Title: Dressing Down
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.
Rating: M
Summary: They go to the hotel to discuss the finer points of their partnership, or at the very least, to uncover the most exploitable parts the other's personality. That isn't what ends up happening. Thiefshipping.
A/N: Messing with the Battle City time line a bit, giving Malik a hotel room and assuming that Bakura and Malik go back to it after their initial meeting and before the arm-stabby-business.
Thanks to: Budiamond and Fiver for betaing. Rinbo for the inspiration.

—

"Why do you dress like that?"

Bakura leans against the wall of Malik's hotel room, an hour after they met in the alley. Malik, a few steps ahead, facing away and bending over to turn on a lamp, stiffens a bit awkwardly at the question, and pulls his short lavender top down in back. When he turns around, though, his back is straight, his head is up, and his eyes are narrowed.

"What kind of question is that?" he asks. His eyes flick up and down Bakura's frame, and the last syllable is pronounced with a carefully-measured amount of disdain. Bakura smirks.

"I, for example, am dressed this way because my host has bigger things to worry about than finding fashionable t-shirts. Me, for instance." He grins, self-satisfied. "You, it would seem, also have more important things to concern yourself with. And yet you're wearing makeup, enough jewelery to ballast your ship, and a shirt I can only describe as...silky. So I repeat, why do you dress like that?"

There's a pause before Malik answers, but when he does, he's wearing a smirk every bit as calculating as Bakura's.

"As I understand it," Malik begins, "you're some sort of immortal, parasitic spirit, tirelessly searching for items bearing the world's most dangerous magic, seeking to harness a dark power that could destroy life on this planet as we know it." He leans a gold-sheathed forearm against the hotel desk, projecting nonchalance from every pore. "And with such motives, I highly doubt you're honestly curious about my fashion choices. Therefore, I can only conclude you're asking personal questions to try to unsettle me, make me more manipulable in the discussion we're about to have."

"Awfully perceptive," says Bakura, dryly.

"Awfully transparent," Malik replies.

Bakura grins and takes a step away from the door, toward Malik, who pulls the hardwood chair away from the desk he's leaning on, swings a leg over, and sits down, backwards. He motions for Bakura to sit on the bed across from him. Bakura considers not complying, just to be irritating, but dismisses the action as somewhat juvenile. After all, he is an immortal spirit in search of a dark force of ultimate power. Must keep up appearances.

He can think of better ways to bother Malik anyway.

Malik has his elbows on the back of the chair, chin resting in his hands, so the golden cuffs on his forearms border the golden choker around his neck. His chest is half-behind this perfect metal shield, and he couldn't look more unimpressed if he tried.

...It's rather attractive, actually.

Bakura taps a finger to his lips. "On the other hand, I think I already know why you dress like that."

"Oh do you." Malik quirks an eyebrow. "Enlighten me."

Bakura takes on a look of false concern. "Are you sure? You were so worried about me manipulating you..."

"Nothing of the sort. I'm sure your opinions will be very informative." Malik's face is a mask of carefully constructed mildness, his tone sickeningly earnest. If he hadn't known better, Bakura would almost have thought he was telling the truth.

"Patronizing little brat," Bakura mutters.

Malik grins.

"Alright," Bakura sighs, mock-resigned. "If you're sure it won't..." -he hooks a finger into one of the chains on Malik's shirt- "bother you." His own grin is rather more fanged than Malik's.

Malik's hand jerks almost imperceptibly under his chin, as if he's restraining himself from swatting Bakura's finger away. Instead he just slowly looks down it, and then slowly back up, until he meets Bakura's gaze.

Malik's eyes are worryingly knowing.

"I'm waiting," he says evenly. Bakura clears his throat artistically, and Malik rolls his eyes.

"I think..." says Bakura, "I think you dress like for the same reason you fight through an army of mind-slaves. You like a shield between yourself and the outside world, a shield so fastidiously constructed that anyone would have to be as intelligent and conniving and controlling as you to break through it. You wipe minds perfectly clean so the outside world sees the shell instead of your control. You dress like this so they see the clothes and the makeup and the jewelery instead of you. The discipline and self-control I'm sure it takes to keep yourself looking the way you do...I'm sure that's just an added bonus."

Bakura smiles, and the finger hooked in Malik's shirt shows no sign of moving.

"I'm flattered that you seem to find me attractive," says Malik. "By the way, I'm curious; were you planning on discussing the finer points of our plot before or after you fucked me?"

Record scratch.

The balance of power suddenly upset in Malik's favor, Bakura all but jumps to his feet. He moves to loom over Malik, the effect of which is rather ruined when Malik shifts his chair out of the way and stands as well, staring Bakura down.

Malik is taller.

Well. He can work with this.

Bakura flops back onto the bed, lying on his back, his legs hanging over the edge.

"Now now," he says, even as Malik steps toward him, places a knee on the bed beside him. "Maybe my plans aren't as rigid as your own." The knee is almost imperceptibly touching his thigh. "I've been known to improvise."

"You're smart though," says Malik, moving his other leg on top of the bed to straddle Bakura. "Seduce the angry little upstart who thinks he can play with the big boys." He lowers himself down rest on his forearms, still encased in that tantalizing gold. "He's probably never been touched before. He'll probably think he's in love. So much easier to control." Malik's forehead is touching Bakura's now, breath ghosting against his skin. "So much easier to manipulate."

Bakura smiles wickedly beneath him. "Can you?" he hisses, his lips just a hair's-breadth away from Malik's. He winds a finger in Malik's hair. "Play with the big boys?"

Malik just grins.

He's just going to hover like that, Bakura realizes after a moment, just freeze, their bodies centimeters away from touching. He's leaving it to Bakura to act on his desire, to arch up into him. He's still putting on a show of his own discipline, his own self-restraint.

Well. Bakura doesn't have Malik's control issues.

His hips snap up to meet Malik's, and he grinds against him. Malik's forearms slip apart as he closes the distance between them, lips (and teeth) coming down to meet Bakura's. They moan softly against each others mouths, and Bakura's arms curl around Malik's shoulders, clawed fingernails skidding off his gold choker and digging into the skin at the base of his neck.

In a flash, Malik's slapped his hands away, pinned Bakura's wrists against the bed behind him. Bakura tries to move them but he can't, and when he sees the muscles flex in the hollows of Malik's arms as they hold him down, he doesn't really want to.

"If we're going to do this," Malik hisses, "we're going to do this my way. Don't fucking scratch me."

Bakura smirks at Malik's apparent anger, at how easy it is to elicit; Malik's not nearly as unshakable as he pretends to be. He could use that, he thinks. He could...or he could grind his hips up against Malik's again. At the moment, option two seems preferable.

Malik moans and pushes back, his hands unclasping from Bakura's wrists to anchor himself on the bed. Bakura arches up to kiss him again, but meets only air as Malik suddenly rolls off him, off the bed. Bakura immediately misses his weight on top of him, and that thought alone is absolutely sickening.

"I have hand lotion in my suitcase," Malik says, standing.

"Of course you do," Bakura snorts.

Malik is beside the bed now, starting to rummage through his luggage, so Bakura slides off the bed to stand alongside him. He slides a hand under Malik's shirt and up the side, working the smooth fabric up, enjoying far more than he should the feel of muscle on palm and silk behind it—when suddenly he's crashing back to the bed, registering only after he bounces off the mattress that Malik's shoved him, with a considerable amount of force.

He's coming to realize that Malik is stronger than he looks. Stronger than he is. And strangely, he doesn't think he minds.

"Take your own fucking clothes off," Malik spits, pulling his shirt back down. But he smiles, remembering himself, and tosses the hand lotion at Bakura, who grabs it out of the air and sets it down on the bed beside him.

Bakura sits up to take his pants and boxers off and watches as Malik does the same across the room. His legs are smooth and dark and muscular and Bakura doesn't even realize he's stopped stripping to stare until Malik laughs at him.

Bakura sneers back and reaches for his own shirt, but once he's shrugged the blue-and-white material off over his head, he notices that Malik isn't doing the same. Apparently intent on keeping his shirt on, Malik makes his way back to the bed, and Bakura tucks that little tidbit away for future use.

But it's the last thing on his mind a second later, because Malik's tackled him again and he's grinding their now-naked erections against each other. Bakura presses up into it, presses his face into Malik's neck, wants nothing more than to just bite down as hard as he can but he can't because he knows Malik would stop so he just sucks on his neck until Malik moans and laughs again.

Bakura pulls his mouth away from Malik's throat to ask, "You've done this before, right? I do hate working with amateurs."

Malik grabs Bakura's cock by way of response.

It...feels like he's done this before.

Not that the body Bakura inhabits ever has before and — holy shit — Malik's pulling them up into a sitting-position, and Bakura thinks hazily about waking up Ryou's consciousness just because it would be funny, but then Malik starts stroking him and he can't think about anything anymore — can't do anything but tangle his hand in Malik's hair and pull him into a kiss.

Malik keeps stroking him while kissing him back with a rather flattering urgency, all soft lips and harsh teeth, smooth skin and rough touches; he's a beautiful contradiction and Bakura did not just think that.

But fortunately, Malik must not be able to read minds, because when he pulls away from the kiss, the mocking, defiant look that's been in his eyes since they met is gone. It's replaced with a look of arousal so intense that it sends a jolt down Bakura's spine, stoking both his erection and his ego.

But the former is suddenly sadly neglected, as Malik removes his hand from between Bakura's legs, sits farther back onto his haunches and grabs the hand lotion from the mattress. Bakura reaches for it and Malik swats his hand away, and how very like Malik to decide that he can touch Bakura but Bakura can't touch him. Instead, Bakura contents himself with watching Malik suppress a shiver as the cold, white liquid hits his cock, and then give in to a body-racking shudder as he begins to stroke himself.

By the time he's finished coating himself, they're both breathing rather hard. Malik shoves Bakura back down to the mattress, then lies down on top of him, takes Bakura's bottom lip between his teeth. He releases it only briefly to snarl, "I'm going to fuck you."

Bakura snorts; it's almost hilarious; he sounds so earnest, and the only response Bakura can think of is 'no kidding.'

He doesn't voice it, though, because that would keep his mouth from better things. Malik's biting his lip again, and a second later he tastes his blood in his own mouth and — Oh God so fucking good— his hands shoot out and grab the sheets and twist as he moans softly into Malik's mouth.

Malik pulls back and licks his own lips clean, then hooks a hand under Bakura's knee and pulls Bakura's leg up around his waist. Bakura sees what he's doing and hooks his other leg around Malik's back, bending himself in half.

He half-wonders why Malik's decided to fuck him from the front, and then really wonders what Malik's up to when he braces himself on the bed with his left hand and brings a lotion-coated right hand to Bakura's ass. He'd thought that thanks to his little display of masochism, prep wouldn't be on the menu.

But a second later, Malik's fingers are inside him, stretching him ... but had Malik not noticed when he bit his lip that Bakura got off on pain, so is he just stretching him to be irritating, and where are those fingers going n— HOLY SHIT.

Malik's fingers brush up against his prostate again and he just barely hears the sound of Malik laughing over his own low moan. Malik strokes him yet again, and his half-lidded eyes meet Malik's open ones. He's staring at Bakura intently.

Bakura realizes through the haze that Malik doesn't give two shits about hurting him; this has nothing to do with Bakura's personal comfort. He's prepping him now because he likes playing with people, manipulating them; he gets a rush when he can get people to do things without their realizing he's pulling the strings. And right now, he's getting off on the expressions he can put on Bakura's face. He wants to see Bakura gasp and squirm under his hands, without being distracted by his own pleasure.

"Manipulative little bitch," Bakura pants, failing to keep his hips from jerking up into Malik's fingers.

"Takes one to know one," Malik replies. His voice is low and husky.

And then in an instant, Malik's fingers are gone and Bakura is cold and empty but only for a second as Malik surges forward again and fills him.

Oh FUCK.

Bakura's breath catches in his throat, but Malik doesn't wait for him to adjust, just pulls back and thrusts again. Back and in again, in and out, fast and rough and hard and so good. Just like him. Just like both of them.

Bakura abruptly arches hard, hips meeting Malik's thrust, pulling him deeper, harder, exactly to the spot Bakura wants him. Malik wants it too. He swallows a scream and falls forward against Bakura's neck, where he lays haphazard bites against Bakura's ear and throat, and when he moves to hovers over Bakura's face again, Bakura would rather lick his own blood off Malik's lips than kiss him.

Malik's thrusting even harder now; Bakura feels the pressure building in his groin as well; they're both getting closer but it can't stop yet, it can't. Bakura searches for a way to convey this thought to Malik, and settles for tangling a hand in the roots of his hair and pulling, one long, continuous tug that tilts Malik's head back, exposes the long clean line of his throat, opens his mouth slightly and lets out his ragged breathing. He's much too far-gone now to complain about a little pain.

Bakura feels himself start to to tighten around Malik's cock and knows he won't last much longer; his legs are starting to shake in their position clasped around Malik's back. And then he can't hang on and he's coming onto both their chests and falling back to the mattress, gasping, warm feelings of relaxation building in his middle even as Malik continues to pound into him.

Malik lasts perhaps a minute longer, and then comes with a soft cry, his face tightening and then relaxing as he bears down on Bakura. Bakura vaguely registers, through the warm haze around his brain and the feeling of Malik filling him, that this is the only time he's ever seen Malik's face that close to vulnerable. But soon he can't see his face anymore, because Malik's collapsed on top of him, breathing hard, arms around his shoulders.

It's disturbingly close to an embrace.

Bakura realizes this abruptly and pulls a face, rolling out from under Malik as soon as his legs are capable, leaving Malik to pant face down into the mattress. The lavender shirt he refused to take off is now drenched with sweat. It still doesn't stop Bakura from wanting to pull it back, to see what's underneath.

He'd like to see more of Malik overall, he realizes. He finds him...interesting.

On cue, Malik turns over. He looks sidelong at Bakura and snorts.

"Your hair..."

Bakura glares at him and smashes his hair down. Malik's is hardly looking magazine cover-worthy either, thanks to Bakura's tugging, but he declines to comment. Malik's more than vain enough for the two of them. Speaking of which...

"You kept the shirt on the whole time," Bakura says sleepily. "And you never did tell me why you wore it... Mmm..." This pillow is really comfortable; he's almost too tired to finish the sentence. He suppresses a yawn and manages, "You know I'm going to figure out why."

Malik just stares up at the ceiling, breathing deeply. More than a minute stretches on, and Bakura wonders if he's fallen asleep. But no, when he glances over, Malik's eyes are open. He looks like he's...thinking about it.

At length, he opens his mouth and speaks, contemplatively, a half-smile on his face.

"I like this shirt."

THE END