Work Text:
A Dialogue on Endgame Strategies
Seventeen minutes.
Seventeen minutes past the hour. Seto’s office, Sunday mornings, 10:00 a.m. Nine weeks they’ve been doing this. And yet Seto sits alone.
Seventeen minutes since Yuugi should have arrived.
Fine. Plenty of work needs doing. Always emails coming in. Board of trustees bitching about market share, R&D wants more funding, marketing wants the OK on their new press release— (And what happened to the last twenty million? Where are the requested schematics? What fuckup prompted this bozo to use the phrase “unforeseen circumstances”?)
And then there are the journalists: three today, wanting interviews.(Delete, delete, delete—and why isn’t PR handling these? What’s the point of having a secretary if one has to do their work for them?)
Ah, Mokuba. A formal request to requisition the jet for…spring break. Haha, very funny. Request denied. Ask forgiveness, little brother, not permission.
And then the lawyers. Legal wants signatures on the liability insurance for the new parking lot (done) and signatures on the family trust amendments (done) and review on the Minari settlements (excellent work as usual, Wanabe, must remember to send him something—) and where the hell is Yuugi?
The door is a dark rectangle on the far end of the room. When the sun shines, the mahogany glows in reds and golds, but today the window behind him is gray, and the door is colorless. Dark day. Quiet day. The building is silent, except for the whirr of the computer fans. The creak of steel beams, buffered by the wind…
Normally, Seto enjoys working on the weekends. No one here to annoy him with senseless demands. He can turn the lights off, think in peace. But it’s quieter than usual. Close to the holidays. And bad weather; there had been an inch of ice on the sidewalk when the car had pulled up this morning. (But that had been 5:00 a.m., before they’d put the salt down…Now it couldn’t be so bad.) He rolls his chair six inches backward, tilting a bit, glancing at the window. Nothing but clouds to see from here. Snow dotting against the glass. It’s no blizzard. The trains will be running on time, surely. No reason for Yuugi to be—
Fuck this. There’s better things to do. It’s a nice diversion, granted: an hour off, a game of chess…but why look forward to it? Chess isn’t the same as Duel Monsters, doesn’t give the same thrill. Frankly it makes Seto nervous, Yuugi’s sudden interest. Wanting to come all the way here for that. Why the change? Why the sudden desire to learn a game Seto had mastered by the age of fourteen? The first time Yuugi asked to play, Seto was baffled. Do you not want to? Yuugi asked then (he’s always asking too many questions) Do you not like chess?
Inane question. Better one: what was left to gain? The cover of Chess Weekly? The acquisition of a board game company? Useless. Accolades, titles? Those might be worth something, but Seto won’t earn them playing Yuugi, who may know the rules, but hasn’t read the books, is hardly a grandmaster. (Surreal, isn’t it, watching him lose? It should rankle, this difference of skill. And still he smiles…)
Nine weeks of nothing but chess. Fucking waste of time—symmetry and poetry be damned, it’s not satisfying to be clicking ancient pieces around the board, showing off a thousand strategies from a thousand masters, waiting for Yuugi to catch up. Boring. They could be playing Duel Monsters, a game where they were well matched, where the rules could be bent and the strategies were always fresh—but no, Yuugi wants to play chess. God forbid a man crave a little challenge, a little panache—
Far away, faintly—ding. The elevator. Seto frowns at the door, looks at his inbox. Eight new emails. He minimizes the browser. The soft tread of steps in the hall.
The desk vibrates. What is that, his leg shaking? He stills it. A notification slides onto the screen and he opens the browser again. Another email: I regret to inform you that I will be resigning my position, effective immediately…Gabi Reynolds? Who the hell is—
The door opens. Deafening, the click of the latch. Seto keeps his eyes on Gabi Reynolds. After many years in my position as overseas operations manager…
Oh, her. Diminutive woman. Laughed too loud. Good riddance. He banishes her to the deleted items folder.
“You’re late,” he says.
Yuugi, unperturbed, lets the door swing shut behind him.
“Good morning.” His voice is obscured by his thick parka, the fake fur lining creeping around his ears. He shuffles across the office in boots too big for him. Seto eyes the carpet, looking for prints. He can see the flush in Yuugi’s cheeks, the dampness at the end of his hair. Snow that melts in the creases of his jacket and drips on the floor.
“Take your coat off,” he says, but Yuugi ignores him, setting a cardboard cup down on the desk.
“Brought you something.”
He’s got another cup in his hands. Seto can see the logo of a coffee shop. Not the one in the lobby—that’ll be closed—but the one by the metro station. Shitty chain store coffee that he doesn’t need—can’t Yuugi see the espresso machine in the corner, the chrome handles polished daily? Isono, in the next room, has made three shots already this morning, and two of them are burning a hole through the walls of Seto’s gut, his racing pulse evidence enough for that—
Still. He picks up the cup, raises it to his lips. Hesitates. Something, a splash of color, a whiff of sugar—
“This isn’t coffee.”
“It’s hot chocolate.”
The cup goes back down. “Am I six years old?”
“Don’t be boring. You can like hot chocolate. I like it. My grandpa likes it.”
“Precisely.” Back to the inbox. Who’s next? A representative from Chanel: We would be pleased to partner with the esteemed Seto Kaiba…Ugh. He forwards it back to the secretary: do better.
Yuugi leans over the desk. He takes back the cup, replacing it with the one in his hands. He laughs when Seto meets his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he says. He’s far too cheerful today. “I had a contingency plan.”
This time Seto removes the lid. It looks like black coffee. He drinks, sniffs with muted dissatisfaction. It is black coffee. He doesn’t like this prank. (Is it a prank? childish foolishness, whatever it is—) Doesn’t see the point of it. Doesn’t like the way it makes him feel, like a covey flushed out of a hedge. A shiver of leaves, and a rush of white wings…
“Take off your coat,” he repeats, but Yuugi only shrugs. He’s looking around the office now, humming around the lid of his cup.
“I’m good. It’s kind of cold in here.” He makes his way to the couch in the corner, looking down at the table. He sits down, angles the chessboard. “Are we going to play or what?”
Seto looks at the clock. 10:27 a.m. He takes his time eradicating seven more emails.
“Are you coming?”
“Momentarily.”
Half an hour. Yuugi’s made him wait half an hour. Even if Seto’s been here since dawn, taking advantage of the quiet, reading research proposals and granting permissions, this is the one break in that routine, the one concession he’s made to Yuugi’s pathetic attempts to broach a friendship or whatever he thinks this is. Least he could do is show up on time—
But there is only silence from the other end of the room, silence that makes his skin crawl. Seto waits a few more seconds. It’s fine. Just read this rate table again—read it twice–
“I could leave.”
Yuugi says it mildly. Phrased as an offer. There’s something strange about his expression, something somber and intense. He’s not irritated or confused. He’s not even worried.
Seto jabs hard at the spacebar. Fucking subtextual threats. He gets enough of these in the boardroom. Better to skip the social games, get straight to the point. To win in a world of black and white, where the moves are pure and the victories are clean. Yuugi wants a game? Fine. He’ll get a game. But Seto’s not wasting any more of his time.
“D4,” he says.
This time, the silence isn’t so long. It spans the length of a question, considers the answer. Seto presses his back into the chair, tilts his head into the leather, makes himself comfortable. He hears the slide of a piece moving across the board. And then he hears it again.
“D5,” Yuugi says.
“C4.”
“E5.”
The Albin counter, or a fluke? A twitch of anticipation runs up Seto’s spine. He glances at the table, sees Yuugi looking back. A blank, expectant look. Mildly curious.
A fluke. Seto turns back to the monitor and clicks through a zoning report for the theme park expansion. “Knight to C3.”
Yuugi presses forward with a knight of his own. Seto takes it in three turns (he uses an elegant little fork maneuver, a riff he’s borrowed from a Nakamara game, not that Yuugi would know who that was. He hasn’t even read the books Seto recommended…but no matter. Seto has the better position now, and Yuugi’s subsequent hiss of irritation is exceptionally satisfying.)
The game proceeds like this, Yuugi thinking through his moves, Seto half attending to emails, to spreadsheets. Is it showing off, when he opens up a text editor and starts writing code? A handicap? Does it matter? He’s enjoying himself. Dividing his attention adds a challenge, makes the difference in their skill tolerable. The code itself doesn’t matter — it’s nonsense, a virus that infects Duel Discs. He adds a flourish: it only activates under certain loss conditions, targeting sloppy players, or weak ones. Useless as a program, but he enjoys the image: some idiot (Jounouchi comes to mind) panicking as their life points tick down, as their cards get swallowed.
And then it happens. Yuugi moves his queen to C5. Threatening Seto’s knight. (Has he really not seen it? It can’t be a trick—)
Seto doesn’t crow, not yet. He spins in his chair, leans forward, elbows on the desk. “E7.”
He sees Yuugi move the knight. How his hand falters as he draws it back.
“Wait,” he murmurs. Brows knotting. “Is that…”
Seto braces. As the seconds tick, the urge to scream with laughter builds up, roils in his throat. He holds it back. Waiting.
Then he hears it, a dropped note in that soft morning. Barely a murmur.
“…damn.”
The gates swing wide. Seto strums his fingers against the desk and laughs and laughs. “That,” he says, “Is called Anastasia’s mate.”
“It’s not a mate.”
“Mate in two.”
“So there’s a counter?”
“Not anymore.”
Still Yuugi is thinking about it. He looks down at the board, frowning. “That can’t be right,” he said. “There’s probably…”
“It’s right.” Seto’s inbox dings, and he turns back to the monitor. “Take your time,” he says. “You won’t find anything.”
The coffee’s barely warm now. He secretly likes it this way: a little lukewarm, a little burnt. Isono makes espressos too perfectly. (Seto was raised on them, these immaculate cups of coffee, so there’s no explaining his preference for bitter dregs, for water that’s been sitting in a percolator all day, going bitter, getting reheated over and over…)
He sneaks another look at the couch. Yuugi is motionless, his focus narrowed in on the board. (There is something about that focus, isn’t there, that overwhelms you?) But he is stranger than usual. Has been stranger than usual, these last few weeks. Perhaps it's the change in perspective, in the way chess makes you think. There are no mysteries in here, no cards to guess at; the game can be read by anyone with an eye for the future. Even now Yuugi hardly moves…just tenses his shoulders, tilts his spine.
A rare seed of satisfaction blooms in Seto’s chest. Ganbare, King of Games. That feline focus won’t be enough. The war’s already over: there’s no luck to be had here, no hope in the next pull of the card. The wins, when they come, are always inevitable.
He lingers in that warmth of that thought as he studies the monitor, writes a few more lines of code. Just playing now, fiddling with the data-flow, considering benchmarks. Is there any use for an algorithm that poisons your machinery? If a duelist falls below a given win/loss ratio, and Disc features shut down for each point the ratio drops… could a tournament run on such rules? The mediocre players would revolt, surely. But for the players who overcame impossible odds…it would make good TV.
“It’s snowing.”
Seto chokes on his coffee.
He coughs, swallows. Puts the cup down. He refuses to acknowledge Yuugi, who is standing at the corner of the desk. (When did he get so close—?) Does he think Seto can’t see that raised eyebrow, that quick crack of a smile? Childish games. The bastard surprised him on purpose. “It’s been snowing.”
“The flakes are bigger.”
“So?”
“So.” Yuugi sidles closer. “It looks nice.”
Does it? Flurries tumble against the pane. Seto scowls at the window and then turns back to the computer. He doesn’t trust this, doesn’t like that Yuugi feels like he has the right to come back here—
“What, too good for a view?” (He’s at Seto’s shoulder now—his thigh bumping a drawer, knocking it shut.) “Tell me what you’re working on.”
Seto can smell chocolate. And something else under it, a perfumed smell—cologne? deodorant? He straightens his spine, looking for distance, and hits a key, minimizing the windows. “Go away.”
“C’mon.” Yuugi is looking down at him. “What are you hiding? Company secrets?”
“The fuck do you care?”
“Guess I’m curious.”
Is this another joke? Seto isn’t quite sure, doesn’t know what to make of this brazen act of trespass, of the nonchalant way Yuugi settles against the desk. He’s never come back here. No one does. Even Mokuba—
The coat rustles. Yuugi’s hand presses into the desk. He’s leaning forward now. Crowding in.
“Should we finish the game?”
“What game?”
“The chess game.”
“That game is over.”
“Is it?”
That flushed feeling again. Exposure, and open spaces…Seto’s eyes dart to the board. Can’t see it, not with Yuugi blocking the way.
“You can’t—”
“You said it took two turns.” The coat crinkling as Yuugi moves closer. The sound of snapping cinders, melted snow streaking down his arm. Seto stares at the wet fabric, at the movement of Yuugi’s hand as it lifts. It moves forward, toward Seto’s face. Why is he—
There’s no feeling it, that brush of fingers against his face, but Seto traces it in his mind’s eye: a scar of flame, a curl of smoke… He jerks back. Stares. Thoughts churning. What game is this? No, not that. Figure that out later. The words—what was Yuugi saying? Two turns? But there’s no way. There’s no way he found—
“Impossible,” he says, grasping at logic. “It’s a forced mate. You can’t—”
But Yuugi isn’t smiling. His gaze is flat. Dark, even, the way his mouth twists, his fingers retreating. “You would have seen it, too…” His voice dropping to a murmur: “…if you weren’t showing off.”
No. Seto pushes the chair back. Stands. He crosses the room, looks down at the board. No. No. There’s no possible—
It takes him a minute to catch his breath, to see the truth. God damn it. God damn it.
Yuugi hasn’t moved from the desk. Even when Seto spins toward him, he doesn’t move. Just stands there, waiting. With that flat gaze. That infuriating little—
“You don’t bluff in fucking chess,” Seto spits.
There’s no satisfaction in Yuugi’s eyes, no trace of amusement. “Worked, didn’t it?”
“Worked how? There’s no move! Do you think I’m a fucking idiot? How do you think that would play out in an actual game?”
“This is an actual game.”
Yuugi hasn’t raised his voice, but there’s a heaviness to him that wasn’t there before. It’s anger: solid with fury, an anvil singing under the hammer. (But why is he angry? When did he—)
Neither of them move. Seto becomes aware of his clenched fist, the shaking muscles of his wrist. The empty building below their feet, the chill sweeping under the door. His forehead burns where Yuugi touched him.
Diversions. Psychological tricks. This bizarre behavior…some second game is happening here. A trick of social engineering, of manners and deceit. Seto hates these types of games. Hates being lied to. If you can’t take what you want by force, you weren’t strong enough to have it in the first place.
“Hour’s up,” he says. “Get out.”
Yuugi holds his gaze a moment more. Then his eyes turn, reluctantly, toward the window, where the snow has picked up, eddies swirling against the glass.
He mutters: “Game’s not over.”
Childish response. Something Mokuba would say, eight years ago, after tossing the board. If you don’t mate it doesn’t count.
Seto had expected better. “It’s over. It’s fucking over. Any professional would resign in—”
“I don’t care.” Yuugi says. He circles the desk, but doesn’t move away from it. Just stands there, his hand pressing into the top of the stained wood. Leaving fingerprints. “Chess is about knowing where to apply pressure.” His head tilts, just slightly. “That’s what you told me.”
And in the terrible silence that follows, Yuugi sees something—must, for his eyes brighten, his focus narrowing. He grins. How can so many teeth fit in so small a mouth? Seto can’t bear it; he feels nauseous. But this is Yuugi, this refusal to lose. This denial of facts. This small silent room feels like a trap, a dark cave of a place. The building abandoned. The whole city asleep. An idea stammers behind Seto’s eyelids: the white rolling eyes of a rabbit, birds bursting out of the leaves. An illustration he saw once, in a survival book he’d read to Mokuba, back when they were kids: a man facing down a panther: his arms spread, his coat hanging open. Make yourself big, the book said. Spread out your arms, intimidate them into believing you’re too much trouble. (Yuugi’s wearing a coat like that—but no, that thought’s absurd. Yet the image lingers…)
Get out. The words building up against the roof of his mouth. Get out get out get out—
His gaze fixes on the white swirl of snow in the window. He can feel the draft, air leaking from under the door, the urge to escape eating at him like a corrosive. (He has you here alone—) But no—no, there is Isono, reading a book at the secretary’s desk. There must be others…some overachieving researcher putting in hours on the fifth floor. The janitorial staff, waxing the floors. But the building echoes. Seto can still see the depression of Yuugi’s shoes in the carpet, the deep tread of snow boots. (And his own, oil-slick oxfords…which had no tread, left no print…)
And the board. Immutable, the truth of it. Patterns you can’t change. Thoughts you can read, codified, as neat as binary…and Seto reads them now. He hasn’t looked at the board yet, not clearly. He’s been thinking of log files, of tournament rules. Of Gabi fucking Reynolds. But he can see it now: a play in motion. Black marshaling its forces, looking for a way in. A decoy here, perhaps. A chase across the board, and then the quarry is cornered…was that your plan, Yuugi? Did you think this was it, the game you could win?
It was close, closer than Seto had realized. He hadn’t seen it coming. And Yuugi was only a few turns away. Two, maybe. Or three.
He was getting better. That’s why he’s so impatient, so hungry to win—(why he’s come bringing coffee, pressing in, trying to catch you off guard). And he’s angry. Yes, of course he’s angry. Who wouldn’t be, thinking that surely, this time, victory would be unassailably yours—only to be ignored, to lose easily to a strategy you hadn’t seen coming…?
A laugh sputters out of Seto’s chest. Absurd, how close he’d been to disaster. Insane play, applying pressure. (With no leverage!) The balls of it: trying to make Seto Kaiba balk. (And the desperation! How exhilarating, to know that, even if for one moment, Yuugi must have been really, truly furious.) He shakes his head.
“Were you hoping I wouldn’t notice?” he asks, and watches Yuugi’s shoulders fall, his smile twisting. Yes, now they both see the board clear.
“It would have made it easier,” Yuugi says. “To win the next game.”
“Yes,” Seto agrees, and then adds, icily: “But there wouldn’t have been a next game.”
Maybe it’s not the answer Yuugi expected. He blinks, then turns again toward the window. His lips move, but no sound comes. A sentence dies on the tongue. What now? Fear? What is there—
That burning sensation again, crawling over Seto’s face. He clenches his fingers. Stretches them. Clench, release. He is confused by this feeling of guilt, this sudden urge to offer comfort. Consolations are for children. They have both lost games before. (And still, there is the way Yuugi’s hands tuck into his elbows, how his weight shifts slightly, his shoulders rising around his ears, his fixed gaze, the blinding snow…Yuugi, don’t you see that you are the predator here…?)
“You know,” Yuugi said. “I…”
Seto speaks quickly. “Is 22 sufficient?”
“What?”
Seto stills his twitching fingers. Very deliberately, he turns his back and moves to the door, where he opens the room controls.
“22 degrees.” His voice rasps in his throat. He activates the heat; the walls thrum to life. “Is that sufficient? Or do you prefer 23?”
Does Yuugi flush, when Seto looks at him? There’s something strange about the way his eyes dart toward the floor. Lamplight, yellow flecks in his pupils. Something like shame, or embarrassment. Expressions Seto isn’t used to seeing on that face.
“23,” Yuugi says. “Thanks.”
Seto doesn’t reply. He finishes setting the heat. Holds out a hand.
Wordlessly, Yuugi steps closer. Strips off his jacket. Hands it over.
It’s heavy in Seto’s hands. Damp on the outside. Inside, the fabric is warm. Apply pressure, he thinks, hanging it on the rack. Maybe that’s it. Turn the tournament into a hunting ground. Put the agency into the player’s hands; award them points they can spend to counteract the virus, or to inflict it on their opponent. Give them the choice of who gets handicapped, and by how much. Could be interesting…making challengers out of novices.
He retrieves his coffee. Cold now, but he doesn’t mind. The couch sinks beneath him as he sits, begins to reset the pieces.
Yuugi wanders closer, watching. His arms are crossed.
Seto arranges the king and queen in their courts, turns the board, gathers the pawns. Working mechanically, already thinking of adjustments to the code, of currency systems, of playtesting—
“Seto.”
“Tell me later,” Seto says. “When you can win a game without bluffing.”
Yuugi is silent again. The board resolves; Seto looks up. There’s something that runs against the tip of Yuugi’s teeth. Something he still wants to say.
“Later,” Seto repeats, and whatever Yuugi might have said is finally swallowed. He hovers, hesitating. He is slender beside the leather armchair, dwarfed by the leather wingbacks, by his black sweatshirt, fingers tugging at the collar.
“I think I hate losing,” he says. He stiffens when Seto snorts.
“Everyone,” Seto enunciates. “Hates losing.” He glances into the swirling dregs at the bottom of his cup. Below the couch, the heater warms, the metal ticking as it expands.
“However,” he concedes, and drains the cup. “It is easier…when the game is interesting.”
They look at each other. The white behind the window is blinding. Yuugi is just a shadow against the sky. But there’s a new jut to Yuugi’s silhouette, an edge unbroken.
“I’ll win the next one,” he says. Seto doesn’t contradict him. He’s feeling magnanimous, cheerful even. (And in the back of his head, tournament rules unspooling, tweaks to the code…and what stadium to use, who to sponsor? A thrill that vibrates at the back of his skull…Interesting games, and the people who play them.)
And Yuugi, braced against that bright window. Watching. What is he waiting for? Seto knows.
He spins the board toward him.
There is something overwhelming about it: Yuugi’s sharpening focus. Witnessing the heat of that intensity as he sits, his fingers flexing, his shoulders disappearing into the shadow of the wingbacks…just the yellow lamplight in his eyes, the sharp edge of a grin. (Oh yes, here is something worth watching.) The tipping scales. A future where wars are waged on this board: blood spilt, teeth bared…
The building groans. Snow cascades against the window. The sky is white; the air whirling around their feet is warm. Very carefully, Yuugi reaches out. He selects a pawn. Above their heads, the tick of the clock. Underneath, Seto’s racing heart. A quiet day, a game worth playing. An opening gambit…a piece that slides from C2 to C3, that taps the board, that settles into place—there. Perfect.
“Your move,” Yuugi says.
Already, Seto is reaching forward.