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Before Yuugi’s hand can even close around the knob, the door creaks open.
The Other Yuugi looks up from where he sits on the floor. Toys of all kinds are scattered around him, seeming almost organized, somehow, despite there being no pattern to their arrangement that Yuugi can discern. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Other Yuugi smile.
“Hey,” the Other Yuugi says as he moves the toys Yuugi is staring at off to the side, clearing the space in front of him. “Come on in! Sorry about the mess…”
Yuugi lets his hand fall. “I can come back another time. It looks like you’re in the middle of something—”
“It’s fine!” The Other Yuugi waves his hands in front of his face and gestures for Yuugi to come in, smiling brightly. “It’s nothing I can’t do later.”
Yuugi shoves his hands in his pockets and steps into the room. It’s as bright and inviting as he’s ever seen it, but the mess seems even bigger now that it’s surrounding him. He scowls, carefully navigating the maze of toys until he reaches the little haven in front of the Other Yuugi.
The door clicks closed behind him. Yuugi glances back, shoulders tensing, and flinches when the Other Yuugi’s hand brushes his wrist. He whips his head back around to face him and finds him with his hand still raised, frowning up at him.
“You’re on edge,” the Other Yuugi observes. “What’s wrong, mou hitori no boku?”
Yuugi shakes his head. “It’s nothing important.”
Gently, the Other Yuugi takes Yuugi’s wrist and guides him down to sit in front of him. The tile flooring is oddly warm. Yuugi’s hand twitches in his pocket, itching to touch it.
“You can tell me things even if they aren’t important, you know,” the Other Yuugi says, offering him an encouraging smile.
Yuugi sighs. “Yes. Of course I know.”
The Other Yuugi lowers his head with a wince and folds his hands in his lap. “Right. Sorry.”
Yuugi has to hold back his own wince. Regret churns in his stomach. “No. I’m sorry. Don’t be. I don’t mean to be vague.” But there’s an ever-increasing pressure on his soul that’s been closing in, its grip so tight it threatens to crush him—is threatening to crush him now, even as it remains unidentifiable past the vague impression of weathered fingers trying to wring his throat and bleed his heart dry. Yuugi shakes his head. “It just isn’t something I know how to explain.”
“Oh. Okay.” The Other Yuugi fiddles with the hem of his nightshirt. “If you don’t want to talk…why did you come and see me?”
Yuugi doesn’t know, but that isn’t a satisfying answer to give. His shoulders hike up closer to his ears, and he sends a sidelong glance at the closed door. “I just…wanted to see you,” he says.
The Other Yuugi peeks up at him shyly. “No other reason?”
Yuugi shrugs and crosses his arms. “It made sense at the time.”
“But not anymore.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” Yuugi admits, hoping that’s enough of an explanation.
“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” the Other Yuugi assures him. His knee knocks against Yuugi’s in a gesture that seems intentional but Yuugi doesn’t understand the meaning of. “We could play a game, if you’d like?”
“A game could be fun,” Yuugi says, but even he can hear that his heart isn’t in it.
It makes the Other Yuugi frown again. “Something else, then.” He glances around the room, searching for anything they can do, but there’s little other than games in his soul room. Only the shelves they go on, a desk similar to the one in their real room, and the bed.
Yuugi’s attention locks onto said bed. “Wait. Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” he blurts out.
“I am sleeping,” the Other Yuugi says, absentminded as he continues mentally scanning crevices of the room Yuugi can only imagine.
Yuugi’s back straightens abruptly, then straightens further as he realizes he’d been slouching. He suppresses a shiver, off-put. “You look…very awake?”
The Other Yuugi laughs so hard he snorts. Yuugi tenses, not getting what was funny about that statement. The Other Yuugi looks him up and down, and for the first time, Yuugi notices the way his eyelids droop and how unfocused his eyes seem despite their attentiveness. “And you look like you’re about to bolt.”
“I’m not,” Yuugi says, too fast to be convincing.
The Other Yuugi giggles again. “Then relax.” He puts a hand on Yuugi’s shoulder. “C’mere.”
Yuugi finds himself being laid down with his head on the Other Yuugi’s lap. Nails run lightly over his scalp and through his hair in a steady rhythm. The Other Yuugi smiles down at him with those big eyes of his, still overbearingly doe-like even under the weight of sleep.
Yuugi’s own eyes sting strangely, like someone has kicked up dust in an old warehouse, or ocean mist has sprayed right in his face, or he’s been staring at someone without blinking for too long. Maybe he’s been staring up at the Other Yuugi for longer than he realized. That must be it.
But that doesn’t explain the tightness in his chest, like his lungs want to cave in on themselves, or the thick lump in his throat that’s stopping him from swallowing right. It must be those old, weathered hands that have been haunting him, finally come to wring what little life he has out of him.
He didn’t want his partner to see this. He didn’t think it would come so fast, not while the Other Yuugi is holding him with such a gentle touch, trying to make him feel better just because he showed up at his soul room door.
The Other Yuugi’s eyes go wide. “Ah—It’s okay, mou hitori no boku!” For some reason, he wipes at Yuugi’s cheek with the heel of his palm. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Yuugi hiccups out an ugly sound. The comfort of the Other Yuugi’s soul pressed up so close calls to him, and he wriggles until he’s in a position where he can wrap his arms around the Other Yuugi’s waist. One of the Other Yuugi’s hands comes to rest on Yuugi’s back while the other returns to his hair. He cards through it gently as horrible noises keep punching out of Yuugi’s throat. His warmth soothes the cold grip on Yuugi’s chest, letting it unravel slowly.
“It’s okay,” the Other Yuugi repeats. “Just let it out, mou hitori no boku.”
Yuugi coughs and splutters, unable to stop the harsh, wet hiccups spilling out of his mouth. His vision has blurred so much that he can barely see. He sniffles and presses his nose into the Other Yuugi’s stomach. The Other Yuugi’s nightshirt quickly becomes damp.
Wait. Damp?
Finally, Yuugi registers the wet trails along his cheeks, rolling down from his eyes. Tear tracks. Tears. He’s crying.
He can’t remember the last time he cried. He doesn’t think he’s ever even had the urge to. As far as he knows, this is the first time either has happened at all.
That only makes him sob harder. His grip on the Other Yuugi tightens.
“It’s okay,” the Other Yuugi murmurs like a mantra, still running his fingers through Yuugi’s hair. “It’s okay.”
“Mou hitori no ore,” Yuugi gasps out between sobs. “Ai—Aibou—”
“Hey. I’m here.”
Yuugi nods. He opens his mouth to speak again, but his throat is too tight, and all that comes out is a choked squeak.
The Other Yuugi’s hands trace down his back, vertebra by vertebra. It’s a little hypnotizing, the way his fingers dip up and down in time with Yuugi’s ragged breathing. They slow ever-so-slightly as he gets lower down his spine, and then even slower as he traces back up again.
Yuugi finds his breathing slowing down with them—or maybe it’s the other way around, and they’ve been slowing with him all along. He can’t tell. But after tracing up and down a few more times, Yuugi’s breathing returns to a speed that could almost be called relaxed.
“Are you alright?” the Other Yuugi whispers in his ear.
Yuugi doesn’t remember sitting up, or grabbing the back of the Other Yuugi’s shirt in a death grip, or curling up into himself so tightly that he feels small in the Other Yuugi’s lap. But here he is, suddenly finding himself straddling him, completely engulfed in his presence.
Both his soul and the oddly warm room made to house it cradle him. No looming fates or fears will reach him here.
The Other Yuugi rests his head against Yuugi’s, and Yuugi blinks. “I’m alright,” he says, voice so hoarse he worries the Other Yuugi won’t understand him.
But he presses a smile to Yuugi’s temple and says, “Good. I’m glad.”
After a few more moments sitting in mutual contentment, the Other Yuugi’s hand slips from Yuugi’s back. A sudden cold seeps back into Yuugi’s bones. He isn’t ready to go back yet.
But the Other Yuugi keeps his other hand in Yuugi’s hair, still carding through it absentmindedly and keeping Yuugi close as he continues arranging the toys scattered across the floor.
Yuugi shifts into a better position to watch him. The grip on his hair tightens for a moment, then loosens once more as Yuugi makes no move to leave.
His partner murmurs quiet reassurances as he works. Some of them are so faint, Yuugi can’t even make them out. It’s more about the constant sound, he figures—probably for both of them.
Whatever pattern the Other Yuugi had started to build before begins to form in full. Many of the toys around them are old children’s toys, some they’d had and some they hadn’t—building blocks, a music box, a toy xylophone, and a wooden train, tipped over or lined up with matching colors side-by-side, filling gaps that would otherwise make the arrangement unsteady. Many are broken, with halves and parts placed together in neat arrangements as if to be reassembled later, while others are strewn about and repurposed for means Yuugi can’t begin to fathom.
Various cards are laid out beneath them. They don’t cover the floor completely, and most of them were obviously tucked underneath after the child’s toys were set up, but they seem to form a foundation regardless. Most of them are loose, but the Other Yuugi continues to fiddle with adding the boxes to the arrangement.
Right at his feet, he rearranges hanafuda cards so they’re spread out like a tarot reading. On top of them he places an old ban-sugoroku piece and a line of three dice—one plastic, pink with white dots; one made from a dark ebony; and one a solid gold. Other oddly specific dice are placed in a semi-circle around them.
Woven between everything are Duel Monsters cards. Yuugi spots the familiar faces of Dark Magician and Kuriboh, but there are others he doesn’t recognize. And on top of those are puzzle pieces of all kinds—raw wood, cardboard, painted, intricate whimsies, 3-dimensional pieces, and broken parts of Rubik’s Cubes. Pieces of the Millennium Puzzle, along with everything else, begin to form a ring around him and the Other Yuugi. A protective barrier between them and the closed door, this time with Yuugi on the right side.
A barricade around this little haven the Other Yuugi has carved out for him.
He’ll have to go back to his own room eventually. But as long as the Other Yuugi will allow him, he’d much rather stay safe in the sleepy embrace of his soul.