Work Text:
Sitting at his desk, Yugi glares at the blinking cursor that keeps taunting him in morse code that he still hasn’t written a single word yet. He drops his head in his hands, sucks in a grounding breath, and wipes his hands across his cheeks. Oil that had accumulated over the long day sticks to his palms and he rubs it off on his jeans.
Yugi knows better than to glance at the time in the corner of the screen, but his frustration wins out. He has been sitting here, with nothing written, for almost an hour. Work had been rough, and he had daydreamed about coming home and working on this one new idea all day. But here he is, with nothing more than a few sentences of ideas, and a blank document that is unwilling to fill itself. He closes his laptop and gets ready for bed. If he can’t write, he might as well try to sleep.
The next morning, groggy and tired, Yugi is about to shut the light on his way out when he notices the laptop open on his desk, the green power button lit up. He could’ve sworn he turned it off last night and closed the top, but with how tired he was he couldn’t blame his mistake. He shuts the laptop and closes the door behind him.
That night when he opens his laptop again, there is an untitled document last modified the previous night. He opens it and it is full of words, well over twenty thousand of them. He starts to read through it, a dark story of an apocalypse and the only aspect of humanity still living are brain scans downloaded into robot memories. It’s good.
Yugi doesn’t remember writing it.
Yugi sits down at his desk with a steaming cup of tea. Tonight is the night, he tells himself over and over. He is going to let those creative juices flow and he is going to do this. It’s eight o’clock, he has a few hours before he needs to sleep, and he is going to do this. He takes a sip of his honey-sweetened tea and opens his word document. He sets the mug down.
Yugi blinks. His vision has gone blurry as if he has been staring at the screen without blinking. He picks the mug back up to sip his tea, but all that is left is cold dregs. Yugi furrows his brow.
He sets the mug down with a confused frown marring his features, and looks up at the screen. A single sentence is written on the white page. Yugi doesn’t remember writing it.
“When you showed up, you stole all of that from me.”
He reads the sentence over, and over, and over again. He hadn’t written that – he couldn’t have, could he? He doesn’t remember writing it, and if he did, he certainly doesn’t know what the point of it is. Yugi closes the word document without saving it and shoves himself away from the desk.
Saturday morning light streaming lazily in through the window wakes Yugi up. It is a clear, windy day that is absurdly cold despite the bright sun. Yugi grabs his notepad and pen and props himself up on the couch downstairs with a blanket across his lap. He feels well-rested and clear headed, and finally feels a desire to write. He opens his notepad and begins where he left off.
He makes good progress, too. More than he had in the past week, if he’s honest, and by the time he looks up the sun is on its way down. He gives himself a break, makes lunch and checks his phone. He skims through his notebook, jots down little corrections here or there. He absentmindedly taps his pen to his lips, and thinks he might try to write that next chapter tonight to keep the streak going. Today is a good day.
Yugi jumps from the sound of the front door slamming shut against the wind, waking up to a dark room. His grandfather calls out to him to announce he is home. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
“Yugi?” Sugoroku calls again as he flicks the lights on. He closes the game shop at eight on Saturdays, catering to the groups of teens that hang out after class. Yugi rises from the couch, disoriented.
“I’m here, Ji-chan.” Yugi greets his grandfather as he walks into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Just took a nap, I think.”
Sugoroku laughs and pats Yugi on the back as he passes him to start dinner. “Looks like you needed it! You’ve been pushing yourself too hard these days. Your body is trying to tell you something.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Yugi reaches up to open the cabinet as his grandfather gathers ingredients from the fridge. He stops dead as his long sleeves ride up his arm, exposing a forearm that is almost solid black with ink.
“You know…” Sugoroku looks at Yugi over his shoulder, his eyes holding a knowing look before he falters. “Yugi, what is that?”
Yugi slams the cabinet shut and pulls his sleeves down. Yugi forces a sheepish smile and laughs nervously. He clamps his left hand on his wrist to keep the arm covered. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just got… carried away. I’m going to go shower, I’m not that hungry.”
Yugi practically runs to the bathroom and slams the door behind him. Yugi starts the shower, turning it as hot as the little apartment’s water heater can get. He stands in front of the mirror, checks his arm in the glass and sees the words etched all the way up to his right shoulder. Most of the words are smeared from sleep, and some were scribbled too fast to read in the first place.
he needs to find the piece in the
…unnecessary conflict…make…take this and put here…
…I won’t have to wait long.”
he doesn’t know…write this…out the end part and make smoother
…he has a hard time…so he deals with loss…don’t forget the…
you can’t leave…and not put…
Yugi breath catches in his throat and tries his best not to freak out. His eyes roam over the words, all dialogue and instructions and pointers for the outline he had been working on all day. He showers, and scrubs and scratches at the writing, trying to wash it off with soap, and when that doesn’t work he exfoliates it off along with several layers of skin. Even when it is gone, he keeps going.
He does his best not to dwell on how he is right handed.
Yugi takes a break from writing for a few days. When he comes back to his word document, he writes and writes until he runs out of words. He re-reads and edits, and comes across the word puzzle written three times in one paragraph. He edits the words, changes the sentences. The next paragraph puzzle appears four times.
Yugi closes his laptop.
He grabs his jacket off the back of his chair and leaves the apartment. Anzu’s birthday is next week. He will go shopping today, instead.
As he walks the streets of Domino, he sees the word puzzle on billboards, in storefronts, in flashing lights. He swallows and hunches his shoulders, pulls his lapel up to his chin. He feels like he is being followed. He quickens his pace.
He forgets about buying a gift as he ducks into an alley.
Yugi sits on a bench in the park with his legs crossed. The sun is shining, the leaves are falling, and the children are laughing. His notepad sits in his lap as the present bane of his existence. A red pen jiggles in his fingers, its ink angry red marks across the page. Yugi’s mouth is screwed up to one side in a frustrated frown.
None of the words on the page make sense to him. He hates them, he hates all of them, he hates all of it. It’s stupid, this is stupid, who fucking writes like this –
He grits his teeth as he re-reads a paragraph. He crosses the entire block out. His words are superfluous and he can’t stand them. All of it is wrong. You should write simply, get to the point, no character should ever be called effervescent.
He slams the notebook closed and goes home.
A week later Yugi is digging through his desk, searching, searching, and cannot find what he is looking for. He digs through scraps of paper, receipts, old assignments with words scrawled across them - puzzle, mansion, shadow games, betrayal, my name – all in his small, bubbly handwriting. A yellow post-it note stuck to his lamp screams at him in big blue letters, “I don’t know how to exist without you.”
Yugi ignores the fact it is not his handwriting.
He slams the top drawer shut and rips the bottom one out. His deck sits, untouched, next to a golden pyramid. His grandfather collects antique trinkets; he bought this one for Yugi when he was little, a three dimensional puzzle that he finally finished last month. A stylized eye stares back at him from the bottom of the drawer.
He slams the drawer shut and crumples the yellow post-it note.
Yugi is helping in the game shop today after one of his grandfather’s employees called in sick. It’s been almost two weeks since he’s worked on his writing. He leans back to stretch as the soreness in his spine jabs at him. His eyes are heavy and his neck hurts.
“Are you alright, Yugi?”
His grandfather is staring at him, broom in hand as he sweeps the shop for the second time that day, and he will sweep it again after closing. The look of concern on Sugoroku’s face does not escape Yugi. But how can he tell him how his eyes want to fall out of his head, how his fingers twitch constantly now, his lips form prose that he does not understand, he feels like he hasn’t slept in weeks –
“Yeah, Ji-chan, I’m just tired.” He doesn’t attempt a comforting smile. He knows his grandfather will see right through it.
His grandfather stares a moment longer, scrutinizing him. Yugi can see the conflict across his face; he wants to help, but he is not sure how. Yugi will not be the one to tell him he can’t help him.
Instead, Sugoroku nods and says, “I’ll go make you some tea. How many spoons of honey do you want?”
“None,” Yugi answers too quickly. “I don’t like it sweet.”
Sugoroku looks ready to argue, but forces himself to climb the stairs to the apartment before he can decide better of it.
When he is gone, Yugi is glad he is not there to see his fingers twitching across the counter, typing phantom words he can’t see on a keyboard that isn’t there.
He needs to be more careful; he knows. His grandfather has started to notice. Yugi has stopped speaking to him altogether; nothing he says anymore sounds like him anyway. He nods, or shakes his head, and retreats to his room. Tonight, Yugi sits at the kitchen table, the light overhead the only beacon in the otherwise dark apartment. His grandfather has gone to bed.
His notebook lays in front of him, red marks marring the page of black writing. Some are in his handwriting, others are not. He ignores those, and somehow that makes him angrier.
“It doesn’t make sense to put the end first the story isn’t meant to be told that way your main character is just you in a different form is that how you want him to come across it’s too rushed your pacing is off can’t you tell I told you to write it like this and you don’t listen you don’t listen.” The words come out under his breath at first, but rise quickly until he is yelling. He doesn’t feel like they are his lips moving but it is his voice in the quiet.
“You don’t listen! You don’t listen!” Yugi slams his fists on the notebook and shouts the words. When his lips stop moving, he takes the notebook and rips out a handful of pages. He is sobbing. He just wants to write.
He doesn’t notice his grandfather closing the crack in his door.
Yugi stops writing after that for a while. He keeps the notebook and the pages stuffed in a drawer in his desk. He doesn’t open the one with the pyramid inside.
Tonight, he tries to write. He opens a new document and writes a few lines. He doesn’t like the idea anymore now. He sits there and stares at the screen, reading and re-reading the same lines over and over again. He does not know how to fix it so he will like his writing again.
He is still for so long the screen goes black. He watches his reflection as he stares unblinking. His indigo eyes look so red, so red, in that reflection; he didn’t know they could look so red. He is so focused on his eyes he does not see his lip curl, or the green light of a stylized eye on his forehead.