#literally the wall separating me and a version of me that watches arcane

[kaibacorpintern]

For the prompt thing: kaiba + yuugi + professionalism!

this was fun!! thanks to @dxmichelle for the retail stories. kaiba as a retail worker is like me when I was a retail worker because when i worked at a barnes and noble, i spent a LOT of time perfectly squaring the books. anyway all the kaibacorp adventure park castmembers get some fat fucking pay raise/benefit boosts after this

***

This was all Jounouchi’s fucking fault and Seto was never agreeing to any stupid fucking bets again. When did he become a good duelist, instead of just a lucky one? And he knew it, too, announcing his plans to win the Domino City Invitational with the kind of brash, easy confidence that was a front for nothing, a Roman wall around nothing, with nothing he needed to defend on the other side. As hard to read as a coloring book. Asshole. 

“The gods have struck men down for less hubris than this,” Seto snapped, over a game of poker at Yuugi’s weekly game night. Mokuba had badgered him into attending after their return from the yearly strategic planning retreat with the board. You need to be around normal people! No more sharks in people suits! 

“So what? You don’t believe in higher powers, Rich Boy.”

 “In my experience, a god and a higher power are two separate things."

“Oh, okay, Neeshee. Maybe you don’t believe in me, but you do believe in games,” Jounouchi said.

“Devastating insight,” Seto said. “And it’s Nietzsche.”

“Bless you. Don't be rude and sneeze into a tissue next time. Let’s make a bet. When I win the Invitational, you… pick up all my shifts at the Kame Game Shop for a week. I take home all the paychecks, but you do all the work. You know, bog-standard capitalism.”

Seto rolled his eyes. “When you lose, you give the jet a good wash and wax. Then you throw your deck and your Duel Disk into the river, and never duel again.”

“Deal. And I tell you what, Kaiba. One day we’re gonna meet across the field, and you’re going to lose, but it won’t even bother you, because you had just so much fun,” Jounouchi said, extending his hand across the table, with a savage grin. 

“Don’t fucking threaten me,” Seto said, shaking his hand.

Asshole! Jounouchi stomped the competition with an ease Seto hadn’t seen since he was fourteen and unceremoniously sacking Inspector Haga at the Pan Pacific Final. 

At least Yuugi gave him his own nametag, instead of making him wear Jounouchi’s: a plastic, turtle-shaped badge with a white space for his name. There was a line below it that said MY FAVORITE GAME IS... chess, Seto wrote in moodily, with the marker. Then he affixed it to his dark-green apron, neatly and precisely, just over his heart.

Yuugi nudged the curtain into the stock room aside, wearing a matching apron and smiling like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Ready to clock in - oh, no. This is the Kame Game Shop,” he said, reaching up to fix Seto’s name tag, tweaking it to sit slightly at an angle. “Perfect right angles are for squares.”

“A KaibaCorp Adventure Park castmember wouldn’t be caught dead with their nametag this sloppy,” Seto snapped.

“It’s not sloppy. It’s jaunty and playful,” Yuugi corrected. “Now, let’s review. You’re an engineering prodigy, so I’m sure you can handle the register. What do we do when a customer walks in?”

Seto sighed, hands bracing on his hips as his eyes rolled towards the ceiling. That asshole picked up five full days of double shifts. 

“Welcome them when they walk in,” he said, as Yuugi nodded along. “Ask if they need any help. If they’re just browsing, leave them alone. Provide recommendations if they ask.”

“And?” Yuugi prompted, raising his eyebrows.

“Wrap and bag their purchases and thank them for wasting my fucking time.”

Yuugi reached up, pressing the tips of his index fingers into Seto’s cheeks. “No! Smile!” 

Seto bared his teeth.

“Can’t believe people call you a bad sport,” Yuugi said. “Maybe just smize instead. Go! Clock in! Upsell your own Duel Disk!”

Seto let out a final dramatic huff, took the clipboard off its hook on the wall, and added his billion-dollar contract signature to the timesheet, below several rows of Jounouchi’s scrawl. 

***

After four hours, Seto took his lunch break, an all-too-brief thirty minutes in the alley behind the Game Shop, leaning back with one foot propped against the wall, answering emails on his phone with all the speed and fury his thumbs could muster. It was high summer. Vines spilled over the wall on the other side of the alleyway, limp and vibrating with heat. Even the shade under the wall was warm. 

The side door opened. He turned his head, preparing a choice little bon mot for Yuugi, and paused, his breath hitching in his chest with a wild regret, birdlike, startled suddenly out of hiding. 

He stared at Sugoroku, privately cursing Jounouchi for the nth time for making the fucking bet, winning the fucking Invitational, and putting him here in this fucking alleyway, staring at Sugoroku. It was too late to go back inside. Sugoroku stared back, hoary-haired, stooped under the weight of his years. Even wizened, with skin like old, pale leather, the family resemblances were clear: the same big, warm eyes, the same bright smile, no less weakened for age. 

He shuffled out the door, dragging a small garbage bag of recycling beside him.

“Open that up and drop this in, will you please? My back’s not what it used to be.”

“Yes,” Seto said, rapidly stooping to take the bag. Should he add sir? Yes, sir? He hadn’t said 'sir' to anyone in ten years. What was he supposed to say? Sorry. I was not myself. I was myself, but the worst version. It was the beta release of me and we have removed the bugs (the murder bugs) in advance of stable release. All remaining bugs are acceptable. We have added accurate legal and medical disclaimers to all our SolidVision and Virtual World products about how the sensory intensity of KaibaCorp proprietary holographic technology may exacerbate existing heart conditions. I am taking good care of her and I love her and she loves me. Who? Her. The dragon. 

He dropped the bag into the recycling bin several steps away and turned around to face Sugoroku, summoning his resolve with an inhale, exhale, firm and deep. 

“How’s your first day?” Sugoroku said.

“My company isn’t going down in flames without me,” Seto said. “Color me surprised.”

“How’s your first day here?”

“Enthralling. The adrenaline high of consumer retail is really just something else - ”

“Speak up, I can’t hear you over all that racket you’re making,” Sugoroku said. Seto paused, bewildered, mouth half-open - and shut it, color flaring across his face.

“Uh - fine,” he muttered. “It’s fine. I helped an eight-year-old pick out a board game.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She came in with all the allowance she’d saved up and she wanted something she could play with her sister. I sold her on mancala."

"That's a classic. Not a board game, but a classic. And hard to sell to children."

Seto scoffed. "I hate the crap they pass off as board games these days, with all the… fiddly, little plastic pieces and the arcane rules. Children get drawn in by the colors, but they don't have patience for the rules, so it ends up forgotten at the bottom of a bookshelf somewhere with half the pieces sucked up in the vacuum cleaner. Mancala is simple. You can play it with a patch of dirt and a handful of gravel. But if you want to win, you need to play with skill and wit. It's timeless. It’s elegant."

"Well, you've sold me. I haven’t played mancala in years. Shall we play tomorrow? During your lunch break?"

Seto said nothing, resisting the urge to bite his lip, a bad habit and a sign of nervousness.

“Yuugi speaks very highly of you, you know,” Sugoroku said. “I’d love to know why.”

He chuckled and shuffled back inside, leaving Seto fuming with an odd, stomach-clenching embarrassment. 

He checked his phone. Three more minutes left of his lunch break, and his feet were aching. He should’ve worn different shoes, not the Chelsea boots. Tomorrow. Mancala? Damn Jounouchi to hell. Better shoes.

***

“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Do you have Legendary Heroes II?”

Seto abandoned his task of aligning board game boxes at perfect right angles. Fuck jaunty and playful.

“No. That’s not out until December,” he said. The production issues on Legendary Heroes II were a fucking nightmare, and the thought of making his game developers crunch - making them miserable, overworked, and more likely to quit and get snapped up by Schroeder Corp - gave him hives. So he’d pushed release back to December, allowing the small hit to his stock under the rationale that the holiday retail season would make up for it. But she didn’t need to know that. 

“But - it’s my son’s birthday next Saturday, and Legendary Heroes is his favorite game,” she said, hands clenching loosely by her stomach, a gesture of pleading.

“I’m delighted to hear it. It does not change the fact that the game literally does not exist,” Seto said. 

“Can you just check in the back? He’s been asking about this for months now,” she said, and Seto clicked his teeth, face slipping into a snarl - from the corner of his eye, he saw Yuugi, watching him.

Smile, he mouthed, and pressed his fingers into his own cheeks, putting on a manic, plastic grin. 

“Of course. I’ll be right back,” Seto said, smiling, and stormed away. As expected, he did not find Legendary Heroes II in the stock room. He dawdled, checking his email, firing off a few replies, advising Mokuba on the right way to handle the zesty temperament of their general counsel - this’ll be fun, Mokuba said, I get to run KaibaCorp without you, like, dying or something - WHAT? - and stashed his phone back into his apron pocket.

“My apologies,” he said, returning to the woman. “We don’t have it in stock. If you’d like to pre-order it, it’ll be available just in time for Christmas. Just log on to the KaibaCorp website and enter the Kame Game Shop as your pick-up location. If you’re still looking for a birthday gift, I strongly suggest the new Duel Disk. The design is much better for children than the old one - lighter and more streamlined, with less intense haptics. If he already has a Duel Disk, he can bring that in for a trade-in.”

“Oh, perfect!” she said. “We'll do that. Thank you. You’ve been so helpful.”

“You’re welcome. Have a fantastic day,” Seto said, still smiling. He watched her leave and returned to his board game boxes, feeling hideously, fabulously smug. A customer walked in, carrying a bare Duel Disk under his arm, and Seto shot him a cheerful welcome. The man ignored him, heading straight to Yuugi at the counter.

***

Yuugi swallowed, squared his shoulders, and lifted his chin.

"I'm sorry. We cannot accept a Duel Disk return without a box or a receipt," he said. Clearly stolen. 

"But I bought it here two weeks ago. And the stupid piece of shit is defective," the man said. "I want my money back!"

Loud enough that Seto, re-stocking towards the front of the store, turned towards them, with open curiosity.

"What's the nature of the defect?" Yuugi said.

"It just doesn't fucking work. I don't know what else to tell you," the guy said. "Are you gonna do the return or not?!"

His least favorite type of customer: smashing reason apart with the baseball bat of belligerence. Yuugi steeled himself for the inevitable slew of insults. 

"Sir. I can't do the return without a receipt - "

A hand came down on his shoulder, pulling him with polite insistence out of the way. Seto, with a canny, feline smile, the kind that foretold bloodshed on the dueling field.

"Oh no, Yuugi," he said. "Let me handle this."

[youhearstatic]

For the micro-prompts: 20, 16, or 47? (I like to give options in case one jumps out more than the others, so don't feel like you should combine them or something!)

20 - You probably thought I forgot, right? I didn’t! (And I haven’t forgotten the other two I have left, either!)

Surprise, surprise, this one went long. Hope you like it!

--------------------------

Alone, Finally

 Barry followed the rest of the crew down the backstage hallway, tugging at the unfamiliar robe they’d been given right before they went on stage. Well, that some of them had been given. Magnus was wearing a jacket he’d instantly pulled the sleeves off of. The captain had a longer version of the same jacket that was tailored immaculately to him with military severity. Merle hadn’t even worn his for the press conference. The twins had worn both jackets and robes, somehow making the IPRE uniform look like couture instead of standard issue. Lucretia was in the robe but she looked like a lost boarding school student, the crimson robe looked stylishly scholastic on her. He tugged at the neck of the robe again, even more self conscious than he’d been on stage. 

Ahead of him, the twins had their heads bowed together, whispering and laughing. For the first of many, many times, the echo of Lup’s comment on stage scraped across his thoughts like nails on a chalkboard. 

Nerd alert!

Just a few more minutes and the others would be heading to that bar they’d mentioned. And then - for one last time for a while - he’d be alone, finally. 

---

 Trailing his hand down the wall, Barry made his way by memory. After eleven years he could have done it with his eyes closed.

Which was essentially what he was doing. 

It was stupid, so fucking stupid. Okay, sure, that first year he hadn’t known to take his glasses off. Why would he? But by the third time they regenned he should have figured out that his glasses were going to be important and he should set them aside before … whatever it was that happened at the end of the cycle. That fourth year he’d died, that could be excused. The eighth year he’d had it ingrained in him not to even think of removing his mask. So that year could be excused, too. 

But that still left six regens. Six opportunities to set aside a pair of glasses in case of emergency. 

Well maybe next year he’d remember. But for the rest of this year he was practically blind. Anything beyond arm’s reach might as well not exist. He could make out colors and if he squinted really hard sometimes he could get a slight hint of shape to the faceless blurs around him. 

It’s fine, he told himself for probably the thousandth time that day.

It wasn’t fine. Sure, he could make his way around the ship, fumbling his way from room to room by memory and feel. But once he was there he didn’t have much to offer. He couldn’t work in the lab. Experiments were off the table - literally if he was trying to do them. Just trying to clean basic equipment in the lab had resulted in two broken beakers before Lup kindly, patiently, but insistently suggested he leave the job to her. He couldn’t help look for the light. He couldn’t take notes on their observations. He couldn’t even help with chores around the ship!

Pushing open the fifth door on the left, he was alone, finally. Dark blur straight ahead was his bed and beige-ish blur to the left was his desk. And then the blurs were watery and the tears of frustration and self pity that he’d held off all week caught up to him. He leaned against the door and let his facade drop.

He was so tired of being a drain on the crew. Not being able to help, having to be looked after, and maybe worst of all, pretending it didn’t kill him by inches, pretending it was all just a silly thing to be joked away. ‘Barold bumping into things for three more months,’ wasn’t it hilarious? ‘Barry fell of the rock jetty, lost his glasses, almost died, and now he’s talking to the coat rack because he thinks it’s Lucretia.’

“Barry?”

Fear shot hot and electric through his body, startling him into embarrassed silence. He swabbed his hand over his face, trying to disguise the fact he’d been leaning against his door crying because he…

“Oh, fuck,” he said. “I went in the fourth door, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Lup answered. That one syllable was so patient and kind and understanding and honestly, it was just salt in his wounds. He didn’t want to be understanding about this whole thing and he really didn’t want Lup to be understanding about him bumbling into her room and having a breakdown.

“Sorry, I, just, um,” 

A blur separated itself from the bed-blur, straightened into a taller blur, and approached him. He could almost see the shape of her hair in her silhouette - it was loose, not braided was all he could make out - when she was close enough to take his hand. “C’mere,” she said, tugging him gently towards the bed-blur. “Hold on,” she said. The Lup-blur bent then straightened again. “Don’t want you tripping over my boots,” she explained. There was a clunk to his right and he assumed she’d tossed the shoes towards the wall to get them out of the way.

It was disconcerting, being pulled into a sitting position on Lup’s bed. Their rooms were arranged identically, looked identical to his unassisted vision, and sitting on her bed was, in theory, no different than sitting on his own.

Except it was. It wasn’t his bed, it wasn’t his room, and worse - oh so much worse - it was Lup’s bed in Lup’s room. His face was burning and his stomach was winding itself into furious little knots and dammit, he hadn’t thought he could feel worse than he did three minutes ago but, look at that!, here he was sunk lower than the freezing point of mercury. 

“I didn’t mean to bug you,” he mumbled, eyes aimed at the floor or where the floor was if he could at least be trusted to get that right.

“Hold still,” she tells him. Then she’s pushing the hair back from his forehead and there’s a weird sensation, like a pinching pull that doesn’t quite hurt but it’s just so odd he can’t figure out what’s going on.

“Stop frowning!” she tells him, her voice colored with laughter. “I’m just clipping your hair back.”

“Why?” he asks before he can stop himself. He feels like he’s three steps behind what is happening.

“Because we’re doing face masks.”

“What?”

“Relax,” she tells him. 

And for some strange reason, he does.

 ---

 They’ve been alone. Over the years, in a dozen planar systems, across doomed worlds, in forgotten ruins, or just in the lab working silently, they’ve been alone.

They’ve been alone. Over the months of study and composition and practice. They’ve been alone, just the two of them and their music filling the empty room, no witness to the way the notes have been building and the music has been building and the way the tempo has somehow gotten slower. Here at the end, right next to each other, a pair of pathways that have wound ever closer over the years, the paths have almost joined and yet.

And yet.

They meander these last months. Dancing closer and closer but not touching, not mingling, not yet. 

Each step forward slower and slower until the momentum is crawling forward, making the distance of a few inches last and last.

They are alone together on stage. 

There are so many around. Instructors and audience and all the people that it takes to keep an infrastructure like this running: janitors and receptionists and the guy that refills the coffee machine in the fourth floor break room. Anyone in hearing distance that day notices. It’s like that sometimes. You can go weeks and months and nothing sticks, even the pieces that get rebroadcast, they run together at some point. It’s beautiful, amazing, but there’s filters to restock and inquiries to respond to. There’s a leaky water heater that needs tending to. But for a minute, you stop, lean on the broom and take notice.

But not Barry and Lup, alone, finally, despite the people surrounding them. Their music is still echoing around them when their hands find one another. 

Lup and Barry, alone on stage. Two paths that have run side by side, so close for so long, join at last.

There’s applause and then the song is sent out anew, reflected from deep within the mountain instead of from her violin and his piano. There’s applause and an empty stage.

Alone, finally.

 ---

 There’s a pillar of bone carved with arcane symbols. There on the hill, two people lean together, forehead to forehead. Further away another watches. But in this instant there’s no one else. Seven on this planet yes. Eight if you count their strange, duck loving new shipmate. 

But for now. On this hill. In this moment.

There are only two. 

Two liches.

Alone, finally, after years of study.

And then like so many times before, they pick up their responsibilities and work and pull it all back on like a costume they only ever drop for a little while.

In those moments they are alone.

 ---

 He’s alone.

This was the final place. It was supposed to be… 

His shoulders sag. It was supposed to be their happy ending, their settled-at-last, their no-more-running. 

But he woke up and she wasn’t there.

It felt different. He didn’t say it, but it did.

And then morning turned to day turned to week turned to months.

He’s alone.

 ---

 Exhaustion wears them down, hang like too-heavy cloaks on backs that can’t stand tall without her. 

He’d been alone.

But feeling the last of her disappear - the her that was only in his memories - he knows what alone really means. He can’t lose her that way, not again, not like this.

“Taako, k- kill me! Right now!”

 He’s falling.

Forgetting.

Forgotten.

Alone.

Final.

y

 ---

 He’s alone. There is so much that makes no sense. Three guys - one of them made of fucking wood if you could believe it - and him naked in a tank full of goo. 

Then he got in the one guy’s pocket? Somehow?

The details are fuzzy.

But dammit, he’s happy. Something feels right. After so long. (How long?)

He’s alone.

Alone, but -

Finally.

 ---

 Who’d have guessed this was a skill? The ultimate hangover and when you got that giant memory dump poured on you every time you did something stupid like fell off a cliff or didn’t bring enough water into the desert… well, you got better at it.

So while the others recovered, he was alone, the only one not under fire from a million contradicting thoughts.

Alone, Finally.

At the end.

And then… and then… his brain comes up empty at the thought. And then?

Alone?

 ---

 The pale green glow throws strange shadows across the cave. There was a ball of brilliant fire but, well, anchoring yourself in a body after a decade out of practice took some concentration. And he didn’t exactly have the concentration himself.

After so long. After everything. After endless nights in this very cave, planning and plotting and hoping.

Alone.

And then.

Finally.

Alone together.