#and tolerates it best when he's throwing golden apples of philosophical discord into the conversation and making everyone fight

[kaibacorpintern]

the only worthwhile bit of an otherwise discarded freewrite

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Yuugi, wedged in between Atem and Anzu, took a long pull of his soda, his cheek propped against his hand. At this hour, Burger World was bright and loud, the colors of their plastic fry baskets and vinyl booth saturated with shadowless white light and slippery from years of apathetic teenage cleaning. On Anzu's other side, the window was pitch-black, throwing their reflections back at them. Like the inversion of a shadow: not dark but glowing, not distinct but blurred. And yet, silent. 

"Atem," Kaiba said, pulling the straw out of his drink and delicately flicking water off it. "I have a puzzle for you - "

"Not this again," Jou groaned, with Honda safely buffering them. "Every time you come out with us, you pull the same damn Bill Nye Science Guy bullshit."

Every time like it'd been a lot of times, when really it had only been a dozen or so, and half of them with Mokuba tagging along, until he seemed satisfied that no one's throat would break open under Kaiba’s teeth if he wasn't there to stop him. And every time because, despite what Kaiba said, it was what he did that mattered, and he kept swinging around Atem the way a comet swung around a star, hurtling in cold and blazing, and hurtling away again. It took a lot of force to stop a comet, and to make it sit in a sticky booth on the border between Tuesday and Wednesday, eating greasy food with people it claimed not to like. 

That, or the comet had stopped itself. Atem shifted restlessly next to Yuugi, who took another sip of his drink, smiling, soda crackling in the straw.

"It's not my problem you have the full brainpower of a chewed-up tennis ball," Kaiba said mulishly, leaning back, resting both forearms on the table and slowly turning the straw between his fingertips. 

"I'll make it your problem," Jou announced. "You say one plus one equals two, I'll say prove it, you fuckin' stuck-up nerd - "

"I can prove that, but I have to say I’m not surprised you struggle with basic math - "

Between them, Honda rolled his eyes, almost explosive in its dismissive power.

"You guys are so annoying," he said. "If you're gonna do your usual dumb slap fight routine, go do it outside."

"No, I want to hear the puzzle," Atem said seriously, leaning forward, folding his arms on the table beside the half-eaten burger deflating in the basket. "What is it?"

"How many holes does this have?" Kaiba said, holding up the straw.

"Two," Jounouchi said. "The in hole and the out hole."

"Nah, that's too simple," Anzu said. "Unless it's a trick question, and we're supposed to think it's something else, but it actually really is just two." 

She lifted her eyebrow at Kaiba, an accusatory smirk that he returned with impassive cool. Classic, Yuugi thought. Not trying to solve the puzzle, but rather the person asking it. 

Atem frowned, his wine-red eyes fixed on the straw.

"But first you have to say what a hole is. You can't count nothing," he said, and Yuugi grinned. 

"It’s whatever’s between Rich-boy's ears," Jounouchi said instantly, but Kaiba took no notice, beaming at Atem, in the same way the moon beamed, brightened by the light from someone else.