Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! GX

Happily Ever After

The icy droplets hit off defined features and the full moon shines down through the trees that move gently in the wind, bathing the former Slifer in an eerie pale glow. The pale disk in the night sky is only partly visible tonight; it is cloudy. In addition to the wind there is the force of the rain upon his slim form, forcing him to pull his trademark jacket tighter around his upper body, holding it together in one clenched hand while the other runs through his untameable brown hair, mussing it up further than it had already been. He knows all too well that he does that sometimes; when he is anxious.

He is vaguely amused, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he genuinely feels anxiety right now; even after all the things he has seen in his twenty one years. His heart is rapidly beating against in his chest, and although he understands this reaction it is nonetheless uncomfortable. It is a sensation which feels somehow familiar and he wonders if he could, if he had a mind to try, link this back to his childhood self's emotions the night before his birthday or every Christmas Eve he enjoyed as a mere boy.

It is totally, completely and utterly different, he has realised, to be a man.

He has come to terms with the truth that he had been a child in a young adult's body for far too long: while his friends matured, grew and thrived around him, he remained trapped in his child's mind, immature. Now that he has at last matured – physically and emotionally – all this has become as clear to him as each single droplet of water that falls from the sky above him now. He has grown up.

His third year at school is over now; he is a young man in the big wide world – as his mother used to refer to it when she described the world of adulthood. Sometimes he truly misses the island where he spent the best three years of his life; the place where he made everlasting friendships and formed close bonds, where his skills improved to excel the norm, where he was thrown unwilling into an alternate dimension adventure that led him to remembering his guardian love, the spirit Yubel.

The place where he met him.

Whenever he thinks about the many momentous treasures he has found and now carries with him, a welcome burden to his heart, it is this friendship that seems to stand out the most, although he knows that every small detail is engraved on his soul – and in the case of Yubel, is literally inside his mind, although she is never unwelcome there.

Duel Academy. That is where he and the world famous pro-duellist, Jesse Andersen, first met.

Now that he thinks about it, up until the age of perhaps twenty, their relationship was borderline romantic anyway. The touches between them that grew steadily once Jesse – about a year after Jaden's return to this world – became more or less at ease with the knowledge that Yubel and Jaden were one, they were too frequent and too lingering to simply be the touches of close friends.

Jaden knows that the two of them were twenty before they finally came to terms with and admitted their feelings for one another; even then, it took a further two weeks for anything much to occur between the two.

Jaden has kept in touch, for the most part, with all his friends from Duel Academy; some he merely talks with online, and others he tries to meet as regularly as he can. At the age of twenty one, he is still little more than a traveller. He has not yet found his place in this world, although he knows that, with attention to detail and the help of Yubel, he will find it. As it is he travels around and helps those who are in need with their duelling or to make connections with their own spirits, whether that person is technically gifted or not.

The talented young duellist is always busy, preferring to be on the move to sitting still, but he makes enough time to regularly visit his boyfriend and lover.

They are lovers now in the technical sense, although they made that specific step only three months ago, neither one being ready beforehand. It had taken many months for them both to be one hundred per cent comfortable with the topic of having sex, and a further few weeks for them to obtain the courage to physically try it out.

Now they both understand why no-one ever forgets their first time. As with most young lovers, their movements had been clumsy at first, a sure sign of inexperience, but gradually they got the hang of it, through many sessions over the period of almost three months.

Jaden had had to leave, to travel to help someone who needed help to connect with a card he had once lost and had reacquired. It had taken two weeks, travel time included, for him to arrive 'home'.

This is not his technical home, because in the literal sense of the world he does not have one. He is a traveller. However, Jesse's small apartment feels like a home ought to, and perhaps one day he might be able to call it that. The two still do not live together, and both object to the idea as it is presently; Jaden because he is travelling so often, Jesse because he is still a little too shy. It honestly does surprise Jaden to realise that Jesse, who is nearly as naturally confident as he is, can be very shy when it comes to romance and pleasures of the flesh. And of course, Jaden will not force his lover into anything. He knows that it is too soon, as it is, himself.

Now, when the wind picks up a little, becoming harsh and raw, the duellist shivers a little and frowns as he realises that his lover is, in fact, almost ten minutes late, and that the apartment is not exactly within walking distance; he does not have the money, after paying his travelling expenses, to get a taxi, either, and he has always harboured an unusual distaste for buses.

This is the first time in two weeks he will be seeing his lover. It could have been two days earlier, but Jaden was unable to resist paying a visit to his oldest friend, Syrus Truesdale, whose new house in Domino City was on the way. He smiles a little to himself, lowering his head to keep the worst of the icy rain and the bitter wind out of his face; maybe he and Jesse can take a short trip to the West soon to see some of their friends. Alexis lives in the West, as do Blair and sometimes Aster Phoenix, who has a holiday home there which he regularly visits. Perhaps when the two have enough cash between them, and enough time, they will take a longer detour to Australia to see Jim. Maybe a holiday to the United States to visit Axel, or to England to visit the studying Chazz...

Jaden's thoughts of the many potential visits he can make are interrupted when he feels a hand on his shoulder, causing him to jump slightly, involuntarily. He realises that he must have been so deep in thought that he did not actually notice his best friend and lover park the car twenty metres back and come up behind him. Or maybe the other man was just feeling playful and snuck up on him deliberately. He'll find out later.

He smirks at the other man playfully; sooner or later, he'll get Jesse back for that. Maybe, if he asks her nicely, Yubel will help him come up with another devious scheme to embarrass poor Jesse. Then, naturally, he will make it up to him when they are alone.

"Welcome back, Jay" Jesse smiles gently.

Jaden nods, a slow grin spreading across his face, as he opens his arms and lets his grin wider as the other willingly steps into his embrace. He folds his hands together across the small of Jesse's back, lightly touching that hollow centre which seems almost vulnerable on a grown man. He feels Jesse's hands at the same point on his own back and he unconsciously leans back a little into the touch; he has a tender spot there.

The rain continues to assault the earth it falls onto and everything that blocks its path to the soil and concrete, including the two young men who stand with their arms around one another and their heads inclined towards each other, oblivious to everything that is not the person in their arms.

And in the rain, their eyes meet, and without any words needing to be spoken, their lips meet and their arms tighten around each other, and they are connected physically as well as emotionally. Later, they will laugh at how corny and clichéd it seems to stand kissing in the rain after two weeks apart, and they will make jokes about it with each other for years to come.

Because they really will spend years together. And when they have been together so long that it no longer seems possible that their time together will come to an end, they will laugh at the clichéd idea, equally as putrid as kissing in the rain, that they will live happily ever after.

Please R&R