Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - Matched Socks
The one thing he would remember That Day was that his socks didn’t match. In the months since the news, Yugi had spent every waking moment making his grandfather’s days what he called “certified Best Day’s Ever.” Some days that meant playing board games until he was blue in the face - including some of his very own creation. Others it meant riding his favorite roller coaster twenty-seven times in a row. One time for every year of Yugi’s life.
As the months went on, the certified Best Day’s Ever looked a lot more like passing time in comfortable silence, staring at the clock like they were squared up in a boxing ring, waiting for someone to land the final blow. The boxing ring turned from their quaint living room couch above the game shop that Yugi painstakingly managed in his spare time now, into the sterility of a stale hospital room.
When Yugi’s grandfather told him to go home and “take care of himself” after Yugi had spent nearly sixty hours in an arm chair vigil, he hesitated. His grandfather did look better than he had in days. He was cheered by visits from Joey and Tristan, who had come by bearing Yahtzee and a deck of playing cards, plus a tiny bottle of pale pink rose wine for Yugi. Tea, across the country making her way through every dance stage in New York City, had sent a bouquet of chocolate roses. And he had sent a single bright orange tiger lily in a beautifully ornate golden vase, with a note written in stunning calligraphy. My entire heart.
When the tiger lily showed up, Yugi’s stomach flipped and his chest tightened. He knew exactly who it was from. Atem. How he knew his grandfather had been hospitalized was likely the result of Joey and Tristan, who maintained some kind of regular contact with him. Yugi had barely spoken to him in five years, after graduating college.
When Atem lost the ceremonial duel between them, he was given a literal once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hit the re-do button, able to stay in this world for a normal, mortal life. A gift from the gods for voluntarily locking himself away in his obsidian void for five thousand years. Yugi and his friends had cried, his grandfather set to work somehow making his identity legitimate in the modern world, and throughout his education they lived life together as one happy, albeit odd, family unit.
There was no denying the likeness between Yugi and Atem, but there were enough differences. Atem’s features were sharp and pointed, his skin darkening with every passing day in the sun, taller. Seeing Atem as a physical person and getting to know him was the joy of Yugi’s life. He learned every curve of his face - the expressions he made when he was frustrated with his cell phone, the way he bit his lip when he concentrated, the way his brow furrowed when he attempted the Sunday morning crossword. As they both entered their twenties, the relationship changed, subtly, like the transitions between seasons. There were even times when he felt Atem looked at him the same way he looked at Atem. With a burning ferocity that made his skin ripple and his stomach bubble with anticipation.
Yugi had always felt like maybe he was into boys, and that answer solidified the first time he kissed a girl. He prepared for sparks, for magic to burst behind his eyelids, but all he felt was the equivalent of ash on his tongue. When it happened again with the second girl, and then the third, he joined the LGBTQ club on campus and felt instantly at home in his black studded necklace with the purple haired men wearing rainbow earrings. Telling Joey and Tristan was terrifying - but they blinked at him, told him “sounds cool dude,” and the rest was history. Tea squealed on the phone. His grandfather cried and told him he was so loved. Atem had blushed the most intense color scarlett he had ever seen in his life and coughed into a huge glass of wine before looking up at him behind those dark eyelashes and said we adore you, Yugi. They both pierced their ears that day.
So when Yugi graduated, with a job as assistant game creator waiting for him at Industrial Illusions, he walked the stage and glanced out among the sea of people in the crowd looking for his favorite faces. There was his grandfather, Joey and Tristan who were holding up a phone with Tea’s face on the screen, but Atem was noticeably absent. He had shrugged it off while trying not to look disappointed, but he was more than surprised that his favorite person in the entire world wasn’t here for him. What he didn’t realize at that moment was that Atem had packed up every single item he owned the night before and shipped himself away somewhere in the morning. He left a single note on the floor of his empty bedroom. Don’t let me hold you back.
What should have been happy years turned darker than Yugi wanted to admit. He threw himself into his work, with long days and little sleep. He created dark horror games that made record breaking debuts at conventions and earned him two promotions in four years. His friends took him for mandatory Saturday night dinner to make sure he ate a good meal at least once a week. His grandfather’s health declined, and Yugi pretended like none of it was happening until the day they got the news. That he was really sick this time, and he could no longer pretend. Yugi took over the game shop as his side project, hiring a manager named Violet and her husband Ben to run the day to day operations. They became like family.
That’s when the “certified Best Day’s Ever” began, and why on That Day, when his grandfather told him to go home and take care of himself, his socks didn’t match. He had no time to match socks, not when they had so little time to have so many Best Day’s Ever. It’s why, when his cell phone rang as he stood, his hair dripping water onto the floor of his one bedroom apartment across town, his stomach dropped when he saw the hospital calling. When they told him his grandfather was gone, and he looked down at the floor, the first thing he thought was that his socks didn’t match. That one rainbow sock and one dark black sock with a gold toe stared back at him as he received the worst news of his life. When he collapsed in a heap on the ground, with the hospital on the phone asking if he was still there, he curled into a ball and stared at those socks, wondering why the hell Atem wasn’t there for him.