A/N: Sorry I've not been around recently! I hope this is up to scratch. I thought I'd try something different to my usual 'murder and mutilation' thing, and the prompt was too perfect to miss.

Prompt #56 – Breakfast.

Bakura – he's reading the newspaper as I step bleary eyed and vulnerable into the kitchen. There's a smell of meat sizzling in the air and the window is pushed slightly open, Bakura's bacon-grease fingerprints smeared on the glass. There's a light breeze in the air; the sun is out but it's too early to be warm yet. It's the same as every other morning. And yet – this is the morning when I take a step back. My eyebrow cocks curiously towards the ceiling as I survey our early morning routine. The perfect picture of domestic bliss.

This is the part where I laugh.

This is how a story is structured: first you get the setting, the description. Then you introduce a character; a bit of dialogue and the story begins. You start with the end, usually, to give your reader a satisfying conclusion. Sorry for interrupting the narrative, but this is where I point out that me and Bakura, we're anything but normal. This happy-housewife image I've created? Please. We're anything but.

If you look closer, you see the true story. This is true with most things. Look beyond a little girl's charm and you find an overbearing mother. Inspect your first love, look at me in the eye, and tell me it wasn't some awkward social experiment, a fumble in the dark with an unsatisfying conclusion. Save your 'butterflies in my stomach' bullshit for somebody else.

Bakura – he's reading the newspaper. The thing is, he's reading the obituaries. Looking to see if some poor duelist he hanged-drew- and quartered last week has been identified yet. He had locator cards, and Bakura wanted them. If anybody questioned him, he'd just shrug and smirk that delicious, wicked trademark of his. He'd say, "What do you expect? I'm Bakura. Destroyer of Souls," or some bullshit. I don't listen to half the crap that boy says, I'm too busy looking at him.

That meat smell in the air? It's disgusting. I rarely eat meat, it was a luxury I wasn't granted in my tombkeeper days and I certainly don't plan on taking it up now. Bakura made me eat steak once and I threw up in some back alley, Bakura's cackle mixed with my retching probably the most hideous thing I'd heard in a while. But I digress – Bakura, he loves meat, but he's only cooking some fucking bacon or whatever he found to steal in the corner shop because he knows how much I hate it. Pure torture, I assure you: playful, but – torture. I feel sick just talking about it.

The sweet thing is, he's opened the window because he really is only doing it to be playful, in his own little 'I'm –Bakura-I'm-TheBigBad' way. And yeah, if the smell of burning flesh (because that's all it is, really. Vile) filled the entire house I probably would have thrown up again. And Bakura – the 3,000 year old spirit who murdered some guy last week for a fucking trading card – well, he's just not that cruel. Talk about an oxymoron.

He looks up from his newspaper when I snort in disgust, and the smile he gives me is pretty much the only unnerving thing about this whole facade. He looks – well, he looks Godamn near happy, and it's probably the most frightening thing I've seen in a while.

"They still haven't found that kid. I'm starting to kinda feel bad about it."

"So you should do," I reply, my voice not without sarcasm. It is, after all, Bakura. I like to call his murderous habit a 'quirk'. I'm growing of tired of trying to seem cool and collected in the doorway instead of being on Bakura's lap, catching his bottom lip in between my teeth.

"Mhm. Truly awful," and for some reason he's doing that weird smiling thing again.

"I'm sure his mother is devastated, the poor thing. Shame on you."

"I needed that card."

"You did not need that card!" I sigh, exasperated. The wooden frame is really starting to dig, and the swollen-lipstick red of indented skin is really not my colour. "You were bored. That's all."

"Ah, you got me there. But what's done is done. You cannot change what's happened; don't dwell in the past. Live for the future, my dear Marik!"

When he's done quoting bullshit taken straight from what he calls a 'fucking book of happy fucking bullshit that's escapism in its worst form', and we're both done snorting with laughter, he decides to get up from his chair to come and kiss me. This is a first, and I appear to be much more taken aback than he is. Such a small, little gesture, but – I don't even know what this is. This is a new kind of weird. He's smiling and making an effort to be the affectionate one. Jesus Christ, what did I do to get it this good?

He pulls away from my lips but he's still close enough that I can taste his spice-and-leather breath. Bakura told me once that he eats a lot of 'exotic meat', and I can't tell if he was being disgusting or sexual. Or both, actually, now that I mention it. By this point, the fact that he was the one to kiss me isn't even the weird part. No, what's starting to freak me out is that the majority of his kisses are hard and fast and bruising. This – tender and deep and lingering, this is what freaks me out. I ask him 'what the fuck that was for', and he does that weird... smiling thing again. All teeth and lips, it's fucking weird.

Then his attitude changes again; so fast I get whiplash. He pulls away from me a little, hands still at my waist, and quirks an eyebrow. He looks confused, and this is not a look that often graces Bakura's perfect features. Well – Ryou's features.

This is a kind of endearing trait. At least to me, anyway. Here we have an Egyptian spirit trapped in the body of a small boy and even when his facial expression is like that of a lost, unhappy bunny, his eyes are still the most godamned evil thing I've ever seen. Talk about villain stereotypes.

And Bakura – lost little lamb Bakura, in this moment – says 'I don't know. I guess I just like seeing you in the morning,' and he doesn't even say anything when I'm smiling against his lips a heartbeat later. I may be the fucking bad guy here, but Jesus, I'm still human.

I think people get the wrong villain stereotype. Whoever said Bakura was cruel and heartless and didn't keep attachments? Well – maybe he's a little cruel, but come one, he's avenging the death of 100 members of his family. Give the guy a fucking break.

I think I'm his newest attachment. Not that I'm complaining, here. What started out as a mixture of coalition and repressed sexual desire turned to rough fucking against a wall turned into a breakfast routine.

This is the thing – the real kicker, the real twist to this story – is that we're happy. I think 'how'd you like them apples, Pharaoh,' but then Bakura's feeding me his tongue and I don't really care about the friendship troupe anymore. Hell, I think I stopped caring a while ago. God knows I never liked that stupid card game, but pretending to want revenge has turned out to be a very good way of keeping Bakura around.

The thing is, me and Bakura. You'd think we were chaining each other up and drinking each other's blood or some other weird voodoo shit, but we're not. We make love and murder and heck, we wake up the next morning in each other's arms and we go and eat breakfast.

Being a villain; it's not all bad, really.