“Lately, I’ve been having really weird dreams.”

The sun is going down. Stood in front of the window, frozen in the middle of sweeping the classroom, Ryou’s face is cast in shadow. Yugi tries not to stare; he’s gotten his attention, at least, and can focus on wiping down the blackboard as he speaks. 

He’s wanted to bring this up for a while, but the two of them rarely find themselves alone together. It’s not hard to get other students to skimp on their cleaning duties after school, though, especially with friends like Jounouchi and Honda, who can rally any group of wannabe delinquents into slacking. Ryou is skittish, sometimes, especially after everything, but he’s also dutiful, and not the type to get caught up in such behaviour. A perfect strategy, then, all pieces aligned and arranged, and now Yugi has him in a sort of checkmate.

Not that today’s conversation is anything like an attack. It just feels like the only way to get Ryou to actually hang out is to corner him, lately. 

Yugi scrubs at chalk equations and takes a breath. It’s not like it’s an easy topic.

“I thought they were just dreams, at first, you know?” Casual. Keep it casual and normal and relaxed. “But they’ve been really vivid, and they’re starting to have, like, continuity.”

He sneaks another glance. Ryou’s eyes aren’t visible at this angle, in the shadows like this, but Yugi can tell they’re fixed on him. He hasn’t moved an inch.

Behind him, the sun haloes his head, darkening to red, painting his pale hair in light.

“That’s weird,” Ryou says, in a clear attempt to respond as normally as possible that comes out a little hoarse, a little strained. “What are they about?”

Like he needs to ask. It’s obvious he knows; he started looking exhausted every day again around the time this started for Yugi. Nobody else noticed, of course: he used to look that tired all the time, after all. Yugi knows why e did, though - has felt that bone-deep aching lack of sleep that a body can only really experience when it’s regularly possessed by someone who has forgotten the need for sleep in favour of – well, in his case, games. In Ryou’s, perhaps ‘revenge’ was the better term, though wasn’t it all played out just the same? 

“It’s kind of like the Memory World,” he begins, keeping his voice as light as he can, making sure to smile even as Ryou’s grip on the broom tightens. His own hand shakes a little with its next swipe. It’s been hard, without him, even knowing this is what’s best, what he wanted. He hopes it’s at least been easier for Ryou, since that guy left, too. “Like waking up, and I’m back then, and I’m there.”

The sound of a broom being pushed over linoleum tile from behind him. Ryou’s head has dropped, shoulders slumped, hair all in his face as he sweeps.

“And you’re him,” he says. It’s not a question. 

“And I’m him,” Yugi affirms. 

“Yeah,” Ryou says, almost too quiet to hear. “Me too.”

–

As the sun rises, so too does the divine-made-flesh, the King in gold, the Lord of two lands - in short, the sun himself. 

The royal bedchambers have a balcony facing East, openings in the doors angled precisely so that those first rays of light might land upon Atem’s face, ensuring that he might bring such light to all of Egypt every day, and thus continue the joy in the hearts of all his people unto eternity.

It’s pissfuck annoying and bright, and forces a more self-styled King to jerk awake, tangling in sheets more finely-woven than he’d ever imagined, hitting his head on a beautifully carved headrest and falling off of the bed with a harsh noise and a word that he knows full well would get him flayed if anyone knew he’d said it in the Pharaoh’s earshot. Not that anyone will know; any palace servants got ordered well in advance to let Atem rest later this morning, and the elaborately-painted door is blocked by an elaboarately-carved chair besides. 

The thief scrubs at his eyes, watches the Pharaoh sit up neatly in bed, lit in pale morning light that makes him look like he really is made of gold. Something perfect and unmarred.

For a moment, he forgets himself. Crawls like a snake on its belly, back onto the bed, with full intent to press their mouths together and lose another span of time to just enjoying themselves, not being who this world has made them.

Just for a moment, though, and before he can dip his head to kiss him, before his continued presence is even recognised, Atem reaches by rote and habit for what lies on his nightstand, and with practised ease, hangs the blood and bone of the thief’s home around his neck.

He hasn’t yet asked Atem if he knows – if he has any idea what made that thing that lies so close to his heart. It doesn’t really matter. He’s set to his destination. Whatever happens on the way is irrelevant.

Still as can be, he watches the King’s chest rise and fall slowly with a deep, steady breath, and those dark, long lashes part, eyes focusing in on the world. An early bird only because he can take his time waking up, perhaps, then, rather than anything to do with being a mortal manifestation of Horus or whoever, even if he is sat flawlessly upright with no discomfortor exhaustion showing on his face at all. 

As he sees the thief, that perfection eases away, though; he relaxes into a truer smile, softening at the edges. The thief doesn’t flinch from his hand as it comes up to cup his face, thumb running over lines he himself has traced a hundred times over. Ugly things. 

He interrupts before the Pharaoh can speak.

“Don’t make that face,” he chides, looking away. Out of the window is the whole city, all waking up below them. People too small to properly see. Perhaps it’s easier to be a king when you’re this high up, this far away. He can’t quite bring himself to pull away, though. The palm held against his jaw is soft and warm, like no hand he’s ever known; like no touch he’s known in longer than he can quite remember. “They’re old; they don’t hurt or anything.”

Atem pulls him closer, lets his lips brush against the marred skin.

“I was just wondering who could do that to such a handsome face,” he says, and, ah, it’s really working, isn’t it? This plan to slither his way into the palace, into this man’s heart, to make sure it hurts as much as possible when the truth comes out. 

He allows himself a laugh (it’s not funny) and shrugs the question off. It’d ruin the moment to answer directly, after all, even if it would feel like some kind of justice (justice, not law) to force this man to question his own kingdom.

“Nobody worth either of our time,” he says instead, honestly, pulling away enough to look the other man in the eye. “And it was worth it, anyway.”

It was. That natron had saved so much meat that would otherwise have rotted before he could eat it - and better yet, the guards who had caught him hadn’t realised the value of it, the treasure he’d truly stolen. He’d been punished only for the trespass into the tomb, marked across his face as a warning and let go. 

He’d been twelve years old, and thought he’d die from it, before he could even step towards that distant vengeance.

Not so distant, now. Practically within his reach.

It would be easy to end it here, now: to reach forward and wrap his hands - callused, rough, but nimbler and steadier than any scribe’s - around that perfect neck and just tighten his grip.

There’s a mark, barely visible but dark against Atem’s skin, right where his thumb would rest, if he did. Right where his own mouth had been, the night before. Not so perfect, then. Touchable. Easy, really, to dirty up, to have the outside match this kingdom’s true face. 

“If you stay here, I can make sure nobody ever hurts you again,” Atem tells him, and he’s being honest. It’s clear in those bright eyes that he would pamper the thief like a prized pet, a favoured treasure. That the thief would never have to concern himself with needing food or warmth or clothing ever again; that he could live in luxury for the rest of his days. 

It’s sweet of him, but it’s worthless. It won’t bring those people back from the Duat. It won’t pay back the blood and bone that hangs shining from the Pharaoh’s neck.

He grins, wide and bright as he can manage (thinks of how those priests will scream just as his mother did), and pushes Atem away with two fingers pressed just below the pyramid-point of that cursed gold.

“Nah,” he insists, rolling off the bed to retrieve his clothes, his bag. “Think I’d rather run about as I please, and see you when the mood strikes.”

“But you will come back?” He sounds almost plaintive. 

Spoiled brat, the thief thinks, and if there’s any fondness laced into the thought, he’d deny it to his grave. 

“Oh, you’ll definitely see me again,” he promises. Which will be true whether or not he chooses to do this more between now and the enactment of his plans, of course. If all goes well, he’ll be the last thing Atem ever sees. And he’ll never have to deal with the glare of another sunrise.

Atem smiles as he joins the thief in heading towards the balcony, and that, too, is far too bright. Worse still, he grabs him by the strap of his bag - jostles it, leaving the thief breathless with a moment of unsurety, of fear that there’ll be one too many clinks from inside the soft leather, that the Ring he’s reclaimed might be discovered.

There isn’t, or if there is, it’s not enough that Atem notices, at least. Perhaps he’s just distracted by tugging the thief down for one more kiss. 

–

“So then you can activate a handtrap like–”

Yugi catches sight of that shock of pale hair in the hallway, and cuts himself off mid-sentence, shooting Anzu an apology as he darts ahead through the crowd. 

It’s funny; Domino High is so accustomed to his presence that no-one takes a second glance at the illustrious King of Games. Anywhere else, and he’d have to be more careful. Somehow, though, school is an exception, its own little world. It’d be humbling if it wasn’t such a relief.

“Ah, good morning!”

He falls into step with Ryou as he greets him, cheery as he can be despite –

Ryou’s eyes are fixed straight ahead; his face is turning red.

“Good morning, Yugi,” he replies, stiff and formal, and Yugi knows that he, too, woke up with the breath of a kiss still lingering on his mouth.

He tries not to let it show on his own face how much that flush makes a bubble of laughter rise up from his chest to his throat, or how much it makes him want to reach out and feel how warm Ryou’s cheek is. 

Ryou is too accustomed to assuming that laughter comes at his expense, and he flinches from most touch, these days. Yugi doesn’t want to ruin this before it begins. Whatever ‘it’ is – he bites the inside of his cheek at the mere consideration of there being something to begin at all.

“Did you sleep well?” The easiest early tactic in any game without laid-out rules is to do your best to surprise your opponent, and Ryou, on this front, at least, seems particularly easy to catch off-guard.

True to form, his hand comes up to cover the lower part of his face, in some half-attempt to hide the pink spreading further and further across his face. 

“Very well, thank you,” he manages in response, and something about it gives Yugi a thrill of the same type of delight he gets from executing an extended combo without his opponent being able to counter it. “And yourself?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad, right?” Yugi asks, letting his head tilt, his eyes blink wide in false innocence. “I mean, it seemed like a nice time, don’t you think?”

Ryou looks practically stricken, and for a moment, Yugi thinks he’s misstepped, played the wrong card, but Ryou grabs him by the wrist and leads them both to an empty classroom. It had been used for chess club for a while, Yugi’s pretty sure - before Duel Monsters took priority in most gamers’ lives. 

They stand under fluorescent lights in silence for a few seconds while Ryou takes some deep breaths and gulps down some water from a bottle in his bag. 

“I–” he begins, and cuts himself off, mouth snapping shut. He closes his eyes, rubs at his temples, breathes. Yugi gives him the time he needs; it’s not hard. As much as it’s fun to treat it like a game and tease Ryou, he does want to talk about it properly, too - when he’d tried to start sussing out why and how these dreams were happening the other night, they’d been shooed out by Morita-sensei doing a sweep of the school before locking up, and Ryou lived in the opposite direction, so they hadn’t been able to actually discuss it to any real extent.

After a minute or two have passed, however, Ryou’s face is still in his hands, so Yugi sits on the nearest desk, and changes the subject.

“I’ve been meaning to try and get some time just the two of us for a while now, anyway,” he says, fingers reaching up to the cartouche that hangs under his shirt. Force of habit; it’s been hard enough to adjust to the far lighter necklace. “After all, we’re the only two who had comparable experiences with all that, aren’t we?”

He doesn’t say ‘the same’, or even ‘similar’. He knows better than that: they had very different spirits possessing them, and very different results from their presence. Well, for the most part. 

He wonders if Ryou knows, though, about the people hurt or mad or killed, in the time before Atem remembered how to be a person. He wonders if it would make a difference. 

“We don’t have to talk about any of it right now, but maybe on a weekend or something we could–”

“He was lying, you know,” Ryou interrupts. He’s not meeting Yugi’s eyes, still, his own wide and lamp-bright, staring hollowly ahead. “It was all part of his plan, to hurt th– Atem as much as possible. He was stringing him along. None of it was real.”

Yugi knew that. 

It was obvious, after all - it’s not like this new context changed the rest of the story, the parts they already knew.

He’s struck by the realisation that Ryou might not know all the details, actually; he hadn’t been allowed to come along to the Memory World, had he? Has he been left in suspense this whole time? 

The thought pangs at his heart - but no, no, they’d all regaled him with their own perspectives on the flight over to Egypt, after. And again on the flight home.

“He was just acting,” Ryou continues, an almost desperate edge to his voice, and Yugi realises why Ryou feels he has to say it. Rather - now he has the opportunity to clarify, without interruption or confusion on his own part, where he never had, before, when the other Bakura had been acting as him. Not until it was too late, at least. 

“I know,” Yugi says, keeping his voice level, trying not to come across as dismissive. “I mean, I figured it was part of his plan, since he clearly knew who Atem was and wasn’t trying to kill him right then and there.”

Ryou mumbles something that Yugi thinks might have been “He wanted to,” and Yugi can’t repress the smile twitching the corners of his mouth.

“It doesn’t mean that it was all lies, though, don’t you think?” he reasons, hopping to his feet and stepping forward to lean in conspiratorially. “I mean, the way he was looking at m– Atem…”

He’d almost said ‘me’. A little caught up in it all.

Ryou doesn’t seem to notice, though, flushing deep red again. 

“Some of it,” he murmurs, just loud enough to be heard. “Might have at least been enjoyable to him.”

“Just some?” Yugi’s teasing again. He can’t help it; the way Ryou freezes up when he flusters only invites more and more of it. 

He’s never been this close to Ryou. It hits him out of nowhere, really, because he’s noticing things about Ryou that he never had before. Almost involuntarily, he reaches up to cup Ryou’s jaw, thumb echoing the path Atem’s had followed in last night’s dream. There’s a thin, pale line, barely visible, traced down the length of Ryou’s face. Not quite the same, but most certainly matching the rugged, deep scar bisecting the Thief King’s face.

He doesn’t get the chance to ask how it happened when Ryou - unlike his counterpart, who had preened and leaned into the touch - almost leaps back away from Yugi, entire body a flinch.

“Oh,” Yugi finds his own cheeks heating up, too – he hadn’t meant to be so forward, especially so out of nowhere. Easy enough to pull the situation back under control though, he’s sure. “Sorry, sorry! I just figured, since we’ve already sort of been that close already–”

“We haven’t.”

It’s the second interruption with such a blunt statement, and if the last one had sounded hollow, this one is bitten out and bitter, harsh. In that moment, Ryou’s voice sounds just a little more like the other Bakura’s, and Yugi wonders if he has to put in effort to sound so gentle all of the time. 

It’s hard to know how to respond to that. He’s never seen Ryou quite like this, but he can’t hesitate, or he might just run, and who knows when Yugi will get another chance to fix whatever he messed up just then. All he can do is keep pressing buttons to see what inputs will give what results. 

“Well, sure, not directly, but I mean, even if it was a dream, it doesn’t make it any less something we both experienced, right? Especially if it’s – you know, a memory. Even if it’s someone else’s memory.”

“It’s different,” Ryou insists. “That isn’t something we could control: this is.”

There’s a weird feeling in Yugi’s chest. Something like disappointment.

“Oh,” he manages, the context of their real, current lives settling back around him. “You’re that… uncomfortable with that sort of thing?”

It’s almost a relief to see Ryou stop and groan in frustration, hands running through his hair, pushing his bangs out of his face. At least it’s not that .

“That’s not it,” Ryou begins, and groans again. Yugi has to be patient. It’s not his ‘turn’, so to speak – and besides, it looks like Ryou is close to a point where he might stop holding back and actually talk to him, finally. “I just- it’s just that I- you–”

Another groan. They’re becoming their own sort of punctuation at this point.

Yugi does the too-cute head tilt he’s long mastered whenever he wants someone to keep talking.

Ryou takes a deep breath and finally - finally! - looks Yugi in the eye properly.

“It’s difficult,” he admits, which is a start. He speaks slowly, feeling out each word. Like having to double check the text on every card before you play it, just in case. Yugi gets it.

Well, no, he never has to do that, but he’s played against plenty of people who do, and that surely counts for something.

“It’s difficult, because I have to experience not only all of the touching, and, and kissing, and stuff, but also the unbelievably complicated and messy feelings all tangled up in that guy’s head,” Yugi doesn’t interrupt, but wonders, not for the first time, what the Thief King’s name was, really. Ryou presses valiantly onwards with his sentence, voice getting more strained and tight as he speaks, pointer finger jabbing accusatorily at Yugi every few words. “And on top of that, I have to know now, since you’ve decided to tell me instead of letting me assume it’s nothing weird, that it’s not just a dream, but a magic dream, which I have to share with someone whose dream-self is doing all that kissing with mine, and I have to spend all my waking hours thinking about all of that, and – and , that someone’s real self is someone I’ve l– liked since the first week we met, and now he’s all up in my business instead of letting me get over him by myself!”

He seems quite out of breath when he’s finished. 

Yugi feels rather out of breath himself. 

His face is warm.

He can’t stop thinking about the Thief King’s mouth, softer than all the rest of him, and wondering if Ryou’s is the same. It’s hard to tell when he started thinking that sort of thing. When he started looking at Ryou like that.

“Oh,” he says. “Well, if you wanted, I suppose that we could have that weekend get-together-and-chat at a coffee shop, and call it a date, instead?”

Ryou’s mouth hangs open.

“What,” he says. It’s barely a question; just a statement of disbelief.

Yugi can’t push all the awkwardness or embarrassment out of his smile; he’s only ever asked anyone out before as part of a larger play, a move to help someone else rather than actual romantic intent.

“I mean, if you want? You meant me, that you’ve, um, liked, right?”

Ryou can’t seem to figure out where to put his hands: they curl in the front of his shirt, in the end.

“I. Um, yes,” he manages, all the fire from moments before lost in favour of mumbling at the ground. “I mean, if you want, too.”

This time, when Yugi reaches forward, he doesn’t flinch away, and lets him take his hand.

“Maybe we can do it a little better than they did?” he suggests, gentle as he can. Ryou huffs out a soft little laugh. It’s cute, Yugi thinks, and grins up at him, already mapping out a game plan for the weekend. 

–

The sun is low in the sky, hanging over the Manu. It reddens as it readies itself to lower into the snake’s jaws. 

On a cliff overlooking a town somewhere, two men – barely men, call them boys, though the world has put enough weight on each of their shoulders that they might be called Kings – sit with their legs dangling into air.

They share bread, dip it into stolen honey, and none of it is sweet as their knuckles brushing against each other.

“If you could live a new life,” Atem asks, out of nowhere, eyes fixed on the horizon as if seeing something very different. The thief chews faster, swallows to be ready with an answer right away. “What would you do differently?”

“I’d tell you I like you,” is the response, and somehow it startles both of them. As if he hasn’t. But then, he hasn’t, has he? “And then – I’d move in with you. And we could invent new games every day.”

Atem laughs, bright and clear and ringing out into the air.