365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

No Interview!

10/17/19

The day of the tournament had finally arrived and Yusei was happy about it for multiple reasons, though one very clear one stood out above the rest of them - it meant that the school week was over for now and his time for a break had finally come. His classes were simple, don't get him wrong, and they didn't require too much effort on his part because he knew most of the concepts already so far, but the workload had jumped an incredible amount over just a week of class and he was left in wondrous horror at just how much there was; all the classes had online pages through the school system, where most of them listed all the assignments that would be due over the quarter, and damn were there a lot of them.

If this was how classes were in college, and Judai was adamant that high school was significantly worse than college both stress-wise and work-wise, then he was really counting his blessings that he never had to experience the public school system. He had a new respect for the twins not coming to him for more help than they did, at least, and he'd already messaged Aki to commiserate with her. They both had heavy workloads, but Aki's were significantly greater purely due to the fact that she was learning entirely new information about everything as opposed to Yusei, who was pretty much breezing through classes and just there for the ride.

On the bright-side, his classmates were all tired Physics and Engineering majors, most of whom were way to busy with coursework and projects to think of anything but school, food, and occasional sleep, so no one gave him any hassle other than one he didn't mind - they'd ask him about some theory or another that they didn't quite understand and he'd had fun explaining it to them and ultimately nerding out over technology. It was an intellectual stimulation that he didn't get much with his coworkers, to be honest, since everyone was (rightly) more focused on fixing the problems and reaching their end goal for their project than exploring theory and research. Even when he got to work on research, which only happened when there weren't any projects he was needed on and that was few times far between, it was always on his own and never with a team that he could really explore the issue with and use as soundboards.

His poor section of the research lab was probably building up dust as it sat unused. Maybe he should do some more while he's essentially on leave...

For now though, there was a tournament to duel in. They were all dressed up in the costumes Judai had made for them, though they did end up using fake attachable wings in the end because there was no way Yusei was going to be able to use his wings yet, even idly, and Judai didn't want to do it without him for some reason, but they were still nice looking and fit in with the rest of the outfit well.

"It's a shame we couldn't do the wings, but we'll probably be able to do it on Halloween at least," Judai said as they finally reached their waiting room for the tournament after signing in, being told that their first match would be a couple duels into the tournament so they had time to waste. There were around a hundred tag-duel teams who'd entered and been accepted, so there'd be roughly three to four duels at a time in the interest of keeping the tournament lasting only a day - it worked to go well into the night for once because of the theme of it being Halloween, so there wasn't much worry about that.

"You still gotta teach me how to use them, don't forget," Yusei reminded him, seeing him lock the door before pulling him down carefully onto the couch inside while minding their costumes and hugging him with a happy sigh.

"How could I forget?" Judai grinned, leaning his head back to look up at him and hugging his arms, "Hey there, handsome."

"Hey yourself, handsome," Yusei replied with a quiet chuckle. He wasted no time in getting as comfortable as possible, Judai turning around to face him while he adjusted their weights better, before kissing him softly and letting out another sigh, "I am so glad I have no classes today."

Judai laughed at that, sending him a sunny smile that just made his mood skyrocket even more, "Now that's something I fully understand. Classes suck, don't they?"

"They really do, though there are some good points about them," Yusei admitted, letting their foreheads press together as they simply smiled happily at each other and leaned on the back of the couch while holding hands, Judai basically sitting in his lap. Luckily the position meant that they didn't have to worry much about their costumes since there wasn't really much getting pressed on them, especially on the wings.

"The good point being free sleep, right?" Judai joked, smiling unashamedly while Yusei merely rolled his eyes in amusement. Suddenly his eyes widened, gripping his hand tighter for a moment as he stated, "Wait a minute! I just realized something, this is the first tournament where they haven't made us do an interview at the very beginning!"

"What...? Wait, you're right, it is the first one," Yusei realized, his own eyes widening slightly too before he grinned brightly and dragged Judai into a fast and hard kiss out of sheer happiness, "Today is just a great day, that's what it is."

"It is... and Yusei, please just... keep the outfits in mind, okay?" Judai replied, giving him a slightly dazed but knowing look as he processed the kiss, licking his lips subconsciously in a way that only served to bring Yusei's full attention to them.

"I will, don't worry," Yusei promised, dragging him promptly into a much softer kiss that slowly deepened as time went on, tongues only starting to wander and brush against each other when they absolutely couldn't stand not doing so anymore.

At least he did end up keeping his promise, though they both ended up needing to straighten their hair a bit afterwards - when all the usual places for their hands to wander weren't permitted, they of course went straight to hair tugging and pulling; it wasn't something they usually did, but after that particular session they'd probably be doing it more often.