Chapter Text
1.
When the girl loser goes away for a week to do what Kaiba overhears is "dancing," he assumes it's around a pole.
But his phone whistles in class a day later, and it's a passport alert, and she's in Seoul, and this explains why the dog isn't asking him to break a twenty into singles.
Yugi shoots Kaiba's phone a concerned look.
He's his sickly-sweet self, shy and faintly worried about people who want nothing to do with him, and Kaiba has to bite down a grunt and make a show of sliding his phone into his pocket so that Ms. Chono can make a show of pretending not to notice it.
Yugi must've picked up on this ridiculously obvious arrangement by now.
Everyone else has - and Yugi is considerably smarter than every single one of these losers, but school district lines have been unkind to him.
But then again, no one in this school is kind.
"Motou!" Chono snaps, and Yugi tares his eyes away from Kaiba and snaps at attention, his back so straight that for a moment Kaiba thinks Chono triggered another episode and Yugi is about to whip out his duel-disk and challenge a professional educator to card games in the middle of class since that's how he seems to think the world works.
Not that Kaiba disagrees.
But no.
There's a tremor in Yugi's knuckles, and he bites dead skin off his lips as if he's guilty of something despicable.
"Does my class bore you, Motou?" Chono coos, her voice laced with hurt. "Ah, no, I understand why you won't pay attention, now that you're standing and I can see you behind Katsuya. Can you see the board now?"
They're red and glossy now, Yugi's lips.
The back row sniggers.
The dog looks like he is about to whip out his fists and challenge a processional educator to a fistfight in the middle of class since that's how Katsuya thinks the world works.
Which is not entirely wrong, either.
"I think it's in the best interest of your education that you stand so you can see better," she smiles, all sunflowers and honey, "don't you?"
"N-no-"
"No? There are only so many ways I can accommodate you, Motou, unless you didn't hear me say it's for your education? Oh dear, hearing too..? Why don't you sit up front, then."
He would look like this, when Kaiba's Blue Eyes would wipe the last of his pathetic lifepoints, except... more of this , like a king deposed and a celebrity shunned and a man humiliated before millions.
Yugi gingerly collects his things and brings them to the only empty seat in the front row, between two massive bullies, though Kaiba supposes there is no seat in this class that isn't next to a bully three times Yugi's size.
This place really is the worst, and Kaiba chose it for this exact reason. It's amazing what this school would let him get away with in exchange for some Botox and a few misused donations. Just two years ago, he brought bodyguards in children's uniforms and nearly murdered another student for a trading card. Which, in hindsight, is about as bad of a decision as his fashion choices at the time.
It's a good thing Kaiba doesn't dwell on the past, else the purge he wrought onto that unfortunate hair color and all records of it would've been for nought.
"No, no," Chono shakes her head at Yugi who is contemplating if his natural instinct to run away would apply in this situation. "That's no good, Motou. Sit at the teacher's desk, it's much closer, don't you think?"
Humiliation is a good look for Yugi. An angry flush across his cheeks is even better.
And, if Yugi chose this particular moment to violate the dresscode with his obscene shoulders he likes to expose to mess with Kaiba's game strategy, well, he wouldn't mind that.
...Kaiba takes his phone out again and habitually refreshes World DM rankings. His teeth grind and he feels a migraine coming on when he sees that he is, in fact, still ranked #2.
Damn.
All the way from the teacher's desk, Yugi sneaks his phone another concerned look.
2.
So the girl is gone, and there is a calculus exam on Friday.
Kaiba sips his coffee and runs his multibillion-dollar company from his phone between rounds of Candy Crush during lunch break at his high school where things like math are a catastrophe, and the girl is gone, and there is a calculus exam on Friday.
Kaiba has an alert set up for their grades, too.
They are so fucked, and they don't even know it.
But his stocks are doing well.
Virtual Reality industry is blooming.
And KaibaLand is still being built according to its usual vague and confusing timeline.
Kaiba's got two minutes left until his next life, because despite what everyone thinks, starving on the streets between orphanages and telling his little brother he should have the last crackers - no, really, he's not even hungry - leaves a bit of a lasting impression. Money is for important things like Kaiba Corp and KaibaLand and Seto Kaiba, or completely frivolous things like sports cars, or the bare essentials like the Blue Eyes White Jet.
Money is not for Candy Crush lives, big brother, this is getting out of hand, please stop, we're all getting concerned.
So Kaiba suffers the remaining one minute and forty one seconds for Mokuba, and listens.
"Don't worry guys, Yug got this."
Yugi is left in charge of math as the most competent member of the loser squad, so they all stay inside for lunch instead of practicing Satanism on the roof. It really depends on the day of the week for them.
Yugi is staring at the textbook like it kidnapped his friends, or stole their souls, or turned them to stone (again, day of the week type of deal), and he isn't exactly the avatar of optimism right now.
But he huffs, and the single curl on his forehead becomes airborne - and maybe his split personality can save him - but no, the curl lands back and stabs him in the eye.
Katsuya is vocal about his plans for remedial school.
Kaiba restarts the level.
They try for a time equivalent of one Candy Crush life, with bright ideas like "this curve looks like a dick," and Yugi is getting shiftier by the minute about his discreet little stares he sends Kaiba's way. They're gauging stares, good-natured and subtle things only Yugi sends him right before the world folds into a neat box where Kaiba has a name for everything he feels, and there's nothing but the two of them, and their decks, and their minds, and peppermint tang of their rivalry, and when Kaiba loses and shakes Yugi's dainty hand only the smell of his sweat and mint on his breath stops him from trying to crush it.
But this isn't a "did you get another Blue Eyes, please no" kind of stare.
It's the kind of stare that's looking for math help.
No.
Kaiba can't think of a single instance where the curve would look like a penis in the problems from this textbook which he solved two summers ago two years in advance in his spare time in case he would be too busy to do it before graduation.
No, he is too busy to help them now. Or ever.
Kaiba fishes the depths of his pockets for headphones and plugs them in before Yugi has a chance to get up and ask.
3.
Kaiba's phone rings, but he knows it will before it does because Yugi's twitter is his homepage and Yugi's facebook is his first bookmark. And so it naturally follows that he hacked into Yugi's phone ages ago. And his email. And the security cameras in the game shop.
He also owns the ice-cream truck that parks across the street from Yugi's bedroom every night.
There is ice-cream in it.
Kaiba picks up after a respectful third ring.
"What," he says.
"Hey, Kaiba-kun!" There's a pause, as if Yugi's waiting for Kaiba to say something. When nothing comes, his voice wavers. "Um, so. I was wondering, since you're stalking my friends, do you happen to know where Tristan is? He's got my math homework but he's not picking up his phone and I'm worried."
"I couldn't care less about your loser friend. The government isn't spying on you, Yugi, get over yourself," Kaiba snaps and pulls up the GPS tracker he has on Honda's phone.
Honda is both at home and without any calls from Yugi.
A ploy? Perhaps. But if Yugi suspects Kaiba is tracking him then he also knows Kaiba will deny it, and if he knows that Kaiba knows that he knows than he wouldn't say what he said, and if he doesn't know then he will know that Kaiba knows if he sees that Honda never got any calls, and if he knows that-
God damn it, this isn't a duel!
"Oh," Yugi says, a bit put off, but when he speaks again he sounds rehearsed. "Wait," there's a random mashing of fingers against the screen, entirely off-key for it to be any real notification, "Tristan just texted me."
One look at the tracker, and 'Tristan' definitely did not just text him.
"He says he's sick and can't come. But, um. I really need to figure out math? So I was wondering-"
"Google the answers," Kaiba says and imagines Yugi wince an indignant wince of a valiant champion of academic integrity.
"How will that help?" Yugi says stiffly but doesn't preach when he's begging. "There's an exam and, well, honestly, we could all use a bit of help, but Jou will just make you angry before we get anything done, so I was thinking maybe you can help me and then I could-"
"I'm busy," Kaiba snaps and almost hangs up.
"Wait! Don't hang up! Um. I wouldn't ask if I thought you were busy, but you were playing on your phone at school and you don't do that unless everything is going well with the company - which is really great! I'm so happy for you! But... I don't know how else to ask. Please help?"
"Don't you have a mental disorder for this exact purpose?" Kaiba grits.
There is a pause on the other end.
"I asked him. He complained that the graphs aren't triangular."
When Yugi bows his way into Kaiba's house half an hour later, wheeling his dirty bike across polished marble, he further elaborates that the 'spirit' suggested that the answer must be always be three, seven, or the surface area of a pyramid.
It isn't often that Kaiba hears about him from Yugi. He just sort of shows up - and then Kaiba pretends he doesn't - and that Yugi is a singular being with a PhD in drama camp.
It'd an unspoken rule. It's a taboo he had a fair hand in orchestrating and regretted the moment he realized how much he craves scraps of information and little pinholes into Yugi's insanity.
A better man would've been concerned for Yugi's wellbeing, a smarter man would've been worried about his own safety - there is, after all, an undiagnosed and vaguely homicidal tiny man in Kaiba's house who should probably be on all sorts of medication - but Kaiba is a better and a smarter man than literally anyone he'd ever met so he figures he can do whatever the hell he wants and no one is in a position to tell him any better.
Right now, for example, he wants to get Yugi the hell out of his house as soon as possible, and to take his insanity out of Kaiba's hungry reach before his sticky fingers get the better of him and he asks after what is nothing more tangible than an imaginary friend.
"He's doing fine," Yugi beams and trots after Kaiba into the staff kitchen. "A bit down lately, but he's fine."
He addresses a high stool far more gracefully than he would've a year ago, and it's subtle things like this that remind Kaiba that Yugi too is coming into his own, something life had forced on Kaiba years ahead of them, all of them, and they are nothing at all like Kaiba, and teaching even one of them trivial things like math is unbecoming.
Still, the losers persist.
"I didn't ask."
"Jou's doing fine, too," Yugi dumps his backpack out on the granite.
"Didn't ask, and," Kaiba adds as an afterthought, leaning against cabinet and watching Yugi uncrumple crumpled notes, "he'll get the bill in the mail, for damaging KaibaCorp assets."
There is no damage. As far as Kaiba knows, Katsuya's been respecting the temporary restraining order that's about to get tossed any day now because 'his existence drives down my stock prices' is not a valid reason to grant a permanent one.
But Yugi isn't bluffing him down across a duelling arena, and at times he's not he's about as subtle as a pink diary. There is no damage Kaiba knows about .
Yet.
There's a caffeine spasm in his left eye.
Yugi scratches the back of his head.
"So. Um. Math?"
"You brought your deck," Kaiba nods his chin at Yugi's hip where, beneath a stripe of delicate skin, his deck glistens.
"I'm weak," Yugi flusters, "and I figured you guys would get along better if I brought cards. He doesn't... do well without cards. But at least you two have that in common, cards I mean, um, so... I'll just... be over there."
And then he narrows his eyes before Kaiba has a chance to tell him fuck no , pushes his fringe back, and at once he's the other one, the parasite.
"Kaiba," the asshole says and adjusts his posture to pretend he didn't almost fall out of the chair. "Yo."
He is abnormally awkward about his transition this time around, and Kaiba could swear he hears him cuss Yugi under his breath. Yugi's much softer in comparison, but it's apples to grapes from a grapple tree, and he forgets sometimes that Yugi is an asshole in his own right.
"Why are you here," Kaiba grits his teeth. "Did calculus threaten the world or something? Go duel it somewhere else."
"My point exactly," he huffs and folds his arms. He's staring at something at his side, not at Kaiba, and whatever he sees there is something cheeky and trying because he ends up rolling his eyes at it.
"Do you even need help."
"Mn," he idles and inspects his nails. "Perhaps. Anzu said she'll help us over the internet. I'd risk a lower grade, if it was my decision."
"Then what the hell is this."
"A setup," not-Yugi drones lazily and clicks his tongue, "I should think. Partner had one of his ideas again."
They stare at each other for a tense moment, and Kaiba considers calling security, and the jackass considers slipping him some LSD for his smoke-and-mirror mind-fuckery.
"Wanna play cards?"
"I don't know, do I?" Kaiba snaps and starts for the entrance hall that can perhaps fit a half-sized holo-field. It's raining outside, and the nearest duelling room is deeper in the house than Kaiba cares to have him.
"Kitchen's fine."
"All those holo developers," Kaiba hisses, "did not die on the cross for you to play cards on a table ."
The PR for that one was a nightmare, he recalls and pushes through kitchen doors, and he doesn't think about it again until Dark Magician Girl boops his Blue Eyes on the nose and takes his single remaining lifepoint.
"This prototype is pretty cool," the jackass gloats after he'd collected his cards and has a chance to appreciate the new duelling system. The field brackets fly back and clip under the deck slot, and Kaiba watches him brace himself for the usual impact and then sway off-balance when the returning brackets don't punch. "Oh, that's new."
It's rated G, and Kaiba convinced the board that it's to expand the market to pre-teens, and not at all because the internet thinks Seto Kaiba likes to punch small children in the deck.
He doesn't tell his triumphant opponent to submit a survey since he's essentially three feet tall and like ten, and fits right into the target market.
"And the hologram rigs are cool, even if you made everything blue. Well done."
"Do not," Kaiba squeezes his good-game hand and doesn't bother to hide his resentment, "patronize my work. If you wanted to change the development color, you should've bet for it."
"I'm not patronizing you, I'm congratulating your new thing," he huffs peppermint and his hand lingers between Kaiba's fingers. "And I don't like betting. I mean I do, when it's appropriate. But some people play games for fun, Kaiba. You should try it sometime."
"You even suck at gossip," Kaiba says because that's what the school whispers behind his back when he's there to hear it.
"That's old gossip. New gossip is that you need to get laid. But it's school, so no one important caught wind of it, and I won't repeat it."
"Whatever. Best of three?"
The 'spirit' makes a face. "Math. Not that I mind you explaining the mystery of what 'Monster Reborn' does for ten minutes, but I have to learn something today."
He looks frustrated, more with himself than with Kaiba, and Kaiba grits his teeth again. For a time, their duels were fury against zeal, but Kaiba hardly ever sees as much as a spark of that old vicious fire anymore. It's a punch to the gut, to know that Kaiba is a disappointing partner to a man who tore him down from his throne and started a new chapter in his life. It's a punch when they shake for a game well played, and it's toothache every time someone as much as breathes Yugi's name in his presence.
The dental bills alone are outrageous, and sometimes Kaiba considers charging them to the Motou residence.
By the time he convinces 'the spirit of a pyramid' that the graphs do not behave like pyramids, they've had two more card matches and a bonus screaming match about destiny, and how they managed to derive that one from calculus is still beyond Kaiba.
"So. It doesn't look like Partner's coming back anytime soon," not-Yugi says causally, but his body language is anything but. It's in the little things. His pencil keeps snapping, his lead rolls away, he can't find the right notes. He is in no way fumbling, graceful about the stationary as if it's the school supplies that are in the wrong, but he's jumpier and vary, and Kaiba can't think of anything that would set him off except himself.
"Well," Kaiba says and mentally berates himself for going along with this nonsense, "where is he?"
"In his Soul Room, playing Nintendo."
...Kaiba sorely regrets ever going after the fourth Blue Eyes card and subsequently meeting this guy as punishment for his shameful actions.
"I know, right," the 'spirit' rolls his eyes, oblivious to Kaiba's eternal struggle. "Lame. He's so nerdy, can you believe him? Anyway, we're alone," which is alien to him, and the news are alien to Kaiba because it never once crossed his mind that they weren't. "And I'm thinking he's meddling again, so heads up."
"Meddling," Kaiba repeats, his voice flat.
He eyes Yugi's crumpled math notes. If one of them is a love note, then it's time to expand KaibaCorp to the moon.
"I checked those," Yugi (or rather, Yugi's mental illness) says and shoots the papers a meaningful stare, and he's in Kiaba's head again, how the fuck does he do that. "Thank the Gods, no. But I demand a gentleman's agreement, Kaiba."
"Never happened," Kaiba agrees gladly, and notices that Yugi's bare shoulders have a pleasant curve to them underneath the drapery of his school jacket.
God damn it.
He pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to banish the thought. No wonder this guy couldn't handle a pencil.
"There you go," the jackass sounds pleased and distraught at the same time. "Misery loves company, Kaiba."
And then his jackass eyes go wide and he falters.
"Not that I'm shutting you down!" he adds quickly. "Or trying to be insensitive. Sorry. Wanna play cards?"
Shutting him down - since when was this - what .
"Why is this happening," Kaiba grits from behind his hand.
"Because Yugi thinks we could work, like togeth-"
"That was a rhetorical question! I'd like to see your god cards help you when I'm tossing you out if you ever finish that sentence!"
He's standing now, his fists clenched and his molars grinding, and he thinks this is it, this is the day Seto Kaiba kills someone without cards over something that has nothing to do with cards. He won't, actually - he knows he won't. Yugi is just one sharply-budded flower in a vast bouquet of crazy, but he is Kaiba's precious rival and one of very few men whom Kaiba begrudgingly respects.
But clock him in the jaw he just might. Over what, Kaiba isn't entirely sure, except he's furious over something which he prefers to keep buried, and so his next course of action is to clock the jackass in the jaw.
He doesn't. Yet.
"Wow," the said jackass folds his arms across his chest and adopts a sour face. "Now you're shutting me down. Rude."
He's bluffing. He has to be bluffing, else Kaiba has to reset to defaults and actually throw him out on the street for lack of better options.
He measures Kaiba with his narrow eyes. It takes him a while to swipe up Kaiba's looming body, toes to head, but when he finishes he's got his game face on.
"Sit," he demands.
"Get out."
"Hn," he grins, and there is a spark of malice in his eyes. "Rock paper scissors."
"What."
"Best of one. I win, you sit down. You win - I don't know, whatever you think is the equivalent."
Kiaba bets Yugi gets the hell out of his house and, of course, loses.
So he sits at the nearest stool and folds his arms, and not-Yugi starts for him in a determined stride, and then grabs at Kaiba's face, and then kisses him, and then gets clocked in the jaw for it.
"Well. Okay," the supposed pharaoh wipes his mouth, turns on his heel to shove his things into his backpack, and gets the hell out of Kaiba's house.