365 Days of Starshipping (Part 2)

Penguin Exhibit

11/11/19

"Whoa!~ Look at them dive for those little fish, they look cool!" Judai cheered, doing exactly what he'd been teasing Yusei about earlier and leaning awfully close to the glass like he was ready to press his face against it. He probably would've, to be honest, if it weren't for the fact that that would mean he couldn't see all the penguins that were out and about and currently in the middle of getting fed; as it turned out, their feeding time was pretty early in the morning for this aquarium, so they'd just happened to stumble across them by pure luck from choosing to see the polar section of the place first. Plus, since they were inside the wing and not up on the outside watching, they got a clear view of all the penguins that dove down to get the food that dropped, which people up top wouldn't get to see.

"They're pretty fast in the water," Yusei noted, which prompted Judai to glance over at him for a second before seeing his face and grinning. He had that analytical look again, that one of curiosity and wanting to learn everything and anything about something - Judai was willing to bet that he was trying to figure out just how they worked purely from watching them swim around and dive.

I should probably take extra time reading all the plaques, Judai suddenly realized, I may just glance over them but he probably is soaking them up and actually learning the stuff. Hopefully I haven't been rushing him...

Ah well, at least now he could keep it in mind when the time came for them to continue onward.

Looking back to the penguins, Judai felt a an inkling of an idea form in his head so he paused to really look at them, trying to figure out what it was his brain was trying to tell him. It took a minute or two, but suddenly he realized that these penguins were northern rockhopper penguins, and that their fur was spiked and colored black with yellow highlights.

"Oh my gods, Yusei," Judai started, catching the other's attention easily and smirking, "Yusei, we've found your brethren. Look at their colors! And they've even got spike-y hair off to the side like you, too!"

The pained look of realization he got in return was absolutely beautiful and only made his smirk grow wider as Yusei's hand twitched in his grip while the other one had nothing holding it back from allowing him to face-palm.

"Aw come on, at least they're cool like you are," Judai stated, nudging him lightly in the side and letting his smirk fade into a lighter smile, "I once met a Nightmare Penguin duel spirit and man, that guy was not cool at all - in fact, I'd say that having to work with that guy was a nightmare."

"...Nice one," Yusei sighed, accepting his fate for now and shaking his head slightly in exasperation, "Please tell me that he wasn't also one of these guys, though."

"Naw don't worry, he may look a little like them but he's got blue fur and the yellow parts on him look more like super big eyebrows than hair," Judai assured, leaning up a pecking his cheek now that a hand wasn't blocking it, "Regardless of that though, no matter what you get compared to you will always be cooler."

"That's a little bit of a stretch, don't you think?"

"...You still don't realize just how much of a bad-ass you look like, do you? I've told you this how many times now?"

"Many, but I still don't really see it," Yusei said, looking off to the side a bit in embarrassment about the topic but managing to compose himself rather quickly again, "Anyway, it looks like they're pretty much done feeding them for now. Ready for the next part?"

"Yup! Let's go!" Judai chirped, letting him drop the conversation for now - one day though, one day, Judai would manage to get it through his thick, gear-filled skull that he was not just good-looking (a severe understatement in his opinion, but really all he could hope for Yusei accepting at this point) but also super cool as well as a whole. There was a reason the twins looked up to him so much, and it wasn't just because they thought of him as an older brother or as a fellow signer.

Yusei had showed him recordings of some of his roughest duels from the WRGP, mainly because he wanted to prove a point about how much destruction solid vision could actually cause if too much duel energy got pumped into it but also because he just... wanted Judai to see the kinds of stuff he'd gone through. It was his own way of sharing his story and he ended up looking away half the time, hand unconsciously clenching tightly around Judai's, but Judai didn't say a single word about it and simply stayed next to him as support, watching the videos closely; there was so much destruction of the track that he wasn't even sure how he was still navigating it, but Yusei was Yusei and apparently god-like at maneuvering his bike - the shit he pulled while somehow not crashing and dying was literally insane and if Judai's already massive respect for his driving skills skyrocketed even higher.

Yusei was not kidding when he said he was a daredevil, not at all. Judai would swear by it until the day he died, Yusei was an absolute bad-ass.

"...So, that's two comparison wins for me and zero for you," Judai teased, making sure to take extra time reading the next plaque they stopped at but also being unable to resist the need to tease his boyfriend.

Yusei raised an eyebrow at him, a determined glint in his eyes, "I'll find something, we've only just started after all."