The Wound - bobtailsquid - Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Same time as usual. Two in the afternoon, on Saturdays. Same place as usual. The picnic table under the massive oak in the park, two blocks away from the Kame Game Shop and twenty minutes by subway from the station under the Kaiba Corp tower. Seto took the subway mostly out of scientific interest, taking a professional curiosity in the world Atem had wanted to live in, and because Atem had told him to enjoy it. What had he seen here, in the faded orange seats and bright pastel advertisem*nts and the quiet scattering of human-not-Puzzle bodies? What had he felt, as the subway swayed around the curve in the tunnel, unseen in the darkness and known only by its momentum, making everyone sway with it? Hands curled around handrails and books. Fingers on phones. The train burst into daylight. The side of that girl’s head against the glass, watching Domino slide by with an equally glassy look in her eyes. Two layers between her and the city. Missing someone? Or just bored of life?

He slunk off the subway, unnoticed and unknown, in an immaculate white hoodie and aviators, stainless steel water bottle dangling from one hand. Yuugi was waiting for him at the park entrance, as usual, wearing some kind of fashionable belted dark purple romper, with the usual tote bag full of games hanging from one hand. On the other hand, something unusual: his fingers stuck out from a half-formed mitten of gauze, giving his slender hand a clumsy, snub-nosed silhouette. He was having trouble holding his iced tea, thumb and fingers alligator-clamped around the lid. Someone had drawn a pair of flowers in pink marker across the back of the mitten, a bumper sticker of cheerful admonition: 🌺 BE CAREFUL! 🌺 Not Yuugi’s handwriting.

“Hey,” Yuugi said. “How’re you doing? You sleeping better?”

Seto pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, over his bangs, crown-like.

“On and off,” he said, which was true. His nights were now vast, tossing oceans of insomnia between shores of just good-enough sleep. Last night he’d simply given up trying to swim and instead, for the first time in years, read a book for amusem*nt instead of education. Some sci-fi novel Yuugi had mentioned and Seto bought on a lark from the bookstore in the subway station. Most of his amusem*nt came from correcting the bad science in the margins, until he woke up at dawn with his glasses bent and his bed linens blotted like calico cats with black ink. “What happened to your hand?”

“Oh, this?” Yuugi said, lifting his mitten-hand. “So, I was making a ceviche yesterday…”

He told the story as they walked through the park to the oak tree: the protagonist was a ripe avocado, its tough, disingenuous alligator hide concealing a soft, buttery-green flesh. The arc of the conflict: avocado against knife, a natural antagonist. The climax: the knife, ignorant of its own bluntness and made arrogant by the shine of its own steel, slid off its trajectory like a failing rocket and plunged at speed through plant skin and plant flesh straight into human skin and human flesh. The resolution: two identical cuts, a half-opened avocado and a half-opened hand. Man versus fruit.

“There was so much blood Otogi almost fainted,” Yuugi said, thumping the tote bag onto the wooden table and straddling the bench sideways. “So we went to the ER and they stitched me up, and then when we got back home I finished making the ceviche. What game? You pick.”

“Hive,” Seto said. He couldn’t stop looking at his bandaged hand. It drew his attention like a glitch on a screen, an inescapable aberration. “Does it bother you?”

“I mean, it hurts, but whatever, you know?” Yuugi said, digging into his tote bag for the drawstring bag of wooden tokens. He spilled them onto the table in a clattering cascade of wood against wood. They rapidly sorted them out. “It’s not my first cooking accident.”

Seto raised his eyebrows. It was a testament to the amount of time they’d been spending together lately - every Saturday afternoon for a handful of hours, until he made some excuse to leave, and Yuugi accepted it not because he was gullible but because he knew Seto had a battery and it ran low - that he didn’t even need to ask a question, and Yuugi simply provided an answer, with examples.

“So, here, I was frying onion rings for Jounouchi, and I splattered hot oil all over my arm,” Yuugi said, lifting his hand and pointing out a haphazard constellation of white scars over his forearm. “Then here - I was baking cookies for Shizuka’s birthday and touched the tray fresh out of the oven with my bare hand, like a moron, I dueled Jounouchi after and drawing my cards was like, ow - ” he waggled his fingertips - “andthisone is another burn - ” a long white ink-stroke across his wrist - “from when I was making ramen for Anzu, ‘cause she was home from New York. Andthisone - ”

More interesting than how and what were who. This burn for Honda’s birthday barbecue, that cut for Otogi’s game night. A violent kiss between blade and fingers behind a frothy veil of soapy water, cleaning up after a movie night. Another spray of oil splatters, frying tempura for his mother. A lot of meals for her, his grandfather, Jounouchi. Every scar Yuugi showed him had a name attached, almost all of them below the elbows, as though collected there for easy reference. Seto frowned as Yuugi’s fingers flew over this map of friendships and family, their routes landmarked by midnight breakfasts, lazy brunches, beautifully-wrapped bento boxes. Something about it tasted sour to him, his tongue held tight and bitten between his teeth. All his own scars were inside him and they all had one name.

“You probably think I’m a klutz,” Yuugi said, with a sheepish smile, sliding one of the wooden tokens into place around their hive.

“I told you to stop doing that,” Seto said briskly. “I’m not some dumpster for all your insecurities.Youthink you’re a klutz. You have no idea what I think.”

“I - ” Yuugi started, and huffed, with another smile, his chosen defense against causing offense. “Sorry, force of habit - ”

“Forget it. You don’t ever cook for yourself?”

“Duh. Of course I do. And I eat what I make with everyone else. It’s not like I make a pizza for all my friends and just sit there watching them while they eat it,” Yuugi said. “But I like cooking for people. I love… nourishing them. Knowing they’re not going to go to bed hungry or anything, and I can make something for them that makes them feel good.”

Seto tapped a wooden token on the table, under the guise of thinking about the game but really thinking about the kind of friends Yuugi made, and how he made them. Jounouchi. Honda. Atem. Himself.

“Did you ever cook for Atem?” he said, because he couldn’t help it, and braced against the soft look that came his way, with a default smile, a pre-emptivelook, I’m fine. this didn’t hurt mesmile.

“Yeah,” Yuugi said.“I did.”

Like what? Did he like it? Did he help cook or did he just watch? Just the two of you or with everyone else? Tell me. What did you nourish him with? What do you think he’s eating now? I ate pomegranates when I was there. Bread and honey and figs and garlic and beer. Nothing I ate makes me spend six months with the living and six months with the dead so instead I trade off day and night. Sometimes I leave for a few minutes, mid-afternoon, and I can hear my own name clattering through me as Mokuba calls me back. Seto kept all these comments to himself. There was only so greedy he could get with Yuugi’s grief; only so much he could share of his own.

He slid his wooden token into place around the honeycomb of pieces. Yuugi swiftly countered. Seto lapsed back into thought.

Yuugi took a quiet slurp of his iced tea, gave it a shake, rattling the ice until it settled, and took another, watching ducks paddle into the reeds at the edge of the pond and paddle out, a portrait of calm patience. It had taken him some time to get comfortable with Seto’s long silences. In concession, Seto made the effort to shorten them.

It was the kind of day where stepping into the shade made a difference. The air was darker and cooler under the trees and the flowering bushes that lined the park paths, while the rest of the earth baked in a cloudless dry heat. Seto made his move and pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up to his elbows.

“How about I cook for you sometime?” Yuugi said brightly, nudging another wooden token against the others with a single fingertip.

Seto scowled, not at the suggestion but at the way his thoughts splintered apart, like two halves of a wooden log split by an axe. He had no doubt Yuugi would pull out the stops for him, slave and sweat for hours over some seventeen-course feast of modern art finger foods. Or maybe something cozy that made him feel like he was just nineteen instead of nineteen and exhausted. Whatever it was, Yuugi would put in the effort. But.

“No,” he said, and made sure to clarify this refusal before the clouds finished gathering over Yuugi’s face in a dejected overcast grey: “I don’t need one of your scars named after me.”

“I - what?” Yuugi said, flashing him an uneven, sideways smile, and Seto felt a flicker of irritation. Atem would’ve understood immediately. But, in fairness to Yuugi, he was being a little obtuse.

“You have a way of suffering for your friends,” he explained. “And I think part of you likes it.”

Yuugi straightened up in his seat, suddenly electric.

“What the heck? It’s just cooking,” he said, with a flash of lightning in his violet eyes. “You’re reading into this way too much. I cook because it’s fun and artistic and I like feeding people, not because I like… self-flagellating or something. Seriously,you can’t just spout off - ”

“Youmisunderstandme,”Seto countered. “There’s no reason to… hurt yourself on my behalf. If you want to eat together, I’d rather go to that kitschy little ice cream place down the block and get a f*cking waffle cone. I don’t want you unable to duel because you burned your hand trying to pan-fry a steak for me.”

Yuugi opened his mouth, brows furrowing together… and scoffed, a surprisingly affectionate sound. He rolled his eyes around the park, his gaze swinging across the sunlit grass, and looked back at Seto, his cheeks plumping with the energy of his smile.

Seto bristled.

"What?" he snapped.

"Nothing. You're so - nothing. Don't worry about it," Yuugi said, with a fluttering, feather-light laugh, as the skin under Seto's eyes burned with worry. "Listen. First of all, I’ve mastered the art of the pan-fried steak, and you should have one. Second of all, what makes you think you’re not someone worth suffering for?”

Seto snorted, masking his inwards flinch. Mokuba already suffered enough, thank you. And for what? A ghost of a brother. A black hole, a perpetual collapsing. Things went in and they crossed the event horizon and the pressure squeezed them for eternity without ever letting them reach the center and nothing ever came back out, as much as it wanted to. The scientific term for such distortion of effort, stretched to an immeasurable length without breaking, was spaghettification. Even a black hole needs to eat!

He slid one of his tokens back and forth with his fingertip, short, scraping jerks of wood against wood, thinking, performing a surgical cut on the question, slicing out the verb: what make you think you're not someone worth [ ] for? An excision of purpose: what makes you think you're not someone worth [ ] [ ]?

No, I am, he thought. Someone worth.

“Direct attack on my life points,” he muttered.

“Yeah, you also got me pretty good,” Yuugi chuffed. “Let’s call it even. But relax. It’s just cooking. I love the process, and I love the result, and I love doing stuff for my friends. It’s not some big… metaphorical… symbol of something. This - “ he lifted his mittened hand - "doesn’t mean anything except I mishandled a knife. It’s not like… you and Duel Disks.”

But Seto also loved the process and the result and more than once he’d injured himself, machining parts or fiddling with wires that, like all wild living things, bit back in fear of being touched. He splayed his hand over the table, watching blood drip onto his work station, knowing he should get up, clean it, bandage it. But it was only two in the morning and there was work to do.

“The Duel Disk is a symbol of Kaiba Corp’s future,” he said, closing his hand into a fist. "I know what you’ve done for your friends. I’ve seen it. Doesn’t that merit the same… mythology?”

Yuugi gave him a funny look, half skeptical, half knowing.

“That’s nice of you, thank you,” he said, and an uncomfortable blush crawled up Seto’s neck. Sometimes he did understand. “Are you sure you don’t want me to cook for you?”

Seto opened his mouth, closed it, folded his arms on the table. He felt like he was trying to explain the feeling of the color blue, or the arguments for why numbers do or don’t exist, or what it was like to dream. Well, you see, the last time I saw Atem, he told me - correction: the last time as in the most recent link in a chain of time, not the last time as in the end of the line, because he also told me we’d see each other again - he told me to enjoy this, and you know me, I never do what I’m told. And I can’t do what he told me to do because he was my friend and he's gone, and if friendship is just getting caught in a great sticky web of small cuts and large cuts and burns and bruises and tears and suffering because they’re here and suffering because they’re not, then just go ahead and let the spider drink me up and toss what’s left of me in the dirt. I am so sick and tired of pain. Mine. Yours. Ours. Is there no better proof of love than suffering?

But he did enjoy these afternoons. He was enjoying the process of makingthis:he had more with Yuugi now than he ever had before.

He reached across the table and took Yuugi’s bandaged hand between his own hands, running his thumb carefully over the inked warning. Yuugi’s hand relaxed in his. Yes, Yuugi was wrong. It was the same as Duel Disks. Every act of creation was an act of power but also an act of presence: I am here. What difference was there between a hologram of a dragon and a steaming bowl of soup? Both nourished something. Both were an answer to hunger. Discovering an emptiness and filling it.

“Okay,” he said, releasing Yuugi’s hand. “Alright. Cook for me.”

“Yeah?!” Yuugi said, with rising excitement, beaming. “What should I make? What do you like?”

“Make me a steak,” Seto said, smiling. It felt good to see Yuugi smile. His hypothesis neatly undermined. See? It’s not all damage. “No. Surprise me.”