Work Text:
It had been a long day, and Seto Kaiba was settling into an uncomfortable chair to type out one last report. He didn’t want to, and his hands were shaking. He reached out to spin the three levels of the gold pyramid desk toy he had commissioned for himself, and when that didn’t work, he sighed. The little black king chess piece he kept on his desk was giving him a condescending look, and he backhanded it catharticly across the room. He slumped back in his chair. His vision was blurring out, and he was very, incredibly tired.
His legs ached from having sat down all day, then gotten up to simply move to a harder chair—he had hoped that the discomfort would keep him from falling asleep, and maybe that he could desensitize himself to it to make long meetings more tolerable—and his head hurt from staring at screens for so long.
He couldn’t admit defeat though, so he tapped on his desk intercom, and the tiny holographic image of Azure Kaiba popped up.
“Need anything, Mr Kaiba?” her robotic voice asked. “You’ve been staying up too late recently, you know.”
He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, yeah, I know, Blue, I know. How about some coffee, okay?”
“…Alright,” she said, slowly. “Just…please. You are going to work yourself to death, I swear.”
“Fine, mom,” Kaiba huffed, but he smiled—a small smile, anyway, in case someone was looking. Her image collapsed back into the desk’s sleek surface, and he sighed again, traced his hand over the glowing blue lines in the shiny black glass desk—he had designed it himself because he was so sick of dark wood, and the scent of varnish always made him feel ill.
It was in Azure’s nature to be concerned for him, of course. He had designed her to worry for him, after all. To be his secretary, at first, and then someone he could confide in. His Bishop.
!
There is, after a while, a knock at his door, and he presses a button on one of his panels to slide it soundlessly open—it would make a loud noise if it were to open without the button’s permission, of course, but he likes the smoothness of the soundless door.
“Come in,” he mumbles, because he doesn’t see a need to steel his voice around Azure. Except it isn’t Azure carrying the tray with his coffee. It is a very particular person, who looks so entirely out of place in a KC uniform that he’s allowed to dress as he pleases. This particular night, the outfit is a long purple dress with open sides, and tall black boots with shining gold buckles to match the buckle around his neck. It all compliments annoyingly well with the specific shade of purple topping his impressive crown of hair.
Kaiba wants to tear out his own hair at the very sight of him.
“…You…are not Azure,” he says, finally, and very slowly.
“I definitely am not,” Yami agrees, still dumbly holding the coffee tray. “She had to help Mokuba get something off a tall shelf, so she sent me instead.”
Kaiba wants to scream. “Diamond was already there. And Set-0. She could have come here herself.” She has certainly done this on purpose. Kaiba takes a deep breath, reminding himself not to reprimand her later. He isn’t used to a normal family—if one could consider advanced holograms to be a family—but he supposes it must be a mother figure’s duty to set their son up with someone.
Even if that someone is an admittedly attractively arrogant duelist nemesis.
“She wanted me to see you then, I suppose. Snap you out of your work fugue, although I suppose you’re going to go right back to it the second I’m gone. You surely didn’t order five whole coffees otherwise.” Yami swishes his way over to the desk—definitely on purpose—and goes to set the coffee down. And then he doesn’t leave.
Kaiba stares longingly at the coffee, which he can't drink until Yami decides to kindly leave him in peace. Which he was is not doing. At all. He can’t reveal his secret to anyone, especially not his greatest enemy—and genuine boyfriend, though that doesn’t matter at the moment. No matter how close he keeps his enemies, they must never be privy to such classified information.
“You aren’t even drinking it,” Yami detects. He’s sitting on the edge of the futuristic desk, kicking his feet back and forth, idly spinning the desk toy with a slight fondness in his eyes.
“No,” Kaiba says. “I’m not. I’m waiting for you to go away first.” He crosses his arms, trying to hide just how much he wants the coffee.
“Tell me you aren’t too prideful to uh, drink a coffee in front of your boyfriend. Everyone knows you drink it, honestly. You aren’t one of your perpetual motion machines, you know. You can’t just cram in all of that work without it.” He grins, scoots a little closer to the coffee. He reaches to pick up one of the cups, and Kaiba snatches it away from him.
“Don’t open that!”
Yami blinks. Kaiba curses himself in his head for a moment about the outburst. This isn’t how he’s supposed to act around his great enemy, and yet…Yami brings out all of his most humiliating and un-Kaibalike emotions. Yami is staring at the cup in his hand with much more interest now.
“…What’s in there? What’s the big deal? You drink coffee in public at meetings and stuff all the time. I’m there sometimes. I have seen you drink it before. What’s the difference?” The spirit leans over, into the five feet that Kaiba considers his very intimate personal space.
“That is classified information. I can’t tell my arch-rival something like that.” He does his best to go back to his typing without the coffee, in hopes that ignoring Yami will make him go away.
“Are you being serious?” Yami asks, getting between Kaiba and the screen, tilting to make sure his dress shows off his legs.
“Why do you even care?” Kaiba asks. Maybe he will chastise Azure if he ever gets out of this. “I have so much important work to do right now. You aren’t going to distract me like that.”
Yami blinks, thinks to himself. “I do have something very distracting with me though, which I think you’ll be very interested in.”
“Nope. I am busy. I don’t have time to flirt with you right now.”
“You never have time for me,” Yami mumbles. “You only flirt with me when we’re dueling, or talking about dueling. Or talking about violence. I’m not just your rival, you know. I’m your boyfriend too, right? You say you love me but you won’t even tell me what’s in a cup of coffee. Seto, please.”
Kaiba startles at hearing his first name, and the cup drops out of his hand and onto the black and white tiles. “I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…ignore you. I’ve just been so stressed with this new Expo coming up, and I’ve been working triple time to cover it. Trying to inventory all of this new MillienniTech has been a nightmare. I didn’t think…I haven’t had much time for Mokuba either, you know.”
Kaiba bends to pick up his spilled coffee before Yami can see the contents, but he’s already crouching beside it, staring at it with such an intense, calculating, yet oddly playful look. A look that Kaiba loves seeing on him, just not when it’s aimed at him.
“Did the cup trespass in your soul?” He swallows slightly, eyeing the creamy tan coffee on the floor, as much as Yami is.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Yami says, blankly. “That’s your secret? That you drink your coffee with milk?”
“Yes,” Kaiba admits, trying to calm himself slightly, annoyed with himself for being genuinely upset over this. Maybe the influx of work for the Expo really does have him high-strung.
“And that’s a big deal, why?” Yami looks genuinely confused—puzzled, even.
“You’ll think it’s stupid,” Kaiba says, clenching his hand tightly around his pyramid toy until he feels the top part almost break off. Yami flinches slightly, his eyes travelling vaguely to the authentic version hanging around his neck.
“I uh. Seto. Calm down, please. This isn’t something to get like that about. It’s just coffee.” Yami reaches over and takes the toy away from him. He calmly pushes Kaiba back into his chair, and perches on his lap.
“Fine,” Kaiba sighs. “It’s because everyone thinks I drink my coffee like…pure black.” Yami is staring at him like this isn’t a major deal. Like this isn’t something he suffered for throughout his childhood, forced to pretend to enjoy bitter coffee—for adults—every afternoon meal. \
Yami doesn’t say anything, just cocks his head, waiting for Kaiba to continue.
“And uh, if it got out that I like sweet coffee, it would be the end of me. My reputation. My company, everything.” He shakes Yami, rather forcefully, to emphasize, until the spirit puts a hand on his shoulder to make him snap out of it.
“I think that staying up too late is having an effect on you. What does coffee even have to do with that?” He looks so lost.
“If…well, if they knew I wasn’t perfect, if they knew I wasn’t mature and serious all of the time—”
Yami puts another gentle hand on the young CEO’s shoulder. He gently leans in and settles his head in the crook of Kaiba’s shoulder, slides a hand into his hand.
“Hey,” he mumbles. “Well, I promise, I won’t tell a soul, alright? This can stay between us.” He smiles as Kaiba relaxes slightly.
“You promise? You are my arch-rival after, all, you won’t use this against me?”
“Never,” Yami swears. “I hope I never make you think something like that. I’m not just your rival. Please. And this isn’t a Shadow Game, this isn’t a Power Game. I promise, you can trust me. Your secret is safe.”
Kaiba smiles, wrapping an arm around Yami and pulling him close, kissing his bangs, rather glad now that Azure had sent him. “Thank you, so much.”
He wouldn’t wake up until late that next afternoon.