Something clanged on the bars. My eyes slitted open, focusing slowly in the low light. Bakura stood over me, holding a wooden spoon.

"Finally," Bakura said. "You were out hard." He paused, pressing his lips together. "I didn't mean to say it that way."

When I tried to sit up, I realized my cock was still out.

"Look, the door is open. Just... wash your hands before you help with breakfast, right?"

His voice sounded strained. I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or trying not to laugh. Probably the second one, knowing him. Fucker. I felt him watching me as I crawled out and straightened up. His eyes dropped to my shirt as I stretched.

"Do you want to change?"

I looked at the white stains on the dark fabric. Then I looked at Bakura. "It's not funny."

"I never said it was funny."

"You're thinking it."

Bakura rolled his eyes. "Shadow, I swear to the pantheon that all I'm thinking about is teaching you to cook breakfast. You-"

He stopped when I took off my shirt and tossed it on top of the cage. His eyes flicked to my abs, and then wandered slowly back to my face. I snorted. "Lying to the gods."

Bakura crossed his arms and slitted his eyes. "What were you thinking about?"

He wouldn't shame me so easily. I held his gaze. "Gagging you with my cock."

Air hissed dismissively between Bakura's teeth as his eyes flicked toward the kitchen. " I don't gag."

I glared. "Whatever, as long as it shuts you up for a while."

Bakura started to laugh, but he stopped at a grin. "I get that a lot."

Of course he did. But I had the answer to my question now, didn't I? He didn't gag. I stuck that one on the list right below the bruises on the backs of his legs.

My stomach growled. "I want more bacon," I said as I followed Bakura to the kitchen.

"I figured. Hands first. Always wash your hands before you handle other people's food." He hesitated with his hands under the water. "And, um," he cleared his throat, "after you handle raw meat..."

"Gods curse you!"

"I had to say it! It's true!"

Fucker.

While I washed and dried my hands, he pulled a pack of frozen bacon out of the freezer and explained how to defrost it in the microwave. It seemed like a lot of waiting and work to me. I frowned. "Won't it just melt when you cook it?"

"Don't fry frozen things. Water tends to make hot oil explode every where," Bakura said.

My eyes widened. "Explode?"

"Gods..." Bakura pinched the bridge of his nose. "Don't tell me I have to remind you that getting splattered with boiling oil is a bad thing."

"Yeah, but... explode? With fire and stuff? From water and oil?"

"We can find a video after I go over all of your chores. Will that sate your curiosity?"

"Maybe." The microwave beeped. Finally! Bakura talked me through the next few steps. Just a little bit of oil. Fry on both sides. The bacon was easy. I got frustrated with the eggs and scrambled them out of spite, though. Bakura made cracking and splitting them look so fucking easy. God's cursed thief hands...

"Good morning." Ryou appeared, pecking Bakura on the cheek. Smiling and nodding at me.

My grip on the spatula tightened.

"Is everything all right?" Ryou asked.

Me? He was asking me? He was looking at me. Not side-eyeing me as he asked Bakura, either. Looking at me. Asking me. Why did I feel so nervous? Everything was fine. Except for the stupid eggs. "Flipping eggs is hard," I said.

Ryou nodded. "I never quite mastered that one, either." He shrugged. "It's a good thing there are so many different ways to cook eggs. We can all find one that works for us."

That smile. It made me want to chew on the plushie. The plushie was still in the cage in the other room. I didn't notice I had the spatula in my mouth until I saw the corners of Ryou's smile twitch, as if they couldn't decide to go up or down. I hid the spatula behind my back and scowled in a random direction. Chair? I was scowling at the chair, then. Until Ryou sat in it. He was looking at Bakura. Smiling at Bakura. Talking to Bakura. I couldn't focus on what he was saying, though.

Bakura poked my shoulder. "Do you remember where the bowls are?"

Only vaguely, but I pretended I did so I could turn my back on both of them. I couldn't look at that smile. It hurt. In a good way. Like it was hard to breathe, but because I was excited. I didn't think I was horny, though. I just... wanted Ryou to keep smiling at me like that. Keep being interested in what I was thinking and doing, but in the way that made him smile at me like that.

Breakfast went fast. Apparently the hour rule didn't apply at breakfast. Probably because Ryou was in a hurry to get to work.

Bakura showed me the laundry next. Two small machines, one stacked on the other, in a closet in the hall. He retrieved a basket of laundry from the bedroom and started to explain something about sorting colors. He'd lost me, though. I was entirely too curious about the scrap of blue fabric he'd just tossed into a pile of other light colors. It was a thong. Did Bakura wear thongs? I tried to think back to the first day. I'd seen him strip in the bathroom. I must have. The bruises on his legs and my anger at the whole situation had distracted me from what kind of underwear he'd pulled off, though.

"I know what you're thinking, and I've already inventoried all the underwear, so you can stop thinking it," Bakura interrupted.

"I- I wasn't!" I snapped.

Bakura raised an eyebrow at me. "Really?"

I stomped my foot. "I wasn't thinking about taking it, stop looking at me like that!"

Bakura put up his hands defensively. "Okay. Fine. Good. Stop staring and help me sort, then."

As I started poking through the laundry, a thought occurred to me. Ryou had suggested this, and never once warned me about not stealing underwear. He either trusted me not to, or didn't mind if I did. "Did he tell you to make sure I didn't steal anything?" I asked.

Bakura looked up. Surprisingly, an almost sheepish look flickered on his face. He cleared his throat and went back to sorting. "I made that decision myself. Habitually cynical, it's nothing personal..."

"But he would be angry if I did..."

"No... Anger's easy. A person gets angry at you, you get angry at them, you fight, and it's easy, because it feels like they deserved it."

Yeah, that made sense.

"With landlord, it's worse than angry."

Worse than angry? What was worse than angry? I frowned, confused. Ryou was stern, but I couldn't picture him being angry in the way I got angry. In the way Marik's dad used to get angry. Screaming, hitting, breaking things. How could he possibly get worse than that? What was worse than that?

"He's too nice to get angry. He gets... Sad? Disappointed? And then you feel guilty, because he didn't deserve for you to disappoint him. Because he's too nice to be angry. It's hard to explain..."

I snorted. "Guilty? It's worse because he makes you feel guilty?"

Bakura shrugged. "I told you. It's hard to explain."

I thought of how he didn't immediately shoot me down when I talked about breaking things and making messes. Of how he could've blamed me for everything yesterday and didn't. "He changed you."

"He gave me what I needed to change myself. Oh, don't roll your fucking eyes at me. If you didn't know exactly what I was talking about, you wouldn't have been blushing like a teenager just because he smiled at you."

"Shut up. I wasn't blushing because he smiled at me." I was just flustered because he looked at me and talked to me. Totally different. Fuck Bakura. Bakura didn't believe me. I could tell he didn't. But he didn't chase the potential argument. Because Ryou told him to try to be nicer to me? I bit my lip. "What?"

"I didn't say anything," Bakura said.

"What did he do? What happened? You weren't always like this."

Bakura laughed. "I was still a shit when I first came back. A lot of little things changed slowly. Mostly being able to talk." He paused. "One thing does stand out as a tipping point. I'd... I had problems with shop lifting. When I had the chance to take something, I took it, because I didn't know when the chance would come around again. It was a survival habit for a very long time and it seemed harmless until I got caught."

"What did you take?"

"Something stupid. A box of pocky, a toothbrush, something like that. A dumb rentacop took me to the security office to turn out my pockets. They took my picture for their stupid board, told me I was banned from the store, and watched me until Landlord came to get me. It wasn't anything dramatic." Bakura snorted. "I thought they were stupid for busting me with something so small when I'd already stolen so much more from them. I spent the ride home thinking about how I'd gotten caught and how to avoid it in the future. Fuck the Millennium items, but the Ring could be useful sometimes... I didn't even notice how quiet landlord was being until we got home."

"We'd already been toying with the dom thing a bit so I wasn't too surprised when he put me across his lap and started spanking me, except that he wasn't being playful about it. He kept grilling me on what I'd taken, how long it had been going on, what I'd been thinking, why I'd done it. At first I thought he was just angry that I'd done something illegal. I'd never seen him angry before, so I didn't know what to expect."

Not angry... "Was he sad?" I asked.

Smiling weakly, Bakura nodded. "Yeah. I didn't quite get it until he asked how I thought he felt, seeing me standing there with a pissed off security guard. Sad, yeah, and scared. Scared for me. Scared of being alone. He made me swear up and down that I'd never do it again. When I saw how much he cared about me, I honestly did want to stop. He's been helping me stop."

"How?"

"Whenever I see something I want, I have to ask him if I can have it. We talk through why I want it, and he usually buys it for me, as long as it's not something unreasonable. Learning that I have someone looking out for me, for once in my entire existence, has been..." Bakura shrugged. "I don't care if being submissive looks weak, or undignified, or whatever. He makes me feel secure. Turns out I really needed it."

I wondered what that might feel like. Really feeling really safe. I dealt with Marik's problems. When he felt like he was in danger. I was always ready for a fight. Always looking for where the fight might be coming from. Always ready to defend myself. What was it like to be in a quiet room and not be waiting for the screaming to start? If Ryou could teach Bakura to feel that way, could he teach me to feel that way?

Nothing new happened during the morning. Bakura showed me how to vacuum, and then, true to his word, used his laptop to find a video of someone dropping an ice cube in a deep fryer. The resulting cloud of steam and roiling bubbles hypnotized me. Before I knew it, I'd wandered down a whole rabbit hole of things exploding and shattering and melting in slow motion. I didn't even notice how much time had passed until Bakura poked me in the shoulder and told me it was time to make lunch.

Bakura was showing me how to use the rice cooker to steam dumplings when Ryou wandered into the kitchen. Thin shoulders slumped as he rubbed his face.

"Landlord?" Bakura asked, concerned.

"It's fine." Ryou leaned one hand on the table. "Do we have anything sweet?"

In a smooth, fluid movement, Bakura glided up behind him, latched his arms around Ryou's middle, and nuzzled his face into Ryou's neck. Ryou squirmed, laughing as he grabbed at Bakura's wrists.

"You serious cornball!" He twisted around and pushed at Bakura's chest, but he was smiling. "That fruit was so low, you'd have to bend over for it."

"You know me," Bakura winked. "I'm all about bending over."

Ryou forced his smiling lips into a pout, poking the tip of Bakura's nose. "Sweets. Not cheese."

"Yeah, I got it." Bakura released Ryou, and then opened a cupboard.

I wanted it. That. That thing they had. That was it. That's why it hurt. That looked pleasant. I wanted it.

They didn't resent each other. Marik resented that I didn't have his outside scars. I resented that he didn't have my inside scars, because he could pretend everything was okay. Maybe it was okay for him, except that I was here reminding him that everything wasn't okay. He'd thrown his problems away with me, and they'd come back with me, too.

I remembered the way he looked at me when I woke up next to him. I'd never forgive him for it. My problems were his problems. I'd been determined to make sure that he didn't get to fucking escape this time.

Except I wasn't his problem any more. He'd pawned me off again. Pawned his problems off again.

"There's no use standing around waiting," Ryou said.

I looked at him, sitting at the table with a purple mochi ball between his fingers. A little plastic tray sat on the table in front of him. There were two more left in it.

"You did your chores all morning, right?" Ryou tilted his head toward an empty chair. "You can sit until the dumplings are done."

Bakura was already sitting, idly chewing his own mochi ball. I eased into the chair next to Ryou. He slid the plastic container closer to me.

"It's taro flavored," he said.

I knew taro. The treat was amazingly chewy, though. Gummy, but so soft. Sweet. Yes. I wondered if he'd let me have the extra one.

"Does the PDA bother you?" Ryou asked.

A little, but not because I didn't like seeing it. "No." But I guessed his next question. He'd noticed I was upset. He wanted to know why. Because he wanted to listen to me. "Marik's an- I don't- Did he tell you what he did when- when I got here? Back? Or was he fucking manipulative about that too?"

"When we compared notes, he mentioned that he was scared. He knew you'd be angry about being sent to the Shadow Realm."

"No guilt," I growled, clenching my hand until my nails dug in painfully. "Anger. Fear. Disgust. I spent years suffering more than he could imagine, and all he wanted was for me to go away. I wouldn't let him do it again. I am what I am so that he can be what he is, and he was never even the slightest bit..." Why was I always leaving that stupid plushie in the other room? I wanted to bite its head off.

"You're separate now," Ryou said. "If he makes you so unhappy, why are you still clinging to him?"

"I want him to suffer as much as I did," I snapped, despite Ryou's gentle tone. He only watched me, like he was waiting for more. "I want him to know what it was like. Every time. Every time he was scared or hurting, he shoved me into it. Every time he was happy he couldn't give me the- And I took it for him! I took it for him and he doesn't care. He doesn't even have to acknowledge what a piece of shit his dad was. How there were things Odion and Ishizu could have stopped but didn't. Odion..." My eyes burned. I felt sick. "Marik was so pissed at Odion after the ritual, but baldy scars his face a little and suddenly he's the fucking hero. I..." A lump clogged my throat. My voice shook. "Marik barely even had to deal with half the ritual. It was me. He has the scars. The recovery was painful for both of us. But he never even felt the worst of it. And he won't even acknowledge all the shit I did for him. Literally for him."

I couldn't talk any more, so I just looked at Ryou. At Bakura. They were blurry. The Ryou blur put a hand on mine.

"That sounds awful," the Ryou blur said, and he sounded like he meant it. "You only want him to appreciate you, and it feels like he's doing everything he can to hate you."

Yes. Yes, that was it. Exactly. He listened. He listened and he understood. I squeezed Ryou's hand. It wasn't the plushie, and I couldn't bite it, because he'd stop me and I wasn't mad at him anyway, but it was warm and soft. Ryou was warm and soft. On the outside and the inside.

This was better. I couldn't, I refused, to believe Marik left me here because he knew it would be better. He never dismissed me to places because he knew it would be better for me. Just easier for him to not have to deal with everything came with me. But this was better. Two days and it was already better. So fuck him.

The timer on the rice cooker beeped, reminding me that I was hungry. I looked at the last mochi ball. "I want that," I said.

Ryou smiled. "I think you're forgetting a word."

I stared at him for a moment. "Um... Can I have it?"

"The word is 'please,'" Ryou said.

"Please I want it?" I tried.

Bakura snerked, but I ignored him because Ryou's smile widened. "I suppose that's close enough for now. Here."

I shoved the whole thing in my mouth at once this time. The soft skin tore between my teeth, hemorrhaging sweet filling. I was happy. Not cold self-satisfaction. Not even warm self-satisfaction. Warm happiness. It felt good.