Shadow: A much, much belated birthday present for Kana-kun. (hugs) On your pairing…I tried, I really diddd!!! But this kept on happening (points down) and this is the best out of all the rambled things of DOOM I wrote and I hope you like and – I'm…gonna shut up now. (blushes)
Warnings: Odd. Extremely so. Shonen-ai (boy x boy). You don't like, please don't read. Pairings are at the bottom, if you don't figure them out over the course of the fic. Some language.
Leaning Toward Madness
A half-lit corridor, two figures - and a third carefully carried in the arms of the slightly smaller. A room they both peered into, a glance down at the sedated one that was clutched to the carrier's chest.
"Are you sure about this?"
A cynical smile. "It's rather late to be having doubts now, don't you think?"
"I want…No, I need…" A pause. "If I know him and his followers as well as I thought I once did, there will be a hue and cry that he is gone."
"You know them well." Flat male tone, agreeing. The man carrying the sleeping one entered the room they'd been looking into previously, crossing to the far end of the chamber and setting his cargo down carefully. "Whatever age they're in, they'll kick up an almighty fuss."
"This doesn't affect you?"Leaning on the doorpost, dark eyes following with some satisfaction the click of manacles onto unresisting limbs.
The last chain in place, object secured. "When have I ever let it?"
"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" The room is brightly-lit, gleaming in the fluorescent light hanging over their head. Both of them stand, either side of the kitchen table, fridge decorated with a multitude of colourful magnets humming contentedly in the background.
He scoffs, dismissing the notion. "What have I to be afraid of?" His voice is low – only in the next room five others lie dreaming, curled up in sleeping bags in front of the television's static. He has no desire for any of them to wake, to pad through and catch the two of them stood there like this.
"You've certainly been avoiding me most of tonight." His companion's voice is dry, cutting through his forced apathy. The slim form hops up onto the side-bench, dangling swinging legs over the side. There are a few inches between the tips of his bare toes and the kitchen tiles. "You ran a mile the other day when I kissed you."
Outright rejection. "Please-! As if you could make me do anything."
"I didn't make you do anything." Long lashes, sooty black, swept over dark eyes, a cat's smile touching the corner of smug lips. "You ran all that way all by yourself."
He hissed, disliking the other's words, but finding none of his own to deny them. "…What do you want, Yami? Interesting as this conversation may be, I have no desire to waste the rest of the time till dawn with you."
"I'd like to kiss you again – but no doubt you're unwilling to offer that freely?" Yami's tone is light, somewhere between mockery and teasing.
"No doubt at all."
"Thought not." A dramatised sigh. "Pity." A soft sound of cloth against marble countertops, his eyes inevitably drawn to the even softer curves for an instant highlighted by silk-like material as Yami slips off his perch, padding around the kitchen table and stopping before him, golden bangs tucked impishly behind his ears. "Can I kiss you anyway?" The once-pharaoh's expression is serious.
"No." He takes a step back, and then another – Yami is following him. Eventually his back bumps into something – the fridge, he can feel all those magnets pressing through the material of his pyjamas, digging into his skin. "Yami-!"
Too late, too late, too late. Yami is already kissing him, lips as soft as the silken material he wears, and the sensation is so pleasant he lets the contact continue, sliding one arm around the other's slim waist to hold him there. Yami lets out a quiet sound, pleased, and the fridge keeps humming.
The others dream on in the room next door, unaware.
The half-lit corridor again, curtains tightly closed to block out daylight outside shining in, and prying eyes with it. One figure this time, leaning in his place against the doorpost, idly gazing into the even dimmer room where another slept.
The other from before, approaching oblivious along the corridor, looking up and stopping dead. "…Do you honestly have nothing better to do?"
Dark eyes glanced up, their master's tone dry. "I could annoy you, but you constantly tell me you're busy."
"You plague my dreams every night while I try to rest – is that not enough? I need to concentrate during the day else our scheme will fail and you'll -"
"I am fully aware it may go wrong and I'll suffer the consequences."Arms crossed, radiating boredom. "Why do you think I come here instead?"
A glance in the infamous chamber, and at the sleeping figure there still encased in chains. "He isn't going anywhere."
"I should hope not; we need him."A considered pause, a glance at the sleeping one and the newcomer from under half-lowered lashes. "I can't believe you seriously want to kiss him."
"Do you truly find the thought so repulsive?" A pale hand raised, almost to stroke a scarred cheek, stopping just short of skin.
"He is…beautiful I will admit but…"
"Will you care so much once the deed is done? You need never look at him again…" The hand had not moved, a strangely tender tone taking the speaker's voice…
Slightly softer: "The other boy…"
"Ryou is too weak; we have been over this before." Hard, the hand dropped.
"But this…child! He – why him?"
"He is as I am in flesh, but has so much more power. The procedure…with him, it is most likely to succeed." Explanation.
"He is at least a full two heads shorter than me."Complaint.
"Bekhura, damn you – do you want this or not?!"
A pause, white hair brushed out of eyes, skin shimmering oddly in the light –
"More than anything in the world…"
Yami frowns when he leaves the bed, rolling over onto his back and leaning on his elbows, crimson eyes accusing. "Where are you going?"
"Home." The other's voice is flat, unyielding, slim fingers reaching out to snatch up the clothes scattered liberally around the room, pulling them on with swift, jerking movements.
"Why? There's nothing for you there -"
"And here?" Movements stilled, fingers caught halfway through threading a button through its hole. "What is here except a warm bed?"
For an instant, hurt flashes through those dark, pretty eyes. Then, the shutters come down, regal manner resuming, and coolness taking Yami's usually softer form of address to him. "You still hate me." Not a question.
Button abandoned, slender digits raised to trail up silken skin, a long throat, soft cheek. Cupping the curve of Yami's face, voice barely above a whisper in the shell of another's ear: "Some things take a long time to die."
He stares into the night, waking gasping after yet another dream. He can see still, in his mind's eye, a darker hand than his own roughly caressing him, silver-white hair falling into his vision over the slash of a scar. Bekhura.
The other is at his side almost as soon as he has thought the name, outline pale as the moon.
"You woke up too soon…" The ancient tomb-thief's voice is almost scolding, long form lying alongside his own the bed, leaving no impression. "Go back to sleep?" Inviting.
"No." He doesn't know why, but suddenly he's not in the mood. Leaving a confused – and more than a little annoyed - lover behind him he abandons his bed, throwing sheets aside and stalking through the corridors of his house.
Somehow, without his mind knowing it, his feet have taken him to the chamber where his 'guest' is kept. The other is sleeping still but he doesn't care, stepping silently across the stone floor to kneel beside the futon, and the one lost dreaming on it. Chains clink when he brushes hair back off the other's face, his actions disturbing the manacles encased around the captive's throat. Soft breathing is the only sign the prisoner is still alive.
"What are you doing?" His lover has taken up his traditional post by the doorway, the watchful sentry.
"What does it look like?"
"I don't know." Just above being a snap. "Stop it."
"Jealous are we, Bekhura?" The thought amuses him, and he can't stop the thin, cold smile touching the corners of his lips.
"…Should I be?"
A glance to the manacled youth. "Possibly, yes. He was my lover before this mad scheme was proposed to me, and is still much more readily available to me now."
Something between anger and amazement. "You let him touch…?"
"You yourself admitted he was beautiful."
"That did not mean I – you – you slept with him? When?!"
A bored sigh, studying of fingernails. "Which time? I told you, he was my lover. He was generally there when I wanted him."
"…You're trying to bait me." Annoyance coloured Bekhura's tone. "What the hell has irritated you so much that you're now taking it out on me?"
"Everything, alright?!" A sudden snarl, hand snapping away from the captive, feet storming over to Bekhura and fist about to punch – only to stop, mere inches from a wavering nose.
"You would hit me?" Bekhura stared at the fist, russet eyes cold as ice.
"I would, but what fucking good would that do?" Angrily, he stares past his current lover, at the hard wall behind Bekhura's head. "All I'd earn for myself would be a sore hand."
"…I fail to see what your problem is."
"What my problem is?!" He whirls on Yami, eyes flashing fire. "Are you stupid, or do you think me blind?!"
"Neither." Yami's voice is cool, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches the other pace the room like an angry cat. "I just fail to see what your problem is."
"What my…you were on the verge of tearing his fucking clothes off, that's what my problem is!!"
"…And this affects you why, exactly?" Scarlet eyes are as cold as their owner's voice. "I wasn't aware you gave a damn what I did or didn't do, as long as I was there when you decided to get down off your high horse from time to time, and come a-calling."
Pride stops his tongue, catches the words that want to burst from his lips to call Yami, to angrily correct those hateful claims. The once-pharaoh had been more than a bed-mate, easily so, but such heartless, callous words… Traitorous snake.
Yami scowls when he says nothing – had the young king been waiting for him to refute the accusations? Tough. "I got sick of waiting for someone who still vows he hates me."
"I never said that." The only defence his wounded ego will allow him to offer.
It's too late, too late, too late.
"Get out." Yami's hard expression makes it clear he's offering no more words on the subject and so he turns, storming out of the room and slamming the door viciously behind him.
His heart stung.
He forgot to sedate the captive one day, and while he was lost in ancient scrolls and scripture, searching for the last ingredient to the last spell that will finally achieve him his ends, Bekhura came to him, standing ghost-like between cramped stacks of aging paper.
"He's waking up."
He flew from the room to the cell as if the gods had granted him wings.
The faintest sounds of someone stirring rose from the dimmed chamber, chains clinking, manacles clanking where they bounced off the futon and hit the floor. A low groan – the other truly was waking.
He couldn't allow that, not this close. Grabbing a pack he left especially on a cabinet in the corridor he entered the cell, crossing swiftly to resume the kneeling position beside the slowly-rousing one he'd taken so many times in the past.
"Go back to sleep, myoujou." He slid the needle into the other's arm smoothly, sweet as the kiss he put upon the drowsy youth's brow.
"But I…please I mustn't…" Pleading hands caught his shoulder, fingers sliding into his soft, thick hair, lips parted and lashes desperately fluttering –
"Sleep." Slowly, he reached up to disentangle those imploring fingers, bending down to seal the whispering mouth with another solid kiss, firm as his command.
A soft moan, one last frantic flutter of the lashes as they tried to open and – unconsciousness, drug taking hold.
He stood, easing the other almost tenderly from his arms, not minding the fact the other had seen him. The captive had not been lucid enough to recall him, if the other was ever even in a situation to do so.
An interrogation outside the cell, Bekhura demanding: "What was that?!"
"Sedative." The empty syringe stored away.
"That wasn't what I meant, and you know it."
"What would you like me to do?" Weary, fed-up, he turned on Bekhura. "Let him wake, and storm around in fury? Oh yes, that would be fun."
"You didn't need to kiss him to put him to sleep!"
Annoyance. "I'll do what the hell I like, and you can't stop me."
Fury – Bekhura loathed being confronted with the truth. His eyes narrowed, his fists clenched – but there wasn't a single thing he could do. He was spirit, able to touch only in dreams.
"…Do you even still want me?" Bekhura was no coward, his question pointed.
His lover looked at him once, and then turned and walked silently away.
"This is mad." He didn't know where the other had sprung from, or how this situation had arisen in the first place. And yet, there he was, pinned to the ground in his sleeping thoughts by the incarnation of his past self.
"Madness is relative." Bekhura bit at Bakura's neck, feeling the paler thief wince, dig sharp nails into his shoulder.
"Get off." Bakura shoved at his other self, pissed.
"I wouldn't be here unless you wanted me to be." Russet eyes looked down into his own, cool. "You called me from the depths of the Ring."
"You're delusional – what the hell would I want you for?"
A careless, casual shrug, Bekhura for once bowing to another's whims and rolling away from Bakura. "You tell me."
"I don't have the time; I have to -"
"Run and lick your wounds?" A sneering suggestion. "Someone's put a dent in your self-esteem, it radiates about this place." Bekhura waved a hand at the dreamscape around them, at the angry, roiling clouds of bitterness, hatred and despair. "I hope you crushed them."
"…You didn't see?" Despite himself, Bakura was curious.
"Would I ask otherwise?"
"….They're of no importance anymore."
Bakura lay awake, and refused to sleep. He didn't want to dream, and he didn't want to see Bekhura. He could feel the other's ire even in his conscious thoughts – there was no desire within him to drift off into unconsciousness and face a bitter tirade there.
No, instead…his heart found him the cell, his body lying down on the thin futon beside his captive prince. He hadn't sedated the other again, deliberately, and those pretty crimson eyes he'd loved so much were due to open soon. Cocooning himself around Yami's body, feeling the cold metal of the shackles through the material of his clothes, Bakura settled in to wait.
Five minutes, twenty, thirty, an hour…Bakura wasn't sure how long it was until Yami began to stir, his body shifting to work out the aches and pains long periods of inactivity built up.
"Yami…" Pale fingers brushed against the pharaoh's cheek.
The lightest of sounds, long lashes fluttering once more, on the verge of opening. Chains clinked, heavy manacles hindering movement to the point where even turning one's head became awkward.
"Yami." Bakura repeated the name insistently, wanting the other lucid if only for a moment, wanting the other to acknowledge him. He waited a few more minutes, before repeating for the third time: "Yami."
Scarlet eyes, so deep in the dark room they appeared maroon, finally opened fully. "...Ba… Kura…?" A wondering question.
"Yes." A simple reply, Bakura leaning in to steal a kiss from soft, parted lips, feeling Yami respond to him for one glorious instant and –
Yami raised his hand, and scratched Bakura's face. "Bastard." Little more than a hiss. He was still somewhat woozy, but clearly infuriated. "You…why did you bring me here?" Sense was returning to him swiftly.
Bakura touched his cheek, feeling blood dribble down past his fingers. "…So much has happened since we spoke last…"
Yami frowned. "…Have you gone completely insane?"
"I think I've always been a little mad." The cuts on his cheek were shallow… "My voices aren't only in my head anymore…"
"Bakura -"
"Did you ever love me?"
Yami halted – he was still a little slow following the conversation. "….Once, I think I did. But it hurt."
"And now?"
"Now?" Confusion, Yami clearly wondering why he was asking the question. "Now…Bakura, I – you're…nothing to me."
"Right…" Bakura sighed, picking up the syringe lying unnoticed beside them that he'd brought in with him. "That's all I wanted to know."
Yami's eyes widened, recognising the item. "Bakura, don't you dare-!" The needle slid smoothly into the once-pharaoh's arm. "Bakura…"
The thief looked away, unable to meet crimson eyes. "I'm sorry."
Yami slowly began to calm down, the drug injected into him taking effect. "…Why?" He was still, pressed against Bakura's chest. "You never said any…thing… Do…do you love me still?"
Bakura didn't reply, waiting until Yami fell completely into oblivion once more, the last drug he was ever to be placed under. The pharaoh, sleeping, was gently laid back on his futon.
Sadly, Bakura regarded him, placing his last kiss goodbye on the fallen monarch's brow. "…It still hurts."
Bekhura waited for him outside, more venomous than any Egyptian cobra. "…And there I was thinking it was solely I who wanted his body."
A flush, but Bakura was too tired to react any more. "I never denied that I wanted him."
"And you do want him. Badly." Scorn. "You're a disgrace, to need him as you do."
"I do not -"
"Don't deny it, the truth shines in your eyes."
Hostility. "Fine, then!! I want him!!! Are you happy now I've said that?!"
"Do you expect me to be?"Cold silence. "I have little to console except the fact I now know why you picked that boy."Pause. "You're in love with him…"More silence. "He didn't love you back, did he?"A thousand heated words unsaid. "I thought not."
"He said he loved me once…" Bakura turned blind eyes to the wall of the corridor, hating himself.
"'Once' is not enough."
"I know that." Bakura swallowed, hiding his eyes with his fringe. "I…Bekhura…the ceremony. We'll do it tonight, if you're agreeable."
Bekhura paused, taken aback. "…You're sure?"
"Yes."
"Tonight, then."
"'Unimportant'?" Bekhura does not look convinced. "Bakura, I constantly ask you what ails you – no, who ails you, and you always reply it's damn unimportant!! Look at me!!! Speak to me!! You -"
Bakura shuts him up with a hard kiss. Breathless, lips bruised, they draw apart. "…I hate that I can only touch you here."
"…That….that is what preys on your mind?" Bekhura digs nails into his arm, smiling when Bakura winces. Proof that he can touch…
"Nothing else."
"I…there are ways for me to receive a body outside of your thoughts… Old ways. Long-forgotten ways. There is scripture from my time -"
"Tell me how to give you flesh."
Bekhura smiled, leaning in to leave a hot whisper in the other's ear. "You wish to be taken so badly?"
Bakura only repeated his command. "Tell me how to give you flesh."
"…You're a thief, aren't you? I'm a thief?"
"Yes…"
"Then our answer is logical." Another kiss, even harder, longer. Bekhura looks satisified. "…If we want something, we take it from someone else."
The ceremony is a success. Bakura knew it was without looking up, refusing to look up from the scribbled sheet of paper he'd spent so many months working on, the chant there, the spell. Can't look up, afraid to see the body he'd carried into the circle only half an hour beforehand stand up of alien will, afraid to acknowledge just what exactly it was he'd just done.
The corpse walks over to him anyway, and drags his chin up so that dark brown can meet flame red. Yami's body, Yami's eyes. Not Yami.
Bakura forces himself to swallow, locked in the gaze of a dead man, a body whose mind has been cast adrift. "…Does this meet to your satisfaction?"
"Quite." A smile – not Yami's. A voice – not Yami's. Yet they are. "It'll take some time to adjust to the height difference but I think…" Tanned palms trailing over their new self, studying, feeling every inch, "I can live with this." Yami can't.
Bakura stood, eyed the man. "Bekhura."
"Yes?" Not-Yami looked at him, ceasing his petting for an instance, half-smile of incredulity freezing on his lips. "Is something wrong?"
"Kiss me." Bekhura frowns for a moment but, catching sight of the expression on hi lover's face, crosses to wind his arms around Bakura's neck, leaning in close. The now-taller man places a hand on Bekhura's lips, pausing the action a moment. "…Close your eyes."
"What?" Another frown, Yami's brow creasing in consternation. Not Yami. "Why?"
Not Yami. Not Yami. Not Yami. Yet is. Bakura couldn't stand Yami's eyes… "Just do it."
Sulkily, Bekhura obeyed the commands. "Can I kiss you now?"
"Do so."
And so, they kissed, Bakura closing his own eyes. For an instant, if he set his mind free, he could imagine, he could pretend, he could soothe hurt and drift away…
And yet the knowledge remained. And he stood there, kissing the Yami who wasn't Yami, and hated himself. And Yami was gone.
It still hurt.
Yami smiled at him, laughing slightly as Bakura ran ticklish fingers up his spine. "…That tickles, dammit. Stop."
"What, is the great pharaoh of Egypt afraid?" Bakura's smile was catlike, his hands continuing to mercilessly tease the other, causing Yami to laugh a little harder.
"Ba-Bakura!"
"Mm…shout a little louder, sweetheart. I think those downstairs can't quite hear you yet."
Yami jabbed him in the ribs. "Baka."
Bakura laughed, ignoring the half-hearted poke and lying at the other's side. "Says you."
"Yes, says me." Yami fell quiet for a short time, content. "Bakura…?"
"Hm?"
"Bakura…do you love me?"
A pause, brown eyes staring into red. An impossible silence.
"…I can't answer that."
Shadow: the pairings were Geminishipping – Bakura x Thief King, and Darkshipping – Yami x Bakura. The…latter pairing just happened on its own, Kana. ;-;