Part 1/4 of a little prideshipping comic I did for a gift exchange!! The prompt was just so good I had to keep running with it so it ended up with like 22 pages..so stay tuned!
Let Pinterest choose what to draw (person, thing, flower, fruit, drink) and I added my own stuff but no background cause the brush I used took forever to use when I was rendering Slifer the Sky Dragon (´-ι_-｀)
Can’t stop thinking about a canon AU where Yugi finds out about Kaiba’s “coma” (which appears to actually look more like either catatonia or a disorder of diminished motivation like akinetic mutism) after their duel and feels awful about it, so he goes to visit Mokuba, and Jonouchi insists on going with him out of loyalty/for protection. Mokuba is ofc cagey and not super psyched to see either of them, but he is upfront about Seto’s condition, and mentions that he can’t be by his brother’s side as much as he’d like while he’s working hard to keep the board of KaibaCorp at bay, and it’s not fair because Seto needs the mental stimulation and the company even if he can’t respond at all.
And Yugi ofc is like I mean I could come and see him if you were okay with that, but Mokuba says he doesn’t think that’s a good idea since it was Yugi who put him in this condition in the first place (ouch), and Jonouchi feels so torn up about how sad Yugi looks about that that he’s like uhhh, I could do it. You have the dueling club after school anyways, Yug’, you shouldn’t have to miss out on it. And you and I can always still duel on the weekends.
And Mokuba is like whatever, fine, as long as someone’s there to keep his brother company who isn’t just a nurse. He agrees to pay Jonouchi, too. So Jonouchi starts showing up every day after school to sit with this version of Kaiba that doesn’t move and doesn’t talk. And it’s weird, because of course it is; but if anyone can keep up a conversation by themselves, it’s Jonouchi.
So Jonouchi spends a whole month talking to Kaiba about anything and everything. And the more he comes by, the more alert Kaiba seems to get when he’s there; at least, he follows Jonouchi with his eyes, and that counts for something. Sometimes they “play” games, even if it’s really just Jonouchi playing against himself. Kaiba’s swallow instinct is still intact so they’ve been able to keep him off a feeding tube on a soft foods diet; sometimes Jonouchi helps him eat. Jonouchi can’t help but start to see him as a whole person, to almost feel like they have a rapport. Like they could be friends.
Nobody but Yugi knows about this job of his, though; it felt wrong, somehow, telling anyone else. One day he’s walking to school with Honda, and in a moment of 90s-typical-teenage-boy-ableism, Honda calls Kaiba a vegetable, and Jonouchi just totally blows his lid about it. And Honda is like woah, dude, what the hell? He’s just some rich asshole who hurt Yugi’s grandpa. And Jonouchi doesn’t really have an answer.
He’s not there when Kaiba comes out of whatever state he was in. And just like that, Jonouchi doesn’t ever go back, because there’s no reason to. It was just a job.
From there the events of canon proceed as normal, just with the added layer of Jonouchi having seen Kaiba at his lowest, having sat and talked to him almost every day for a whole month. And the worst part is he’s not even sure if Kaiba’s remembers that he was ever there, or was ever even truly that aware. He assumes Kaiba probably doesn’t know. Kaiba is walking around belittling him during Duelist Kingdom and all Jonouchi can think is I wiped your drool off your face for you, I was sitting with you even when the nurse would come to change your catheter bag, and you’re still talking to me this way just because you can.
He doesn’t want to publicly throw any of that back in Kaiba’s face, though, because it’d be cruel and it’d just be wrong. And also ofc Mokuba keeps shooting him dirty looks, lol. He clearly doesn’t want Jonouchi to say anything about it. Yugi is stressed out about it but also feels bad about potentially saying anything (I have a feeling Yami might not have any such qualms, though….)
And it’s extra good if all along Kaiba does remember Jonouchi being there, but he’s kind of horrified by it and ashamed, especially because Jonouchi was genuinely a calming and grounding presence. And if anything, he can’t help but needle Jonouchi constantly bc he almost wants to see if he’ll crack and say something. He keeps waiting for Jonouchi to prove him right. It feels like the only control he has in the whole situation.
Anyway cue Jonouchi eventually finding out that Kaiba did remember him being there the whole time and it leading to some kind of confrontation. And it really comes down to the innate connection that’s already been formed between them and how uncomfortably intimate it is to have seen and known someone at their most vulnerable
A dumb idea that i have is that all the sports/hobbies in the Yugioh world are actually as dramatic as the card games, we just don't see them because we exclusively follow the POV of game nerds. Like, people that really like Soccer can do superpowered attacks like in Inazuma Eleven, but Yugi doesn't like sports so we don't see that.
Tristan seems pretty boring, but that's because we don't see the motorcycle-related spy thriller that's also one of those deliquent manga he gets involved in off-screen; somehow, it is the missing link that leads directly into 5Ds in the future
Tea goes to the USA and quickly becomes the protagonist of a Josei manga about dancing, with murder, betrayal and yuri undertones, but you need to go buy a diferent magazine to read about that unfortunately
Mokuba is probably the rival character to another protagonist in a anime about either Capumon or computer games in his free time; he's less unhinged than Seto in that role but probably even less likely to admit he has a crush on said protagonist
I’ve been listening to the Yugioh OST recently and whatever 4Kids was doing THEY WERE DOING IT WELL! I love this track so much, it’s so funky! I decided to draw Mokuba vibing with it, because it would’ve been weird to draw Seto when he DOES NOT fuck with the Blue Eyes Toon Dragon T T
titsay
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
tangentwithtanner
kianamaiart
areudirty
