#puzzletime

It's his summer uniform shirt. He squeezes the soft fabric just to feel his hands. School seems such a faraway thought at the moment, their holiday still going on, everything having... changed. No longer are the rooms of his heart occupied by a 3000-year-old spirit of a pharaoh, no longer lays the heavy weight of the golden puzzle against his chest.

Although, he thinks sluggishly, he might have lied a bit. Chuckling to himself, oddly breathless, he finishes folding the shirt and turns to lean his elbows on the kitchen counter.

“A bit” doesn't really cut it, he admits. It was an outright lie to say that the spirit didn't occupy his heart - he did, he does, Atem does, oh how he does occupy it. While that presence in the deepest crevices of his heart is no longer true in the literal sense, it doesn't change the fact that Yuugi is completely, utterly, infinitely in love with Atem.

Burying his hands in his hair, head drooping low, he closes his eyes and breathes. He smells coffee grounds, laundry detergent, bread. Hears bird songs and the sound of traffic from an open window. He keeps breathing, listening, grounding himself little by little. His thoughts have been moving like molasses but they're moving, that terrifyingly blank canvas he came to completely gone. He hears the grandfather clock in the living room chime eleven.

Time.

Time had been a precious, finite resource for all those weeks leading up to their trip to Egypt. The clock had ticked inevitably closer, closer and closer to that fateful day they all knew was coming - the ceremonial duel, and ultimately, the leaving of Atem.

Now time is a resource that they have in abundance. Yuugi still doesn't quite feel able to wrap his head around it. Atem stayed, Atem isn't leaving, Atem is here. With him. Still here, like always, but outside of Yuugi's head and in his own actual body. Atem is his own person, whole and shining, able to wear his own clothes, his own makeup, his own smile. He's able to touch and be touched. Hug and be hugged.

It's exhilarating, that thought, it's full of so much happiness Yuugi feels like he's going to burst. And he does burst, he notes, as tears start to burn in the corners of his eyes and soon stream down his cheeks like rivers, uncontrollable and free.

The last time Yuugi had cried was when he thought he would be watching Atem leave his life forever. It had been almost a week since then and Yuugi hadn't been able to cry, not from anything - something stopped him each time he felt close to tears and they dried up even before he could feel the sting of them.

Now, it seems, that blockage is finally gone and Yuugi laughs wetly, wiping his eyes once before realising it's no use. He feels as if it's all the fear and anxiety and relief and joy and love that comes pouring out of his eyes and by doing so lightening the weight in his chest he didn't even know had been there. It feels liberating.

Time.

They finally have time, and they have all of it.

It's a worthy reason to shed tears for and Yuugi lets them come, welcomes them like an old friend, smiling throughout it all.