Archive of Our Own

The flight, delayed by inclement weather in Domino, did not land in New York City until just shy of midnight. Then there was the strange, stark journey through the customs terminal, a place of unnatural yellow-white light, carpets whose patterns left Atem’s memory the moment he looked away, the smell of stale, recycled air: a temple without a god, at least not one Atem respected. But the people were interesting. He used the last of his energy making faces at a fussy, dark-eyed baby, bouncing in her father’s weary arms, until she rewarded him with a dimpled, single-toothed smile. By the time he found Isono in the arrivals hall, Atem was dead on his feet.

Over the course of modern life, he’d already encountered its pettiest curse - the vortex of laundry, separating socks, flinging them at random into the cracks between dimensions. Traveling felt like the same curse, inverted: somehow, over fourteen hours of flight time, he’d picked up more things than he left Domino with. His dark red puffer coat slung over his arm, like a distended wing, unzipped, passport and boarding pass in the front pocket of his hoodie, headphones around his neck, connected by a dangling cable to his phone in his back pocket, mysteriously silent; a book (Merleau-Ponty), a book (sudoku), both of which should’ve been in his backpack, bearing down on his shoulders, and his rolling suitcase, the wheels clacking over the floor tiles in flat, rhythmic announcement of his arrival: ta-tack! ta-tack! ta-tack!

He pulled the suitcase with the same hand he used to carry a plastic shopping bag with some Japanese candy he’d bought in the Domino terminal, for Anzu but mostly for himself, and had started eating halfway through the flight. Any thoughts of stopping to organize himself were flattened by exhaustion, like an elephant stepping on a grape: a tiny pop! and a squish.

Isono - serene, competent, Isono, monolithic Isono, eternal Isono, who never missed a step - took one look at him and somehow, magically, fixed things: books, candy, headphones, and passport into the backpack, zipped. The phone, buzzing with joy at being taken off airplane mode. And the coat - 

“I suggest you put it on. We’re going outside,” Isono said, holding Atem’s backpack - his suitcase was nice. His backpack was a loan from Yuugi. Seeing its battered carcass hanging from Isono’s hand made Atem think its next flight should be nonstop into a dumpster.

Atem shrugged into the winter coat. The second part of Isono’s statement finally pierced through the mental fog. “Outside?”

“Yes, to the heliport. The helicopter will take us into Manhattan.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course,” Atem said. Duh! If P, then Q. If Seto, then helicopters! This was the strongest logical leap his mind was capable of at this hour, nightmarish not because of some monstrous, inescapable evil but the labyrinth liminal-space banality of airports. Same thing? He wondered if Isono would carry him to the helicopter if he asked, landed on yes, he would, and followed him out of the terminal...

...into a bracing, face-slapping blast of frozen winter air. 

Atem’s skin shivered and shrank from his scalp to his toes, squirming in their inadequate socks. Instantly he forgot his life all over again - the blazing, burning heat of ancient Egypt, the immortal flaming light of Amun-Re himself, promising rebirth and renewal every morning - every memory flaring out like a spark and swallowed by the pitch-black, frozen abyss of winter in New York City. There was only The Cold now, crawling into every crevice between his clothing and his skin. Horrifying.

“Seto-sama sends his regrets he was not able to come collect you himself,” Isono said, and Atem nodded, numb save for his clattering teeth. Seto was busy. Contracts. Pegasus. Business stuff. Whatever. He did his best to follow along, but it was unbearably dry. All of the complexity of Duel Monsters and none of its earth-shaking grandeur. Some of it bored even Seto. 

He crawled gratefully into the back of the town car, which oozed through traffic to the heliport, where the walk to the helicopter (QED) across the windswept tarmac felt as merciless and testing of the spirit as a trek across Antarctica. Seto had swapped out all the old white helicopters for updated models, deadly sleek black birds. Isono bundled Atem into the cozy interior. Within minutes they were aloft, deafened to the sound of even their own thoughts by the thunderous chop of the blades.

Atem leaned his head against the side of the seat, watching as the world grew smaller and smaller below him, at a continually tilting angle. Even through the glass window he could feel the cold on the other side, a hollowness in the air. Its whisper alone was enough to make him slouch deeper into his puffer coat.

He glanced at Isono, sitting across from him, wearing the same crisp tailored suit as usual, below a black topcoat. A pair of black leather gloves, a dark blue scarf dangling in perfectly even lengths from his neck. Instead of the black wingtips, a pair of sensible, stoic winter boots. Would Isono let Atem cuddle for warmth, if he asked? Like penguins, pressed against their fellows in a feathery fortress against the frozen winds? He looked like a penguin. Probably.

Atem curled and wiggled his toes deeper into his own boots and took a moment to check his phone. The Manhattan skyline stretched across the horizon, black and glittering.

JOEY: Emailed u all my recs for brooklyn

JOEY: If ur sugar daddy doesnt like them dump him capeesh?

ATEM: How many times have I told you not to call him my sugar daddy?

ATEM: That’s not what this is. YOU capeesh

JOEY: Sorry your royal shortness. I promise i will be respectful of ur relationship w him

JOEY: He is your...

JOEY: sucrose father

ATEM: HE IS MY BOYFRIEND WHOM I ADORE

JOEY: LOL it’s a JOKE. i love that u love the guy

JOEY: and him flying u first class all the way to new york just for fun is, i admit, one of the cooler perks of being a snot mr moneybags rich guy

JOEY: tell him i dare him to buy the knicks. i really need em to get good lol

ATEM: 👍

He ferreted his mustard-yellow scarf out of his backpack, wrapped it around his neck, and sank lower into his seat.

The helicopter touched down at the Lower Manhattan heliport. Then another town car, lurching through Manhattan traffic. With every block that passed, minutes at a time, exhaustion sank deeper and deeper into his bones; he felt like wet sand, dense and packed-in, not getting out of the town car so much as sludging out onto the slush-covered sidewalk. Just crossing the handful of meters from the curb to the lobby of the hotel was a freezing exertion, the smog-stained snow and blue salt crunching under his boots. 

Isono half-guided, half-dragged him into the elevator, which rose in a near-silent whir up to the presidential suite. In the foyer, he relieved Atem of his coat, his scarf, his backpack, and his suitcase, exiting with a polite good night and a pointed nod towards the living room.

Atem took off his boots, discovering one last thread of energy, a forgotten vein of gold gleaming in the dull bedrock of his mind: excitement. He was finally, finally here, and Seto was… where?

He stole into the creamy-white comforts of the living room. The lights were on low. None of them were as bright or welcoming as the rosy golden glow coming from the gas fire - thank all the gods! by all their names! - flickering quietly in the fireplace, as though not to wake the sleeping figure half-curled on the couch, simmering in all black like a spat-out coal. His head drooped off his hand. His laptop lay half open on the glass coffee table, next to his face-down phone. A finger of bourbon gleamed like liquid sunlight in a graceful glencairn glass.

Atem leaned in, studying him, enjoying his first look at Seto in a full month. He usually preferred to let Seto sleep, and let him wake up on his own. No matter how light or subtle the touch, Seto had a habit of startling awake, sucking in a steeling breath, his eyes going wide and blank. No matter how brief, it was not a shadow Atem liked to cast over their moments together.

But Atem was the only person who touched Seto like this, sliding his hand gently along the side of Seto's face, sweeping his thumb along his cheek, easing him up. That was enough to breach that ruined fortress wall of memory.

Seto’s eyes fluttered open, his chest filling with a deep, wondering inhale, and he saw Atem, his muted expression filling with light from the fire, and he smiled.

“Waiting for me?” Atem said.

"Mm. Took you long enough," Seto murmured, husky and sleep-filled. 

And Atem, still cupping his face with one hand, finished the last three inches of his journey with a kiss. He had crossed an ocean and a continent, almost seven thousand miles, just to see that smile. As he rolled onto the couch with Seto to greet him properly - straddling him, kissing him deeper, drawing soft, pleased rumbles from his chest - he knew, without question, he'd cross another seven thousand miles just to see it again. 

When Atem woke up in the morning, Seto’s side of the bed was already cold. The curtains were pulled back, giving him a floor-to-ceiling view of the park and the jagged-edge skyline, and also the distinct impression that he’d been left in a cool, luxurious cloud, floating high over the world. Even through the impenetrable wall of his deep, jet-lagged sleep he’d sensed movement, something shifting, stalking through the dark - dreaming Seto’s dreams now? terrifying, dreams that bled from their sleeper - and realized now it had only been Seto, leaving well before the morning light.

There was a note on the nightstand, scribbled on the top page of a notepad: 

Dinner at Cassonade at 8. Fuguta is on call for anything you need. Enjoy your day

Under his barbed-wire scrawl Seto had drawn a game of tic-tac-toe, with an X in the corner, and left a pen neatly aligned beside the notepad. Atem smiled, claiming the center with an O. Typical: turning even ‘xoxo’ into a game. 

He rolled out of bed, unpacked his suitcase in the walk-in closet between the immaculate tailored suits - the closet already smelled like Seto, and his rainy, steely cologne - and prepared for battle with winter. The wind was whipping past the windows at a vicious, howling speed. 

Against such an enemy, there were no possible counter-attacks. Just the defense of woolen socks, his thick scarf, his black leather gloves, with the touch screen-sensitive tips, so he didn’t have to take them off to use his phone (some modern inventions were pure genius), his red coat, the hood lined with faux white fur, and his lace-up snow boots, which looked more like giant beetles than boots, with sturdy laces and an aggressive tread.

“Atem-sama,” Fuguta said, summoning the elevator with a genteel tap of the call button, “it may be more practical to put all those things on in the lobby. In here we have a thermostat.”

Fuguta had a little bit more bite to him than Isono did. Atem liked that.

“I’m prepared,” Atem informed him, through a vertical halo of faux fur. 

He was not. 

The wind was not just wind. 

The wind was teeth, biting and gnashing at his exposed skin. The wind was a scream, ripped from the frozen throat of the sea, The wind slid past his scarf like a lover and squeezed his neck with a pair of icy hands, also like a lover. The wind made the air solid, forcing him to hug his sides, hands tucked under his arms for added warmth, and push through a wall that pushed back. 

It was fucking cold.

And yet, the streets of New York City were packed. Every sidewalk and street corner bustled with people, moving ceaselessly in a non-stop stream from block to block, in and out and in and out again of department stores, boutiques, cafes, delis, museums, skyscrapers. Even the parks were full, with children bouncing around the playgrounds, bundled in their coats like brightly-colored marshmallows, and old men playing chess with steaming thermoses at hand. 

Atem had long understood what Seto was talking about when he described light as both a particle and a wave, but here he saw it magnified. Everyone flowed together and apart, in seamless shifting, and at the same time they were all different, completely themselves, from the sleek and fabulously chic to bedraggled and shuffling through the slush. Atem slipped a hundred dollars into a grimy paper cup and moved on.

He took the 5 express train from the Upper East Side to 14th Street, transferred to the L, and rode, happily swaddled in the heat of the other passengers, buffered from the rattling cold, into the heart of Brooklyn. Solving the byzantine subway map, a worse labyrinth than the Puzzle, made him feel delightfully smug. He removed his gloves, breathed on his fingers until they warmed, and fired off several texts to Seto with his revelation on the properties of light and the movement of people.

One of Joey’s recommendations was a non-descript bodega. He spent twenty minutes crouched on the floor, coffee and bagel abandoned on a stack of newspapers, petting a fat tortie cat dozing atop the instant ramen.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, he texted to Joey, with a portrait mode photo of the cat.

Then he fled from the cold into a charming board game cafe - a mistake. At once a dozen eager faces, playmats spread before them, lit up in recognition (tourists. The locals didn't give a fuck.) Yes, he still dueled. No, he didn't have his deck with him. No, he didn't want to buy some cards and duel right now. Yes, that's a good card, but a card is only as good as the strategy behind it - I'm sorry, I can't look at everyone's deck - Battle City was a long time ago, but he's planning a new tournament with Industrial Illusions for the spring - my relationship with him is my business, your business is apparently losing your duel (the locals laughed. the tourists didn't) - and he fled from that back to the safe anonymity of the sidewalk.

He spent the rest of the day wandering Brooklyn, darting into every warm place that caught his eye, lingering inside as long as possible to avoid the cold, until jet lag finally caught up with him. Nothing he’d ever experienced felt quite so blissful as taking off all his winter clothing and rolling into the plush bed for a nap before dinner - not even the obscene luxury of his life as a pharaoh. After all, the bed smelled like home, like Seto had been here, maybe lying awake thinking about Atem the way Atem had done in Domino, thinking about him, counting the days until they saw each other again, and those memories did not. Those memories smelled like nothing, and ended only in darkness.

SETO 💙: Won’t make dinner. Keep the reservation. Try the foie gras brûlée

ATEM: New phone, who dis

SETO: I curse the day nerd herd taught you memes. Now *I* have to learn them

ATEM: 😘

ATEM: I’m already on the way, I’m in the town car

ATEM: I’ll bring you food. What do you want?

SETO 💙: Isono handling it

That was the first Atem heard from him all day, and the last he heard from him that night.

Not unusual. Seto often worked late.

But.

Atem ate alone, counting the other lonely diners at their small tables, casting shadows over the pristine white tablecloths. The low candlelight leeched the color from their faces. They were easy to find, signaled by blinks of bright, discordant light as they checked their phones. Waiting for messages that never came, or did, whatever compelled them to raise their finger for the check and vanish, ghost-like. 

Only a handful. Then a couple. Then it was just Atem.

He finished his third glass of wine, sinking lower and lower into mortification for having taken so much care with his make-up, for trying on three pairs of jeans before settling on the grey snakeskin pattern, for spending so much time in front of the mirror admiring how the black cashmere boatneck sweater displayed his collarbones, underlining them with a long, sultry swoop. It was all frivolous fucking vanity, because no one looking at him was the person he wanted to see, and - 

No. He was whining. Seto was busy, with Kaiba Corp, acquisitions, Pegasus, stock markets finance Wall Street NASDAQ what fucking ever, as usual, as always.

And maybe there was something... romantic? about looking scorching hot and eating alone. In the style, but not the spirit, of his old games, Atem pushed unshakeable visions into the minds of his fellow diners. Who is he, they wondered. So handsome. So alluring. Oh, to be his chocolate soufflé, so delicately consumed. What silly fool would let him eat alone? Maybe he’s an artist. Or a sculptor. A famous poet, taking ordinary, mundane words, ordinary, mundane feelings, and with a flick of his pen - apotheosis. Dining alone, exalted. There was an art to it.

He pushed the remains of the soufflé aside. It was okay. For the price point, it was mud. Yuugi’s were better, and Yuugi’s were made with love - not for the craft, but for whoever he made them for.

The cold was worse at night, but more beautiful. The barren, leafless trees glittered with white lights. Steam rose in slanting, rolling columns from the streets. Atem braved it long enough to go see Times Square - very pretty, very colorful, filled again with light-particle-wave people, dancing around each other under an orange-grey winter night, Seto’s face flashing across a massive screen, scowling down at the masses, hawking his holographic fantasies - Times Square was also a holographic fantasy, a kaleidoscopic hole in the city, unreal in its colors and its sounds and its remorseless, cynical rebuke of the crowds who came to behold Times Square, and Times Square came to behold itself and their money, and Atem was the only real person here, cold and alone, the bucket busker’s frantic rhythm clattering out of the subway station and through his bones, always a single mistaken beat away from veering over the edge and yet it never did - and he went home.

Seto came in while he was half-asleep, lying on his side, alcohol and misaligned hours sending him spinning slowly through a warm, melancholy darkness. A questioning murmur dripped into his ear. A cool, slender hand trailed around his waist. A familiar pair of lips pressed a wet, burning kiss to the soft spot where his jaw met his neck, and Atem shivered as that same cool hand tested his pajama pants and slid into them.

But his irritated disappointment had crawled into bed with him. 

“Maybe you should make a reservation next time,” he muttered, grabbing Seto’s wrist, pulling his arm across his chest in firm denial: no sex. yes cuddling.

“Asshole,” Seto chuckled, a hot fluttering over Atem’s scalp, making him shiver anew, and kissed Atem’s neck again, nosing and lipping around the sensitive shell of his ear. “You’re bluffing.”

Atem hummed a single, flat note in reply, through a thickening fog of thought. 

He was not bluffing. He was asleep.

Seto gave it up and curled around him, winding their hands together. Before long he was also asleep, his breath rolling like a wave across the back of Atem’s neck in sweet, slow rhythm all night long. Atem dreamed his own dreams.

Seto left the exact same note in the morning, revised:

Dinner at Cassonade at 8. Fuguta is on call for anything you need. Enjoy your day
               Butcher’s Boy 9 PM

And another X on the tic-tac-toe game.

Atem counter-attacked with an O and spent a lazy morning in the suite, reading and taking notes for class, musing over an outline for a paper. All of his philosophy classes this semester required written papers, not sit-down exams, and the world had long since allowed attending lecture and discussion section via video chat. You have some very interesting arguments about phenomenology, his professor replied to his discussion post, and Atem smirked.

Then he went out to face his frozen, heartless nemesis once more.

With a cheerful whoop of welcome, Anzu flung her arms around him. Atem hugged her back, burying himself happily in her earth-pink woolen coat, in awe at how her natural sunniness defied even this cruel and dismal cold.

“Look at your coat! You look so cute!” she said, and Atem blushed, delighted.

“How are you? How was the flight? How’s Seto? What have you seen so far? Don’t you just love New York? I love New York,” she gushed, throwing her pink coat over the back of her chair. The small café they’d picked as a meeting point was bright and minimalist, every other seat occupied by a hip twenty-something, frowning portentously over a laptop. Snow blew in idle, spiraling sighs past the window.

“I - don’t know which question to answer first,” Atem said, laughing. “I like New York so far, I like all the people. But this cold... I don’t understand how you tolerate it. It's terrible.”

“You get used to it. But yeah, Domino winters are a lot more mild than this. And I bet the weather in the, uh, Netherworld was always perfect, right?” Anzu said. 

“It was,” Atem said evenly, and left it at that. He rarely talked about Aaru.

“Are you going to the Met at some point? They have a world-class exhibit on ancient Egypt. We can go, if you want. I have the rest of the day free."

“Well, I’m hoping to go with Seto,” Atem said. “But he’s busy.”

“Big surprise,” Anzu said, with a sympathetic smile. “You guys haven’t seen each other in a hot minute, have you? We got coffee a few weeks ago for like, fifteen minutes, before he had to scamper off to Wall Street or wherever it is he goes, and he was all, like...” 

She pulled a stern, sullen face. “‘For such a smug, arrogant little bastard, I do like having him around - ’” 

And she laughed. “Like yeah, kid, we know! You shot yourself into another dimension because you ‘like having him around.’ It’s wild, though. He seems really good. Like we had a whole conversation about Mokuba stepping back from Kaiba Corp to go to Stanford and the whole time he was… ” She made a gesture, summoning a breath with both hands and releasing it, a dancer relaxing into a pose. “Chill.”

“Chill,” Atem repeated, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, okay. His head’s still in the clouds. But the weather seems much better up there now.”

Atem smiled.

“Yeah, we haven’t seen each other since New Year's,” he said, “and still haven't, not really. He had to cancel on dinner last night. But it’s fine.”

“Oh, that’s a bummer. Have you made other plans? I’d love to take you two out for drinks before you go home. It won’t be, I dunno, fuckin’ fancy-ass Cassonade, but I know some fun spots.”

“We have tickets to Akhenaten at the Met Opera tomorrow, but that’s it,” Atem said. 

“I have friends in that! One of my best friends here is an understudy for Nefertiti. I haven’t seen it yet, but the staging is, so she says, dope.”

“I’m excited, we love the opera,” Atem said, grinning. Her enthusiasm and easy manner were as infectious as always. “I don’t care about the tourist spots. Take me somewhere you love. As long as it's not outside."

“You got it. You should do Central Park with Seto anyway, it’s romantic as hell when it’s all snowy like this.”

Coffees in hand, they descended into the seamy veins of the train stations and rattled to Brooklyn, chattering nonstop about their college classes, philosophy, dancing, Yuugi, their friends, her apartment in the Bronx, the art shows, the pop-up boutiques, the apartment parties, the terrible superintendents, the weird moments of life in New York that no one blinked at. Her life seemed filled to bursting at the seams. And because it was Anzu, none of it seemed like posturing. 

"You seem like you're really enjoying it here," Atem remarked, as they emerged onto the cold, grey street, bright yellow taxis rolling by, their tires hissing through slush-filled puddles.

"I am! It’s so full of life. There’s always something interesting to do," Anzu said. "Your stick-in-the-mud boyfriend might love it too, if he got out once in a while."

"I'm working on it," Atem said. “And he’s not a stick. He’s just… tall. Slender. You know.”

He drew Seto’s silhouette in the air with his gloved hands.

“A giraffe in the mud.”

“More graceful than that! A gazelle in the mud.”

Anzu snorted, her breath clouding between them. “You’re the only person on the planet who’d call your boyfriend a gazelle. His eyes face forward, pal.”

“Well… pfft,” Atem started, flustering, his face burning despite the cold biting at his ears. To counter with a confession, and tell her what Seto was like in their quieter moments together (his eyes down as he spoke to his hands, until Atem took them in his own, and brought his eyes up) felt too careless, a betrayal. 

“I call him a lot of names,” he said loftily. “He’s a lot of things.”

“You are a lovesick muffin," Anzu laughed, making him smile, sheepish, irrepressible; and she looped their arms together, pulling him in closer as they trekked up the sidewalk, buffeting him with warmth.

ATEM: [image]

[image]
[image]
[image]

YUUGI 💜: THESE ARE SO CUTE!!!

YUUGI 💜: THE ONE WITH YOU IN THE KURIBOH PILLOW BALL PIT IS LEGIT INCREDIBLE

YUUGI 💜: Where is this

ATEM: Anzu took me to a Duel Monsters pop-up museum in Williamsburg

ATEM: The DM robes were too long for me so she was DM and I wore the DMG robes. We almost fell over when I sat on her shoulders

ATEM: [image]

YUUGI 💜: DSKFKSDJFLS PLEASE DON’T KILL MY GF I LIKE HER A LOT

YUUGI 💜: Looks like fun!!

YUUGI 💜: your cat misses you. she's being a brat

ATEM: tell her she is a god on earth and being a brat is unbecoming of such a creature

ATEM: try a new flavor of wet food. she gets bored easily

YUUGI 💜: LOL you got it

YUUGI 💜: You having a good time w Seto?

Before Atem could reply, another message flashed across his screen.

SETO 💙: Held up. Won’t make it. Keep the reservation

With a frown, Atem sucked in a breath, held it for a beat - a text? Unbelievable, it was almost nine, the hostess had already seated him - and exhaled, shoving his disappointment down deeper than before.

ATEM: Okay

ATEM: Go get ‘em tiger 🐅

ATEM: What time will you be home tonight?

He waited several minutes for a reply, tugging the sleeves of his wine-red woolen sweater over his palms for warmth.

With an elegant swoop, the waiter interrupted his vigil.

“Are you ready to order? Or are you still waiting on the rest of your party?” he said, setting two cocktails on the small table.

“No one would ever call him a party,” Atem retorted, and the waiter chuckled, tucking his hands and his tray behind his back. Despite the wooden farm tables and the cast-iron lanterns, it was a pretentious restaurant, so self-serious that the waiters didn’t use notepads. They just committed the orders to memory, with spotless aprons and spotless precision. “He won't make it. I need a few more minutes to decide, thank you.”

“Of course.” And the waiter left him in peace. 

He took a heavy, graceless gulp of his Godfather, another of Seto’s Old-Fashioned, rolled his tongue in a pained scoff at the bitterness, and considered calling Yuugi. It was late morning in Domino. 

But phone calls in restaurants were rude, and the second Yuugi heard his voice, he’d know something was wrong. Some things never changed, even though they no longer shared a body. Then Atem would have to tell him a single text had left him sour and moody, and he was scolding himself for the shameful indignity of wanting attention. 

It’s just jet lag, Yuugi would say. You’re tired. You’re always more sensitive when you’re tired. Your pride bruises like a peach. Like a barrel of peaches. You know Seto is always working. Here are a thousand really good, convincing reasons for you not to sulk or lose your temper with your workaholic boyfriend, and Anzu and I are sooooo good at communication and never ever fight ever because we’re ridiculously good people who never feel BAD about things, and you and Seto are both reckless, cranky bastards who never feel GOOD about things. Maybe you should try it, sometime. 

“What if I want to sulk? A nice, high-quality sulk feels good. Feels great, actually,” Atem muttered, propping his chin in his hand, to the straw-Yuugi sitting across the table. He turned his drink with his fingertips, catching the light, scattering it back onto the table in fragments. He'd been in New York City almost forty-eight hours, awake with Seto less than one, and the wind outside howled with fury as Atem scowled in silence at his black phone and his throat burned.

Again he was half-asleep when Seto came back. The distant sound of the shower kept him awake long enough for him to feel Seto oozing into bed, fresh and steamy. Dimly he registered his frustration all over again, a needle pushed through the blanket of his exhaustion. He rolled over to catch him, throwing an arm across his bare chest, one leg across his thighs. Trapped! You’re not going anywhere.

“Hello, stranger. Long day?” he mumbled, into the side of his neck, caressing the plane of his cheek with his thumb.

Seto sighed. The curtains were open. Beyond the strong slopes of his profile was the dark orange-grey sky of a city in winter, thick with the light of the sleepless streets below.

"Fucking unbearable," he growled, sottovoce. 

"For you or for them?" Atem said, and Seto laughed at his deepest octave, from the deepest part of his chest, a rumbling chuckle that passed like a train in the night. 

"They'll reap what they sow."

A promise full of blood and fangs. Atem smiled.

"We have the opera tomorrow," he said, still stroking Seto's cheek. "Try not to miss it. I'd love to see you at a human hour."

"All hours are human," Seto breathed. Yes but no, Atem thought, no, no, no. You don’t mean that. Not with the mythic life you lead, by day a force of nature, by night falling half-naked into bed, shedding thunder and lightning in a trail like dirty, dented armor, falling into the hands of the person who loves you, and at last lying still.

“You know what I mean,” was all he said. "An hour when we're both awake."

Seto sighed again, made a low hum of assent under Atem’s hand, and promised nothing else.

Dinner at Cassonade at 8. Fuguta is on call for anything you need. Enjoy your day
               Butcher’s Boy 9 PM
DRINKS BEFORE OPERA BAR LANCELOT 7PM

His horizontal victory thwarted on the tic-tac-toe board, Seto had begun a vertical attempt. Atem blocked it with another O.

Again it was freezing, a deathly cold, white-out winter day. Atem escaped into the Guggenheim, wandering from exhibit to exhibit, taking photos of the artwork and sending them to the groupchat with the most frivolous descriptions possible. The art he actually found interesting, he sent to Seto, his phone buzzing as Seto liked them in reply. A good sign. 

At a boutique on the Upper East Side, some barren, concrete-walled industrial box without price tags, he tried on a black woolen coat that belted to a trim silhouette. Flanked by mirrors, he turned this way and that, testing his angles.

ATEM: you’re the expert. yes or no?

ATEM: [image]

SETO 💙: yes

SETO 💙: yes

SETO 💙: yes

SETO 💙: polymerization

SETO 💙: yes ultimate dragon

An excellent sign. 

At 7:28, Atem was half-hidden in the dim, green-walled bathroom hallway of Bar Lancelot, tucked away from the vibrant melodies of the other guests, their conversations, their laughter, their clinking glasses, baring his teeth at every innocent soul who made the mistake of trying to sidle past him. He pressed his phone to his ear with one hand, almost wiped his eyes with the other, and course-corrected, running his hand through his hair instead. Didn’t want to ruin his make-up. Whatever. It was already ruined.

It rang once. Twice. 

“Atem,” Seto said desperately.

“Where are you?” Atem said. “I don’t even get a phone call? Or a text? Is it too much trouble to show me the bare fucking minimum courtesy? And don’t you dare tell me you forgot. Are you showing up tonight at all?!”

A long silence followed. 

Anxiety crunched in Atem’s chest. 

The silence ended only with the distant crackle of a low sigh, and a voice in the back, on Seto’s end, indistinct but oddly familiar. I’m on a fucking call! Seto shot back. Even the omission was wounding: not on a call with Atem, my boyfriend, I love him. Just a fucking call.

“I know you’re busy, but this is getting ridiculous,” Atem spat. “This is the third night in a row you’ve left me hanging. We’ve spent less than an hour together since I got here! It took me longer than that to get to fucking Brooklyn! What the hell is so important that you have to keep blowing me off?!”

“Atem - ”

“Save it. I might be arrogant, but at least I’m not fucking careless,” Atem snapped, and hung up.

He crossed his arms and fumed, blinking furiously, breathing hard, trying to loosen the tightly-clenched knot of rage and misery that seethed and pulled in his ribcage. His heart plunged into humiliation; his mind barreled towards vengeance. If this was all he was going to get, he might as well go back to Japan. At least seven thousand miles gave that bastard a decent excuse. 

His phone vibrated, lighting up.

He rejected Seto’s call and called Anzu.

“Where are you? What are you doing tonight?” he said, without allowing her a chance at hello. “Want to see Akhenaten in half an hour?”

“Can’t, I’m in rehearsal, you just caught me on break - why, do you guys have an extra ticket or something?”

“He’s not coming.” 

The acid in his voice dripped through the call, unmistakable.

Another silence, shorter this time.

“Oh,” Anzu said, a softly-tread syllable. “Um - I’ll be home by the time it’s finished, if you want to come over?”

Atem sniffed, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. He hated taking his fights with Seto to anyone who wasn’t Seto. 

“Some other time,” he said.

As a tableau of loneliness, of scenes from the life of a spurned lover, eating alone was mundane. Pocket change. A mere bucket compared to the heaving ocean of emotion that came from sitting alone in a dark theater, with waves of light and sound surging forth from the stage, sweeping past Atem into the shadows. Throne-like in his seat, hands draped over the armrests, trying to drive the anger from his face but achieving only a dull, inflexible scowl. Every few minutes, Atem unclenched his teeth. 

Usually he and Seto loved the opera, and how it indulged in itself, in a flourish of color and costume and full-throated feeling. If music was the food of love, the opera was their chocolate truffle. But this was the wrong opera at the wrong time, in the wrong company: his own. The music drove through him with relentless urgency, a music that whipped to madness and death like the Greek Furies. And Atem, frenzied with anger inside his hard, sullen shell, knew it was coming, because death always came like this, with one final revelation before it carried you from the world, a secret that left you surrendering and docile in its arms yes I'll go now yes yes I'll go quietly

What if Seto was right, and always had always been - 

The opera house spat him out into the freezing night. It was snowing. The wind was down. The cold reached him anyway, seizing his bones with an icy grip. The world had shrunk during his three hours inside: the horizon was not distant but close at hand, revealing itself not as an edge but as a fading, the ends of the streets vanishing into dim whiteness. He staggered across Central Park, through a snow-white tunnel of trees. It was silent, soundless, save for the crunch of his boots in the snow, and the melodies and funeral hymns still ringing in his head.

The hotel was on the other side of the park, several blocks up. Atem, shivering, looked up the street, saw his route rolling before him - to the hotel lobby, up the elevator, stripping off gloves and scarf as he rose, and to the bed where he woke up alone, three days in a row. 

- and we are all alone?

Swallowing his bitter fury, gritting his teeth against the cold, he texted Anzu for her address and headed several blocks further east, to the subway station.

On the train to the Bronx, small and buried between the other passengers, he dabbed his eyes with the thick of his hand. His new woolen coat was not as warm as the red puffer coat, and the cold had followed him into the train, his hands turned to swollen clubs, red and numb.

After several stops, the older woman next to him reached into her purse, pulled out a crinkling package of tissues, and clapped them into his unsuspecting palm, gently, patting his hand. Then she went back to her business.

Atem sat on the lumpy red couch in Anzu’s bedroom, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea in pleading: give me warmth! They were illuminated by a scalloping line of fairy lights, hung along the brick walls. Snow drifted past the chessboard warehouse windows into the hazy white night. 

He was done crying. Now he just felt tired. A little numb. A lot pathetic.

“Oooh, come here, my pouty little pharaoh. Come on. Pharaohs don’t pout,” Anzu said, dropping onto the couch next to him and relieving him of the mug. She wrapped both arms around him, falling back with his head on her shoulder, so easily and comfortably that he had no doubt he was not the only distraught friend whose romantic troubles she’d soothed.

“Yes, we do,” he mumbled. “We do when our boyfriends are being assholes.”

“You love that he's an asshole,” Anzu pointed out.

“But what if he’s having an affair.”

“He is not having an affair.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I want to say I know because he spiraled with grief after you… left, and invented a new field of physics just to see you again, but really, it’s because he hasn’t changed his card game strategy in like, ten years,” Anzu said dryly, and Atem chanced a wet, clogged laugh against her black and blue Juilliard sweater. “It’s only ever going to be Blue-Eyes. And it’s only ever going to be you.”  

The candles on her coffee table flickered, a woody, homey scent wafting through the apartment. He saw them sideways, his head still on her shoulder. His hands were finally warm again. Good. Can’t duel with cold hands. A non sequitur of a thought, until it wasn’t, because this - THIS - had begun, as almost all things did between them, with a duel.

“Then why the hell does he keep cancelling on me?” he said. “I don’t mind doing things alone. I’m having fun exploring. It’s the... no explanation. No apology. I feel…” 

He dug through himself, on hands and knees. At the bottom of the hole was a bone-white feeling, ordinary, older than time. A spark, a snowflake, a wisp of breath, all vanishing into the tomb of the air. The most devastating fate his people could imagine.

“Am I asking for too much? Am I just being needy?” he said, Anzu giving his arm a soothing stroke.

“No. I don't think so,” she said. “You miss your handsome man, and you want to see him. Who wouldn’t? But you can't just get mad in silence and then explode on him. You do need to tell him how this makes you feel. He’s not doing this to hurt you. He probably didn’t even know you were feeling hurt until you exploded on him, and he does listen to you.”

“I do tell him how I feel,” Atem groused.

"Finish your sentence."

"What?"

"You said 'I feel… ' what? How do you feel?"

Atem reached into the hole of feeling again and flinched as he touched it, light and limp. Better not name it. It was already too powerful without its name. Better an epithet: What Happens to Those Whose Names are Struck from the Temple Walls. What You Are When You Drink for Him Who Isn’t Coming. What It Is To Be in Love and Alone on the Train at Night.

"Atem, sweetheart, I swear," she said, "sometimes you're worse than Yuugi."

Sometimes worse? So sometimes he was better? Terrifying thought; completely perpendicular to the world he knew. With a sigh, he surrendered, draping one arm around her waist.

"Have you talked to Mokuba at all?" she said, after a moment.

"He's the nuclear option. Seto and I... prefer to try solving this kind of thing between ourselves, first. For Mokuba's sake and our sake."

"That... makes sense."

"I'll go to the office tomorrow. Find out what's going on."

"Try not to get too melodramatic," she said. "If you go in firing on all guns, you know he’s just gonna fire back. This is just a little thorn you need to dig out, not the end of the world."

"I am not melodramatic," he muttered.

“Right, of course. My mistake. You and Seto are never melodramatic,” Anzu said, but her attempt to keep a straight face failed. Her giggle vibrated through her chest into Atem, who allowed himself a smile.

The snow kept falling. They lay there, awash in quiet. At least one roommate poked her head through the door, waved, and retreated. Over Anzu's bed she'd tacked photos of her friends, old and new. Purikura with Yuugi, Joey grinning like a loon in a headless food court fursuit, Honda making a dramatic secret-agent pose on his motorcycle. Seto at Kaiba Land, holding an enormous stuffed Marshmallon in his arms, stone-faced. Next to that photo, the same exact shot, Seto making the same exact face, holding Atem. He'd been a joy that day - as awkward and stumbling and eager as a freshly-born foal, running on untested feet into a new world.

Atem's phone lit up - not a text, but a call. He unwound himself from her arms, scraped it off the coffee table, and gave it to her. 

"Seto, hi, it's me," Anzu said. "He's fine, he's here at my place, we're hanging out. Yes, he's - relax. Calm down. Don't snap at me, I didn’t kidnap him! Hold on - "

She stood up and left the room, closing the door. Her voice leveled to an even tone, trailing until it faded: "I'm not taking sides. He’s my friend and you’re my friend, whether you like it or not. Do you want to tell me...?"

Atem lay back on the couch, counting each pinprick bulb of the fairy lights, his thoughts adrift in music. He lost count of the light and started again, and again, and again, until they blurred and rippled and turned to waves.

Anzu came back a few minutes later, the phone still to her ear. "Atem, Seto will send the town car, if you're...?"

Her voice fell to a hushed whisper. She crouched and unplugged the fairy lights, leaving Atem in the dark, with only two candle flames flickering like a pair of lonely stars in the black air.

"Seto, he fell asleep, should I…? Okay. Okay. Yes, of course I have blankets for him, you goose. Yes. You are. You're a bonafide goose and we all - listen to me. Listen. We all want you to be happy... You’ll believe me some day. Good night."

Atem found the note torn into four jagged pieces in the bathroom wastebasket. 

Dinner at Cassonade at 8. Fuguta is on call for anything you need. Enjoy your day
               Butcher’s Boy 9 PM
DRINKS BEFORE OPERA BAR LANCELOT 7PM

I MADE A MISTAKE

The tic-tac-toe was locked in a cat's game.

Atem’s heart hung in his throat. Either Seto was planning a different, better apology, or he wasn’t planning one at all. He dropped them back in the wastebasket and undressed for his morning shower. After waking up in Anzu’s noisy apartment, aching and disoriented, her roommates chattering and cracking jokes in the kitchen as they started their days, the hotel presidential suite was a chilly, lonesome place.

An hour later, he swept into the Kaiba Corp offices downtown, armed with Fuguta, the belted black woolen coat flapping like a war banner with every stride. The massive atrium of the lobby, a vault of glass and steel where the click of polished shoes rang off the marble floors, did little to awe him. A hall of power was a hall of power, and his people had built far more beautiful places.

“I’m here to see Seto Kaiba,” he said, to the receptionist on the 72nd floor. “But don’t tell him. It’s a surprise.”

Faced with his slim, charming smile, she glanced at Fuguta, who vouched for him with a nod.

“Certainly,” she said, “you’ll need a visitor’s badge - ah, you may want to wait, he has a twelve o’clock - sir!”

“Cancel it,” Atem said, already pushing through the glass double doors onto the office floor. Seto’s office was a sleek glass box at the very end of the floor, past the rows and rows of polished dark wood desks, where several dozen people were frowning at their monitors with the intense devotion of priests bent over their scrolls. 

At the glass door, he stopped. The office was not quite so dramatic as the Domino office, a modest set-up with a low coffee table between two sleek couches. The view of the harbor was spectacular, the winter sea sparkling under a hard winter sun. 

Seto, at his desk, had not yet noticed him, eyes riveted grimly on his monitor. An untouched cup of coffee sat near his elbow. The tiny Blue-eyes plush he used to rubber duck his programming quandaries had been banished to a high corner of the stately bookshelves behind him. Unhappy grey clouds were gathering under his eyes, the kind that usually rolled in after a sleepless, tossing night. Other than that, his navy-blue tie was perfectly knotted, his white dress shirt as crisp and welcoming as a sheet of ice over a lake.

Atem steeled himself, preparing for the plunge. He wanted to fix this. NOW.

He pushed through the door and walked in.

Seto looked up - eyes widening - rising from the desk and reaching Atem in the span of seconds.

“What are you doing here?” he said, as the door fell shut behind Atem. 

“I’m here to buy some stocks, obviously. How do I get to the stock market?” Atem said. “I’m here to see you, Seto. Because unlike you, I like to make time for us.”

“This is the exact wrong time to have this discussion!” Seto said.

“Then when?! When’s the right time?! It’s never the right time to have anything with me, apparently - you miss dinner twice, you miss the opera, you’re barely communicating anything, it’s like you’re just completely ignoring me - ”

“Oh, yes. I am so sorry I haven’t been around to wait on you hand and fucking foot,” Seto snapped. 

“I don’t want you to wait on me hand and foot, I want to spend time with you! To eat dinner with you and talk to you and do things with you! Important fucking nuance!” Atem snarled, his body tightening with a lightning crack of rage. “We haven’t seen each other in a month! I didn’t come to New York to see Times Square, I came for YOU! Am I really less important to you than whatever the hell goes on in here - ”

Seto’s face darkened to a cold, dangerous scowl.

“You’re too smart to play this stupid,” he said, “because you know. You know what I do here is important to me, you know Kaiba Corp is important to me, you know why it’s important to me, and if you’re this fucking self-centered as to think - ”

“Sometimes I think this place is a prison for you,” Atem said. “You think you have to be here, because if you’re not here, bleeding yourself dry, then nothing that happened to you - ”

“Oh, dear,” sang a familiar voice, light, tinged with laughter. “Try not to say anything you'll regret, hm?” 

Both Seto and Atem whipped their heads around to the door. 

There stood Pegasus, brushing his needle-silver hair over his shoulder, smiling a needle-slim smile. Where the Millennium Eye used to be was only a sleek black eye-patch.

Something kicked hard in Atem’s chest: alarm, every one of his nerves pulling tight in preparation. He didn’t even need to look at Seto to know he’d gone still, almost blank, every emotion jettisoned from his face.

“This is a private conversation,” Seto said, his tone flattened.

“These are glass walls, Kaiba-boy,” Pegasus said, rapping his knuckles on the glass, revealing a hint of teeth with a sideways twitch of his lips. It was jarring to see him in a color other than red. In his black winter coat, with his sleek silver hair, he seemed more a knife in a sheath, the true edge of danger still hidden.

Atem straightened up. “Remove yourself. We’re not done.”

“I have a meeting with your dashing young Romeo here. You are intruding on my time,” Pegasus said coolly. “But - it’s been a while, hasn’t it, Atem-boy? I haven’t seen you since your... illustrious return. How are you? Did you enjoy the opera last night? I know Kaiba-boy was so looking forward to it. A shame he had to miss out.”

Now Atem chanced a glance at Seto, who held himself in a stiff, bracing posture from head to toe, jaw clenched in controlled fuming. Sullen. Miserable. With that slight downwards tilt to his chin that drew his gaze to a tight precision, an arrow on a bowstring, a fury restrained with tremendous force.

Back to Pegasus, radiant. 

And - inwards, at himself, returned. 

He’d come seven thousand miles to see Seto. Seto had gone even farther to see him.

And Pegasus had gotten nowhere.

“It must be hard to see me here with him, isn’t it?” Atem said. 

“Oh?" Pegasus said, eyebrow raised, a perfectly polished syllable of false confusion.

“Knowing he did what you couldn’t do.”

Pegasus laughed. "And just what has he accomplished here? This ridiculous little squabble of yours - "

"I am sorry. It's difficult to be separated from the one you love," Atem said, "but this is a pathetic attempt, even for you."

He held Pegasus' arch gaze, holding himself with regal poise, chin up, unblinking - once, a mere wave of his hand summoned priests, armies, gods - but here it was just himself, with no power save his own backbone. And staring at Pegasus, undaunted, he discovered it was enough. Whether this man could still read feeling from him, whatever was so plain he needed no Eye to see it, was irrelevant: it was all love. Let him see it.

Pegasus smiled.

"Kaiba-boy should know better than to gloat. It makes him so dull," he said, in a voice that slid smoothly between the ribs.

From the corner of his eye, Atem saw a shadow cross Seto's face, a fleeting, microscopic flinch. From deep inside him came a painful snap of anger, like a bone, breaking in half.

He sneered at Pegasus.

"He's not gloating, he's happy. You fucking animal."

He turned to Seto. "Get your coat. We're leaving."

Seto's stillness broke. They shoved past Pegasus without a word, Pegasus taking a hasty step back as the glass door swung shut, the panes shuddering with impact. And with several curious, wary gazes trailing after them in the wake of their passage, and ignoring them all, Atem and Seto left the offices.

They stood in silence in the frosty air of the underground parking garage, waiting for Isono to bring the town car around. Atem made a Parisian knot with his scarf and shoved his hands into his pockets for warmth. Seto had both of his gloves clutched in his hand, his bare skin already reddened with cold, his black and white checkered scarf simply draped around his neck. The unnatural light of the garage gave their colors a strange tone, the dark blue of Seto’s long wool coat flat and shadowless.

“I should’ve figured it was Pegasus keeping you at the office,” Atem admitted, low and grudging.

“Maybe if your eyes didn’t glaze over every time I say the words ‘IP licensing negotiation,’” Seto snapped.

“Fine! But it takes exactly three seconds to add ‘I have to cancel because Pegasus is a fucking demon, and I’m in hell’ to your texts!"

Seto said nothing, staring sourly into the concrete middle distance, muscles flexing in his jaw.

“You don’t need to play his games, you know,” Atem said. “You don't. And I won’t be part of them. Not as a piece or a player. Some games are built to lose. I don’t know what he said to you, if he dredged up that poisonous little part of you that still thinks love is weakness - ”

“He doesn’t even have to go that far,” Seto muttered, in a low hiss of self-rebuke. “He just gets under my skin and - stays there. Every time I have to deal with him, everything starts to…” He held his hands around his head, in a rigid set of claws, and mimed a gesture like those claws sinking in, a wildness stealing into his eyes. “Vibrate. It’s impossible to think! It’s just a beehive of noise and none of my thoughts go where they’re supposed to go! He opens his mouth and I’m sixteen again, and I’m doing everything I can to keep it together and it’s just barely enough, and then he - just waltzes in and shoves me - ”

He cut himself off with a loud huff, forced through his teeth, a syllable of pure, unresolved anger. His gaze flew sideways, roving over the walls of the garage, face pinching in a rare expression. Atem had only ever seen him make that expression twice before, and both times on accident, wandering into his home workshop on the wrong side of midnight. It was an expression that stripped several years away at once, a stricken, tight-lipped prelude to tears of frustration and shame. A boy, playing the cruel games of adults. 

Atem’s throat tightened with guilt. Quietly, carefully, he nudged his hand, the hand clutching the gloves. He received only a cold twitch in reply. He settled for curling his hand around it.

Seto pressed his other palm into his eyes; first one, then the other. 

“Your flanking attack did not help,” he said stonily, speaking to the air. “I didn’t want to cancel. I wanted to go to the fucking opera.”

“I’m sorry,” Atem said, after a moment, having raced through the usual calculations of pride and loyalty and conscience: it was easy to fight Pegasus, hard to fight Seto, and harder still to fight himself. “I know it’s hard, but please tell me about these things. Especially when it’s hard. It might feel like you’re sixteen and alone, but you’re not. You’re twenty-one and you have Mokuba and you have me. Don't cut yourself off from us."

Seto made a noise deep in his throat, his usual sound of understanding when his feelings had fallen off the rails of speech. Atem wondered if now was the right time to follow Anzu’s advice. He had not followed very well in the office.

If not now, when? 

“And I didn't mean to attack you. I wasn't thinking,” he said. “I was... angry, I felt like... you'd forgotten me.”

Seto shot him an odd, sharp look - 

The town car slid around the turn from the lower levels and pulled up. Without further ado Atem dove inside it, the leather seats squeaking in his haste to escape the cold. Seto slid in beside him.

“Isono, take us to the Met, please,” Atem said, through the partition. If he had any protests against spending the afternoon surrounded by artifacts of the past, Seto didn’t say, leaning against the door and staring out the window as they emerged onto the wintery streets, mouth propped in morose thought against his fist.

“I feel stupid. I feel like I let him win,” he muttered.

Atem reached over, turning his head with a stroke of his cheek, beckoning his gaze. With Seto’s attention finally on him, he leaned in to cup the back of his neck and kiss him, the lock of their cooled lips giving birth to a bright, spreading heat, a kiss plucked from the scorching glories of high summer and saved for the dead of winter. A slip of tongue, insistent - taste it, savor it, remember this? keep it for later - Seto humming deep in the back of his throat - 

“You lost nothing,” Atem said.

The air in the halls of the Met was warm, emboldening them to leave their coats in the coat check. The air between them was still a little cool, as it always was after they got angry with each other. They were not resentful but reserved, measuring the distance between the trenches of their no man’s land, testing the risk of gunfire with every word as they crawled towards the middle. I canceled the rest of my day. Oh good. Should we get lunch? I ate. Where should we get dinner? Wherever you want, I didn’t make reservations tonight, I thought you'd still be - And every gesture a white flag, not in surrender but a promise of peace, Atem sliding his hand around Seto’s elbow and pulling him close. The Egyptian exhibits are that way. 

They wandered through the labyrinth of galleries, two of hundreds of people at the museum, tour groups, field trips, art enthusiasts, the excited, the scholars, the bored, the lost. A woman with a pair of colorful children’s coats draped over her arm standing motionless, riveted, before the massive enclosure walls of the Senwosret pyramid complex, her eyes filling with history as she looked up, up, up. A college student sketching an Old Kingdom statue, streaking charcoal under his lower lip as he stroked his chin in thought. A trio of girls taking triumphant selfies in front of the sculptures of Hatshepsut. Some of it was history even for Atem, who tried to read each placard, Seto patiently translating every English word he stumbled on. 

And of the language they did know - not Japanese, but what was carved into the stones and painted on the sides of sarcophagi, what was inked onto papyrus paper, turned dark brown by the centuries - they read everything, almost everything, Atem’s head spinning with the words of the past. To know his people had continued without him, had thrived along the Black River, wading its banks to check their nets and tying amulets to their children’s wrists and singing hymns to the morning Sun... it gave him a feeling of rest more profound than walking through the double doors of Aaru’s horizon.

In a small, windowless room, tucked away from the crowds, they found an exhibit of senet, mehen, and twenty-squares. Each one was displayed in a bed of velvet, their pegs and squat pods artfully displayed mid-game. A beautifully preserved wooden senet board inlaid with faience, displayed alongside a delicate, fractal-edged leaf of papyrus between panes of plexiglass, drew Seto's attention. The papyrus had been found tucked inside the drawer of the senet board, hidden below the pieces. With his hands in his pockets, his usual pose of mild interest, Seto leaned in to read, his brow furrowing. Atem sidled next to him, curious about what had given Seto so much pause - 

SENET BOARD WITH NOTE
Wood with faience inlays; papyrus
c. 11th Century BCE 
Found in the tomb of Pharaoh Set

With a hitch of breath, he read on - not the translation, but the note itself:

O priest o jackal o my holy fool,
Perhaps our games of senet would wound you less if you devoted less of your time to the temple, and more of your time to the board - but I fear not even Our Mistress of the Gods Who Knows Ra by His Own Name, Who Rises and Dispels Darkness, can aid you in defeating me. Take heart! She is More Clever than a Million Gods. You only need to be more clever than one.

And a name, scratched out, a furious little storm cloud breaking apart on the parchment, a record only of agony.

Atem blinked, shuddered, awoke from a dream, and turned to Seto, a question rising to his mouth - 

Seto was not there. 

His heart drumming in his chest at a nervous march tempo, Atem swung his head around, saw nothing. He darted out of the exhibit, searching over the top of the thinning crowd. They’d come in from the right - he went left, pushing past a group of middle schoolers into the airy vault of the Sackler Wing, with its slanting, floor-to-ceiling windows. The winter sun illuminated the Temple of Dendur in the center to a pale, weathered splendor. 

Seto was there, sitting on one of the stone banks of benches that flanked wide around the Temple, hands in his lap as he watched wonder dawning in the faces of children. His own face was as still and composed as the sculptures in the galleries they’d left behind, and - for an odd moment, a twist of light in the air - just as ancient, a face three thousand years old.

Atem sat down beside him, studying him carefully, sideways.

For a long minute Seto was silent. 

Then he inhaled, drawing his shoulders up straight, broad, proud. When he spoke, it was in the old tongue. 

« You wound me, my pharaoh » he said, « when you believe I can forget. I cannot. I do not. It is impossible. The Sun will rise in the West before I forget. »

His eyes swung to Atem, bluer than faience and full of grief, a soul that had been colder and lonelier and more desolate than an ocean spit of rock for a long, long time. And he sighed, a curve setting into his shoulders.

« But I wound you when I make you believe that I can. » 

Atem's heart clenched, dense and heavy, and he swallowed, uselessly. The clot of both relief and remorse stayed stuck in the back of his mouth. He gently crawled his hand into Seto’s hand, twining their fingers together.

“Let’s both be sorry,” he said, “and we'll do better next time.”

Seto curled his fingers around Atem’s, warm and slender.

“Point, us. Pegasus, zero,” he said, in a dry undertone.

“If death can’t beat us, Pegasus definitely can’t.”

Seto grimaced. “At this point, our worst enemies are ourselves.”

Atem swatted the thought away with a toss of his hand. 

“I’m not worried. We’ve beaten those pathetic bastards both before,” he said, and Seto finally smiled.

Another pair of hours in the museum, crossing several dozen centuries to the Modern Wing, where they painted their own meanings over everything - I think it’s a statement on existence, how hard it can be for us to accept the world we live in... look at how the colors clash, they’re so disharmonious to each other - really? I think it’s your hair when you wake up in the morning - Seto cackling with glee as Atem scowled and flipped him off - and they glided out into the freezing blue evening air. Around them the city stretched up towards the dusky sky, the skyscrapers lighting up in tiny squares, pixel by pixel, under the silvery-white wisps of clouds.

"Food!" Atem said, once they'd descended the front steps of the museum.

"Yes. Sustenance," Seto agreed, procuring a white woolen hat from the depths of his coat, pulling it over his ears. He pulled out his phone. "I have a place in mind… ten-minute walk. Let's go."

They crossed the street and set off. It was a bustling hour. The sidewalks were still full of people, despite the crisp, quivery winds.

"Is it fancy?" Atem said, tucking his gloved hands deeply into his pockets, shuddering against the cold. In the bright, hazy spheres of the streetlights, his every breath was a cloud fallen from the sky.

"You'll like it."

“Bold claim. The soufflé at Cassonade was offensive,” Atem breathed, tucking his chin, pulling his scarf upwards. His ears were iced, ringing with that fragile, porcelain feeling, and his jaw started to tremble.

“Mm. I concede the point. I should’ve warned you not to order it, Yuugi makes a far superior soufflé. His taste... I don't know, not just rich, but cozy, somehow - are you cold?”

Atem, doing his best to keep his teeth from chattering, looked up at Seto, who (fucker!) seemed immune, fresh-faced and at ease, his scarf in an elegant knot, eyes sparkling with wintery cool. The woolen hat flattened his bangs over his eyes, strands of hair curled delicately over his ears. The effect wasn't sexy, it was (damn him!) cute.

“I’m freezing,” he huffed, cringing into his coat. 

Seto cast an eye up and down the street, frowning thoughtfully. A few yards away, on the edge of the sidewalk, was a street vendor, bundled up in a coat and blanket, sitting at his card table piled with touristy souvenirs. Seto walked over, made some idle conversation with him Atem couldn’t hear, laughed - laughed! - at the street vendor’s reply, opening his wallet, and came back incredibly smug, bearing a soft, black object: an I ❤️ NY hat. 

“No! I can’t wear that. I’ll look like a rube!” Atem protested, struggling to contain his smile.

“Don’t argue with me, you’ll catch a cold," Seto said, smirking, and he tugged it over Atem’s head, tucking in stray strands of hair. Then he held out his arm. Atem, seizing it in his eagerness for warmth, pressing up against the side of Seto’s warm, sturdy torso, made sure to mark the time, because this was an event: like cuddling! Cuddling in the street! “Better?”

“Much better,” Atem said, as they continued down the street, “but this restaurant better be inside, and it better be incredible. I’m not freezing my ass off for anything less than gold-leaf chocolate strawberries.”

It was not inside. 

It was not gold-leaf chocolate strawberries.

It was a falafel cart, a silver-paneled little block of heaven under a streetlight, heralded by colorful, gaudy photos of the menu and a yellow awning. Atem almost stopped in his tracks, all complaints about the weather obliterated by his rising excitement. A mouth-watering warm smell was wafting out of the food cart, rich and savory.

“Mister Kaiba!” came the cheerful shout from the young woman inside the food cart, who could’ve been a long-lost Ishtar cousin. “Is that your man? Lucky you!”

“I told you I’d bring him,” Seto said, as Atem blushed furiously. He had taken extra care with his make-up this morning: looks for storming your boyfriend's executive office to demand answers (and attention.) “Business is going well, I presume?”

“Oh, sure. My mom says the restaurant gets mad Kaiba Corp guys comin’ by every day on their lunch breaks. Bet you had nothin’ to do with that, right?”

“Game recognizes game,” Seto deadpanned, and she laughed.

「Your boyfriend thinks he's intimidating, but he was so excited when he told me you were coming,」 she said to Atem, in Egyptian Arabic. He smiled, with a thrill of affection as they both looked at Seto, who gave them a suspicious, blushing look in return. 「 So? What do you think? Are you two moving to New York?」

Atem grinned, summoning his two semesters of college Arabic.

「Only if the ta’ameya is good.」

She laughed again and flung her hand out, jabbing her finger at the photos of the menu below the window. 

「It doesn’t matter what you order. You’re stuck here!」

They loitered in the warmth of the cart as she whipped up their orders, people-watching as the city flowed past their little island of fragrant light on the sidewalk. Negotiating: Hard yes to drinks with Anzu. Hard maybe to Jounouchi’s recommendations, I don’t care how cute the cat is, there are a million bodegas just like it and every single one of them has a cute cat - yes, we can go to the zoo. But more often than not, their eyes flowed back to each other, inescapably, caught in a gravity that had drawn them together over thousands of years. 

By the time she handed their orders through the window, two foil take-out pans fat with falafel and hummus and fries and salads, their appetites had shifted.

“Are you still upset? How can I make this up to you?” Seto said, which was odd, coming from him. He never asked for guidance on apologies: he just came up with something and did it.

“No, I'm fine. You don't need to do anything. Relax,” Atem said firmly, admiring his falafel plate, the plastic lid clouding with steam, and noticed Seto fixing him with a look of intense scrutiny. “We can talk about it later, if you still want to discuss, but I don’t expect you to always get this right. We are going to get this wrong, every now and then. But when that happens… don't ever doubt that I love you.”

And he rose on tiptoe, hanging a hand on Seto’s shoulder, pulling him down for a sloppy, affectionate kiss to his cheek.

Seto made a strange face, color flaring across his cheeks, thinking very visibly and very hard. His brow furrowed with a haughty impatience, the expression he made when he’d raced down a line of thought, and was waiting for someone else to catch up.

“Okay. I love you too,” he agreed, brisk and businesslike. “But would you agree I’ve been bad?”

Atem paused, mystified - 

And it clicked.

"Oh," he said, with a sly grin. "Yes."

They abandoned their uneaten take-out in the suite kitchenette. They failed to make it as far as the bedroom. Piece by piece, they shed their defenses against winter, making a stumbling, eager retreat into the living room, thudding into the walls, tumbling onto the couch and off again, laughing, smearing love across each other with every kiss. Atem swallowed Seto's furious, whining growl as he pressed his thigh between his legs, testing the growing hardness. 

“Wait - wait,” Seto choked out, and broke free of Atem long enough to turn off all the lights and turn on the gas fireplace, sending a pool of golden, wavering heat flooding across the ornamental carpet. The curtains were open, revealing the city sprawling into the night below them, a glittering mass of geometric light that plunged into the dark, distant infinity of the evening horizon. 

“That should be warm enough,” Seto said, turning back to Atem, standing in front of the fire. He caught Atem by the hips, tugging him closer, slipping his hands under Atem’s sweater to slide them up the bare skin of his back - a cool, delicious thrill of sensation that sent skitters racing up his spine. 

“Seto! Hands! Cold!” Atem gasped, back arching as Seto at the same time pressed a blazing star of a kiss into the skin below his ear. The stark split between cold on his waist and hot on his neck made his head spin.

“We’ll get warmer,” Seto said, in an engine-revving growl that ran straight through him. He curled his fingers along the hem of his sweater, pulling it up, up, over his head and flinging it away, then the long-sleeve shirt he wore underneath, then the undershirt -

"How many layers are you wearing?!" Seto muttered, throwing that aside, and Atem laughed.

"I hate feeling cold," he said. He threw his arms around Seto’s neck, capturing his mouth in a demanding kiss, relishing the way Seto bore down on him, both arms around him and capturing back with tongue and teeth, as though all five senses were not enough, and surely, if he tried hard enough, he’d discover a whole new way of sensing Atem. 

He himself was already hard, straining against his jeans. He fumbled blindly through the kiss, found Seto’s tie, and gave it a brisk tug, eliciting a low, muffled murmur of questioning. Their foreheads met, then their eyes, burning through the dim light. 

“How are you going to make this up to me?” he said.

In response Seto took Atem's hand and slipped two fingers deep into his mouth, pensive, cheeks hollowing around them.

“Mmmmh,” he hummed, tongue swirling around his fingers, in supple suggestion. Atem felt dizzy, his thoughts whirling. “I have a few ideas.”

“You are a man of action,” Atem said... 

...and with a fluid motion, a smile both reverent and insolent balanced on his lips, Seto sank to his knees before him. 

His eyes landed on his bulge, then flicked up through his lashes, with a gaze that plunged through Atem like a spear, tearing through every quivering nerve. 

But they weren’t new to this. The time had long since passed when every stray look of desire left them in nervous, fumbling puddles of dismantled wit. The question was no longer how do we do this? is this what you like? will this hurt? but can you handle it? how much I want you? need you? And the answer was obvious. The answer was always the same. Seto unzipped his jeans and pulled him free, kissing, licking, sucking down his length, soft velvety hot and slow, achingly slow, dragging Atem closer and closer to the edge as he dragged his tongue in merciless teasing… until finally Atem, panting, shuddering as each churning swell of WANT crashed into the cliff-walls of his self-control, no thoughts left in his head except HIM, slid a hand into his hair and Seto slid around him to the hilt - YES, the answer was always yes, yes, yes - 

“Yes," Seto moaned, a sound that swelled from the depths of his chest, resonant and unrestrained, despite the way Atem was restraining him: on his back before the fire, his hands pinned to the carpet and one long, muscular leg slung over Atem’s shoulder. They were done with simple prelude and had moved on to the fugue, hands, mouths, limbs, voices tangling together in impassioned counterpoint: you against me, you with me, you and me here together, melodic, rhythmic, euphoric. Atem lowered his head to trail kisses along his jaw, under his chin, chasing his pulse around the column of his sweat-drenched neck and biting down when he caught it: mine now, mine mine mine, hitting the point home with every tight, delirious thrust - “yes - harder - yes, yes, yes, Atem, Atem, Atem - yes - Atem - ! - ! - !”

And Atem, hearing the cry tear from his throat, wordless and raptured, feeling the wetness stripe their stomachs, buried his face in the crook of his neck and followed him into that blinding darkness - O Hathor! - releasing his soul from his body in bracing silence. An ascent to the breathless peak of ecstasy.

They panted through it, collecting themselves, descending to the world little by little. 

Slowly, they unwound. Seto freed his hands from Atem’s grasp with a pair of light twists. Atem shifted and pitched sideways to let his leg unfold, nuzzling an adoring kiss to the side of his thigh. Then he flopped back onto him, lazy and boneless, resting his head on his chest with a faint sticky squelch between their bodies. 

He swooned easily into the dreamy post-orgasm haze. Seto smelled like sex, raw and warm and sweating, and like his cologne, faded to a gentler scent, less steel and more rain, a scent like throwing the windows open and letting the morning storm in. Atem lay still, breathing him in, hands laced over Seto’s collarbones, listening to the allargando bass note beat of his heart.

Eyes closed, Seto ran his hands up and down Atem’s bare body, trailing fingernails and fingertips in slow, idle exploration, although there was no part of him he did not by now know by heart. The firelight danced over them, leaving no traces in its wake save light and heat.

“Play with my hair?” Atem murmured.

“Why don’t you get the falafel, and get me a towel,” Seto murmured, without opening his eyes, “and then I’ll play with your hair.”

“Incredible,” Atem intoned. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

“What?”

“An idea more brilliant than SolidVision… falafel after sex - ”

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Seto said, laughing, his chest bouncing under Atem's head like a drum, and sent him off with a brisk smack to his ass. 

A crunch of warmed-up falafel, a cool zing of bourbon, the rock of ice clinking against the glass, the tap of wood against wood as Atem advanced his knight to d5. They lounged in their soft pool of firelight, less than half-dressed, drifting over the cold depths of midnight. Their clothes lay scattered around them on the floor, fabric islands in a sea of carpet. His hair had been well-stroked, by Seto's deft, nimble fingers, and Atem was practically melting with contentment.

“Very nice,” Seto said, eating a lukewarm fry, lying on his side like a figure from a Roman fresco, comfortable and indulging in it. “You’re going to lose in twelve moves this time, instead of six.”

“That was a fluke,” Atem insisted, pouring himself another half-inch of bourbon and setting the bottle aside. “How do you know I’m not actually a chess prodigy, and I’m just letting you win for the sake of your ego?”

“Please. No need for that kind of petulant murder-suicide. Just accept your loss with dignity and get good,” Seto chuffed, and moved his bishop with an uncompromising tap. “If you can’t beat me, it’s no fun. Until then, you’ll just have to suffer.” 

“The audacity! And from someone who never even beat me at senet,” Atem said, frowning at the board. “We should go get the board from the Met. Technically, it belongs to you anyway.”

Seto, usually so quick to discard the more mundane fragments of his other life, this time did not. “And how do you propose we do that?”

“Theft. A museum heist. You rewire all the alarms and security cameras, and I'll do all the laser beam acrobatics."

“Too easy. I do the acrobatics, and you do the alarms. Then it's a real challenge,” Seto said. His phone chimed, the bright chirp that only meant Mokuba. He flipped it over and texted a reply as Atem continued pondering his next move. “Mokuba’s coming to New York. He’s going to take over for a few days.”

Atem lifted his head, fixing him with a look. “I thought he's trying to avoid doing Kaiba Corp things.”

In response, Seto read aloud: “‘you absolutely need a break. you were on your own in NYC and as much as you don’t like to admit it, that makes you easier to rattle bc no one's there to soften the blows. p.s. also nothing I love more in life than fucking up the P-man,’ fire emoji, knife emoji, three smiling demon-face emojis.”

“As vengeful as he is wise... So you're taking a few days off?"

“Mm.” 

"Good."

Seto set the phone down and rolled onto his back, eyes gleaming like polished coins with firelight as he studied the ceiling. Atem moved his queen into a square he found enticing for its possibilities and stretched out a single bare leg, toes pointed at the fire. He took a healthy quaff of bourbon, exhaling as it spiked down his throat. He was warm inside and out.

“Atem,” Seto said, half-muffled by the hand he was dragging down his face, “when you said Kaiba Corp is a prison…”

His eyes flashed to Atem, two profound wells of blue, flecked with firelight. All at once hungry and beseeching. His usual question. It was a different question than before. It was not even the first, oldest question, because that one had long been lost to time, buried in the sand at the bottom of some dusty, sunny afternoon in a palace stable. And despite being the usual question, despite how it was forged in furious, desperate fires, it never lost its luster, the grace and humility in its heart of surrender: How do I live now?

As if Atem had the answers. As if any of his best answers hadn't come from someone else first: Yuugi, Anzu, Jounouchi, Seto himself. But he'd been alive for almost three years, and he had a few answers of his own now, scribbled down in the margins of his books, written up on the ceiling in the unnumbered hours of the night.

And Pegasus was wrong. It was what Atem did not say that he regretted most.

He set his drink down and pushed the chessboard aside, pieces scattering - not because he was losing, but for the drama, and because Seto undoubtedly had it memorized - and crawled over to sit beside him, legs curled.

“I do know what it means to you," he said, "what you suffered to get it, and what you made other people suffer. But I think... sometimes you work yourself to the bone because if you didn’t, if you looked away for half a second, it would be like saying none of that mattered."

Seto huffed softly, a light wince tightening his features. “But it does matter.”

“To me,” he added, quietly.

“And to me,” Atem said. “But you know… after my duel with Yuugi, as I walked through those doors, I had a moment where I thought…"

He closed his eyes. The memory flickered through him. Seto's hand rose to his arm, as though holding him steady.

"I am at the end of anger and fear and pain," he said. "I am leaving those all behind. Only one thing I will take with me, and damn any man to Ammut who dares plunder my tomb for it. You know what it is.”

“Yes,” Seto murmured, reaching up to cup Atem’s face with both hands, fingertips slipping into the hairline along his neck. Gentle shivers rippled in the wake of his touch. “I know. Sometimes I forget, but I know."

"I am more than happy to remind you," Atem said, smiling.

"Maybe you should remind me again," Seto said, and pulled him down for a kiss, untangling a knot of flavors with their lips and tongues: alcohol's cool thorns, the hot, savory threads of food and sweat, their sweet, eager zest for each other.

An interruption from Seto’s phone. He broke the kiss to give it a quick glance and tossed it away with an offhand flick, sending it skidding in a quiet shff across the carpet, out of reach.

“Weather alert. It's snowing tomorrow,” he said.

"I am not going out."

“I’ll... work from home.”

Atem raised his eyebrows.

"I will not work at all," Seto corrected.

“Yes. We’re going to sleep in, watch the snow fall from inside, where it’s warm, and I’m going to remind you as many times as you want.”

“You spend all that time on your philosophy classes, reading your books and writing your papers, and all you practice is hhhh… hedonism,” Seto groaned, his breath trembling out as on a whim Atem took his glass of bourbon and spilled a long, iced stripe down his bare chest. He kissed his neck, then the soft, v-shaped dip at its base, lacing kisses along his collarbones and down the shallow valleys of his chest, lipping up every cool, sharp drop and savoring every warm inch of soft skin.

“I don’t practice,” he said, chuckling, nosing over the firm, fire-golden planes of Seto's stomach and relishing how they fluttered in ticklish anticipation under his bird-wing beats of laughter. “I’m a master."

Seto laughed - o glorious song! - and on they went, tumbling with breathless joy into their warm, glimmering black hollow of the night, hidden from the cracked and shivering hands of winter. And again they met in the place where lovers meet, that slow-whirling darkness without form or sound, where nothing mortal or divine, not death nor distance, could keep them apart.