friends had appropriated their own corner of grass under the spotty shade of a maple tree, away from the other cliques that had loudly asserted their own territories in the pavilion. It was the same spot they’d taken last year as juniors. That was the perk of being a small group that didn’t enjoy the company of most of the rest of the student body: They had their spot, and everyone else had everywhere else. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.
Yugi leaned back on his palms, turning his face up to the cloudless blue sky. He always enjoyed the last warm days of the season, especially with the serenity that came with the company of his friends.
“Duh, Joey, of course she knows. Maybe she’s trying to help the team.”
“The FUCK did you just say to me, TRISTAN?”
His loud, ridiculous friends.
“Well, Joey,” Tea offered as she popped a grape into her mouth, “Look on the bright side. If you don’t play the homecoming game, at least you’ll have time to study for that test next week.”
“Awh dammit, you’re right! What kinda teacher has a test in the first two weeks of class?” He pointed a victorious finger into the air. “Proof! Proof that that woman is insane!”
Tea shushed him aggressively, looking up over his head as if checking for spies. “Joey, you dumbass, someone could hear you!”
“Oh, right, yeah-” Joey took a large bite out of a sandwich and continued, “Mmph- fo, fhe’s dryanna make me loo’ li’ I’m infane-”
“Oh my god, close your mouth, you animal- ”
“Oh yeah? Lookit this!”
“Joey oh my god , close your mouth, that’s disgusting- ”
Yuugi laughed, shrugging off his jacket and spreading it in the grass like a blanket. He flopped back, stretching his legs out, and smiled up at Tea as she tugged a whining Joey’s ear aggressively, scolding him about manners and politeness like a mom from the fifties with a disobedient son. His friends might have been the loudest, most rambunctious people he knew, but without them his life would have been a thousand times less colorful.
“Did you ever even learn manners?”
“Fuck you!”
Less colorful in a lot of ways, he thought to himself.
“Hey, Yugi,” Tristan cut in from beside him, “Don’t you have a lunch today?”
Joey and Tea paused in their argument to look over, having apparently not come to the same realization. “Hey, yeah,” Joey started, “Where’s your food, bud?”
“Oh, yeah,” Yugi sat up, scratching the back of his neck guiltily. “I stayed up last night trying to solve that puzzle Grandpa gave me a little while ago. I was exhausted this morning, so I woke up ten minutes before I had to leave and I only barely had enough time to eat breakfast before I had to catch the bus. But I’m fine!” He added quickly, seeing the concern on his friends’ faces. “Grandpa lent me a few bucks this morning so I could grab something on my way home.”
“If you say so, pal,” Joey shrugged, turning back to rummage through his brown paper bag. “That puzzle again? The gold triangle one? Why are ya so set on that one in particular? I thought you had, like, a billion others!”
“First of all, stupid, it’s a pyramid, ” explained Tea with an exasperated roll of her eyes. “Second, why wouldn’t he be? That puzzle was excavated in Egypt and hasn’t been solved in millennia. It’d be so cool if he could figure it out! If anyone could, it’d be Yugi. Yugi is to puzzles like...I dunno. Like Tristan is to motorcycles. He’s never come across one he couldn’t take apart and put back together blindfolded after only solving it once.”
Yugi blushed at the comment, smiling brightly. “That’s just it, Tea! I can’t help but feel like I’m super close. But there’s one problem,” he added, the smile dashing from his features, “I think I’m missing a piece. Grandpa swears up and down that every piece that was found in the excavation site was handed to me in the puzzle box, but the more I look at it, I think the piece that should go right in the middle isn’t there.”
“Oh, man, that’s rough,” Tristan’s brows raised in awe. “What’ll you do if you can’t find the last piece?
Yugi hummed, picking at a blade of grass that had been tickling his arm. “Well, Grandpa said there are shops and things that would be willing to make a plastic replica of what the piece should have looked like. He said it’s normally pretty expensive, but since this is an ancient Egyptian artifact I might be able to get some donations from museums to help out. Especially ones connected to research facilities. Think like a locksmith, only, for super old stuff.”
“Oh, cool!” Joey grinned. “So no matter what, you’ll get to have the finished thing?”
“Yeah!” Yugi nodded enthusiastically. “It’d be nice to have the complete puzzle with all of the original pieces, but Grandpa said the center piece might have been taken by a thief or something. Which I guess is also really cool, even if it does make things a bit harder. It just means that my puzzle has seen a lot of history, right? In the meantime, I think I’m gonna start on the thousand-piece puzzle Tea got me for Christmas last year. The one with the otters in the pond.” At this, Tea beamed.
“You and those puzzles,” Tristan shook his head. “I don’t get the appeal of putting yourself through hours of frustration just for a picture. Can’t you just Google some cute otters and get the same thing?”
“It’s a smart people thing,” Tea teased, lightly punching Tristan on the shoulder. “I guess you just wouldn’t get it.”
“HEY!”
Everyone’s laughter was cut off by an electronic bell sound ringing across the courtyard; three monotone beeps signaling the end of the hour..
“Ah, damn,” Joey sighed, crumpling his empty lunch sack and taking a final swig from a Coke can. “Off to an hour of the only thing more boring than history. Literature,” he spat out with a grimace. “Hey, Yugi, are you sure you’re not gonna starve?”
“Nah,” Yugi smiled, standing up and brushing off the back of his jacket. “The day’s over in two hours anyway. I’m sure I’ll live. Ready for math, Tea?”
Tea shook her head. “I don’t know how you can be so happy about precalc, Yugi. It must be that nerdy puzzle brain of yours.”
Yugi giggled, hanging his jacket over his shoulder as he turned back towards the cafeteria doors, which now looked more like broken floodgates with the crowd of students all trying to force their way in at once. “This nerd puzzle brain is about to kick a quiz review’s ass.”
Yugi’s last class of the day, History of English, would have put even Tea to sleep. The professor was an old, round man with a kind chuckle and a bushy mustache that made up for the absence of his hair on his head, though his voice was surprisingly monotone. Had it been any other subject Yugi might have found it hard to keep his eyes open, but he had always found history subjects more thrilling than anything else. It was like the greatest story ever told, and there was always another aspect of it to learn about. Since the eighth grade, when asked what he wanted to do after school, he’d always said he wanted something to do with history. He had no clue what or why or when, but that was always something he was sure of.
Yugi had found out through some internet forums in his middle school years that every History Kid had a time period that they latched onto like a baby to a bottle. For Yugi, that was ancient Egypt, although anything in the ancient world was oddly fascinating to him. He couldn’t help it- ancient societies were so similar to the modern day, it was like learning about a parallel universe. Egypt in particular was one he loved to fantasize about. His grandpa had gone on a research exhibition to Egypt when Yugi was young and come back with all kinds of pictures and stories, including his puzzle. Now, whenever Yugi spent those late nights fiddling with the pieces to try to make them fit together, all he could think about were the other pairs of hands that had touched it’s golden surface as well: The lives they’d lived, the things they’d said, the friendships they’d forged.
The language aspect only made it more interesting. Yugi tapped the end of his pencil eagerly against his notebook, waiting for the teacher to move to the next slide. He had long since copied down the table depicting how ancient Sanskrit had evolved into the modern English alphabet, and now wanted to hear about the next part- Hieroglyphs and pictographs, and how they were used by Egyptian upper classes.
“Now,” the professor was saying to a class that was half-full and half-asleep, “Sanskrit was a well-developed method of writing, but the letters of this alphabet were used to give a vernacular language a written form. This was the language of the lower classes- those who weren’t educated in the way the higher classes spoke. The language of royalty was depicted-”
Just before the slide turned, the intercom beeped loudly, making the entire class jump. Three desks behind Yugi, a boy who had been sleeping on his jacket fell out of his desk.
“YUGI MOTO. PLEASE REPORT TO THE OFFICE TO PICK UP A PACKAGE. I REPEAT, PACKAGE FOR YUGI MOTO IN THE OFFICE.”
Yugi looked up in surprise as all eyes turned to him. He couldn’t think of what that package could be, and he definitely hadn’t been planning on missing the second half of the lecture. He glanced over at the professor, who had paused momentarily and was now looking over at him curiously.
“Well,” decided the man, smiling kindly, “Looks like they need you more than I do! I’ll let you take a picture of the next few slides before the day is over.” He shot Yugi a wink. Although the school year was still young, Yugi felt they’d formed an unspoken connection that Yugi was the most interested and dedicated student in the class. It helped that he was probably the only one who had chosen the class as an elective, unlike most other students who were thrown in because Floral Design and Autoshop were full. “Better go on before someone else tries to take it!”
Yugi nodded gratefully, hurrying out of his seat to grab a hall pass. As sorry as he was to miss such an engaging lecture, he was curious above anything as to what his package might be.
As soon as he opened the office door, he knew exactly what the package was.
“Ah, Yugi!” Greeted the beaming, wrinkled face his grandfather, who by the relieved look on the office attendant’s face had been up to his flirting antics again.
“Grandpa?” Yugi couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. “What are you doing at school? Shouldn’t you be back at the store?”
“Things were slow at the shop this morning, so I figured I would bring you that lunch you forgot! I sure hope I’m in time!” The small round man proudly thrust a brown paper sack in Yugi’s face, not unlike the one Joey had used earlier. Yugi felt his face flush bright red. Grandpa hadn’t just packed him a lunch. He’d also decorated the bag.
“Do you like what I wrote?” His grandpa was grinning ear-to-ear now, and Yugi wanted nothing more than to hide his face in embarrassment. Printed on the bag in big, bold Sharpie letters were the words “YUGI- YOUR GRANDPA LOVES YOU! HUGS AND SMOOCHES FROM THE DARK MAGICIAN GIRL!” WIth a corny drawing of a girl in a pointy hat and short skirt, brandishing a staff. By the quiet giggles and not-so-subtle glances the office ladies were sending his direction, he could only imagine what his grandpa might have said before he’d arrived.
“Grandpa,” Yugi started awkwardly, not wanting to hurt his grandpa’s feelings, “This is really, really nice, but lunch ended over an hour ago. School gets out in-” he glanced over his shoulder at the mounted analog wall clock above the door. “Thirty minutes!”
“What?” Grandpa pulled the bag away from Yugi’s face and scratched his head in confusion. “But I could have sworn you were in school until four!”
“That was back in Kindergarden, grandpa,” Yugi sighed, knowing his face must have been glowing by now. The office ladies giggled again. “I’m in high school now.”
“Hmm, no kidding! Well, I suppose by now I really am getting old.” Grandpa had more to say, but at that moment the door to the office opened yet again. Yugi turned out of curiosity.
He immediately lost track of whatever Grandpa was saying.
The boy who walked into the office was confident, well-dressed, and very, very handsome. Yugi suddenly became hyper-aware of his own outfit; a leather jacket two sizes too big that had once been his Grandpa’s and now swallowed him whole, an old band shirt that had faded a long time ago, dark jeans with holes in the knees that weren’t exactly intentional and sneakers he’d kept since his eighth grade growth spurt. Yugi suddenly realized he must have looked like a dorky middle schooler trying to pull off the “punk” look. It didn’t help that he was wearing a choker . Were chokers cool? Right now, he had no idea.
This boy, this mystery who had swept into the office like some kind of king, somehow made dark skinny jeans and a loose muscle shirt look like he was dressed to the nines. Yugi personally felt that it was a little unfair: This person, whoever he was, could wear a belt chain and have it not look stupid, and still had the audacity to walk around making a bulky chain necklace and leather cuff-bracelets look good. But that wasn’t even half of Yugi’s issue- this boy also had an incredibly handsome face, with a deep-cut jawline and sharp features that looked a lot like the Greek statues his history professor had pictures of around the room.
The strangest part had to be the hair. Yugi, without thinking about it, lifted a hand to brush through his own (over-gelled, why did he use so much gel this morning ) locks which looked remarkably like this mystery boy’s. They both at least had a very similar dye job. In fact, had the boy’s skin been a deep, tan color, he might’ve looked like Yugi from a universe where he was...well, something . Cool. Capable. Sexy-
Yugi wasn’t exactly focused on thinking at the moment. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to. Actually, his brain seemed to only be able to think the words “ oh shit oh shit oh shit ” in the face of this really, unfairly attractive new arrival.
“Say, Yugi,” Grandpa was saying, suddenly louder than Yugi remembered him being when they’d started their conversation, "I made sure to cut the crusts off of your sandwich like you like. I even wrote a note on your napkin, just to make sure-”
“Okay, thank you grandpa!” Yugi blurted, snatching the bag from his grandfather’s hands. Grandpa beamed and Yugi found himself glancing frantically at the new boy, desperately willing him not to have heard anything of Yugi’s embarrassing situation.
The boy, currently facing the desk and looking back over one shoulder, met his eyes.
Mystery Boy smiled.
Yugi gulped.
“Well, Grandpa, I should really get going back to class,” Yugi hurriedly continued before his grandpa could say anything else that might have revealed Yugi to be a complete dork in front of this stupidly hot stranger. Yugi firmly believed that the person he dated in the future should get to know and love all of his sides; even the dorky ones. That being said, he wasn’t about to let that happen right now. “Thank you for bringing me this, but I really need to get going-”
“Eager to leave your old grandpa so soon, Yugi?” Grandpa shook his head. “You know, you were in such a rush this morning that you forgot to give your grandpa a kiss goodbye. You youngsters are so focused on your games and your dating that you always forget to appreciate the ones who raised you. But you most certainly didn’t forget to give one to your wall poster-”
Yugi winced, dreading what the Mystery Hot Guy must think of him right now. As if it wasn’t enough that Grandpa had outed Yugi as a massive nerd with no romantic life whatsoever, now he looked like a grandpa-hater. “No, Grandpa, it’s not that-”
“No, no, go on, Yugi! Leave your grandfather who came all this way to see you!”
Yugi sighed in defeat, then leaned in and gave his grandfather a very quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you at home, grandpa. I love you.”
Grandpa nodded his approval. “There. Was that so hard?”
Yugi groaned internally. Behind the desk, the office ladies giggled to themselves a third time, though this time he could hear a low baritone chuckle under all the chatter. Behind him, the office door opened and closed. The Mystery Boy was gone, just like that. Now this incredibly hot stranger knew Yugi was a closet nerd who still slept next to a poster of a fictional character, and Yugi never even had so much as a name. He wanted to die. “I’ll see you later, grandpa.”
“See you at home, Yugi. Say, that boy was rather handsome, wasn’t he?”
If Yugi was blushing before, he was a firetruck now. He nodded weakly and left, wringing the now incredibly wrinkled ( too wrinkled; had he been twisting it the whole time?) paper bag between his hands. He hadn’t seen which direction the boy had gone. Maybe, after everything that had happened, it was for the better.
As Yugi made his way back to class, his eyes totally didn’t glance (and maybe linger every now and then) over every classroom window. He told himself it was just passive curiosity. Why would he be looking for any signs of hair that looked like his own? That would be a ridiculous thing to do. Hot Stranger probably had a girlfriend. He probably had six. Maybe they were all boyfriends; Yugi wouldn’t judge. He was probably a total jerk, who liked...jerk things. Yugi repeated this to himself every time he walked by a different classroom, all the way back to room 204.
Back in class, his History of Language professor was going over the origins of specific hieroglyphs and their relations to Egyptian culture.
Yugi couldn’t focus on a word of it.