Author's note: Hello, all. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I've had this file sitting three-fifths of the way finished on my flash drive for a very long time...since February, actually. It had been waiting for me to finish it, but for so long I just couldn't catch the inspiration. But last night I finally finished it, at the expense of my homework. So, give it a read, hm? Hope you enjoy. Angeliz out.

…

"I will love you until the last rose dies…"

Bakura Ryou stared at the note with something unreadable in his dark eyes.

To any other, this would be a gesture of caring, a sincere if slightly saccharine gift for Valentine's morning to rise upon. From any other, nestled among the twelve blushing roses would be an immortal, cast in plastic or silk or even glass, sparkling like fire at the newborn sunrise. Between any others, this would be a promise of forever, an expression of something greater than such limitations as time and mortality.

For Ryou, it was merely a warning.

…

He cried out a little as Bakura fucked him, hard and fast on the living room floor. The carpet was rough against the bare skin of his back, leaving angry trails of scarlet against the pale softness of his skin, and it stung every time his darkness moved. Still, there was a perverse pleasure to the pain, and he found somehow he couldn't complain. Not that he ever would. Not with Bakura.

"Nn, Ryou," came that voice, dark and growling above him, with all the heat of the friction between them. It made his heart skip, just a little, to hear his name like that, falling from behind those lips like blood. It was enough to send him over the edge without ever once being touched. It was enough to pull Bakura along with him, snarling as he came. "Ryou," he hissed again, and this time blood did fall, dark beads of onyx from glimmering fangs.

It splattered warm against his chest, reminding him of the roses.

"Bakura?" he said after a moment, after his darkness had rolled to the side with a vaguely satisfied purr, threading long fingers back through unruly hair. "I…found what you left me. This morning." He hesitated at the silence, weighing its presence, but barreled on anyway despite experience's whispery apprehension. "…On the kitchen table?"

"You're babbling, yadonushi."

Ryou flushed, warmth creeping unpleasantly down his neck. "Sorry…but, what did they… Bakura, why?"

The figure beside him grunted, shoulders shrugging beneath a fine sheen of sweat. "It's some sort of holiday, isn't it? They seemed appropriate." His voice was gruff with deep-contained emotion, or perhaps only with weariness. Bakura had not slept in some days, he thought, though the reason behind it was not entrusted to him. To be trusted by Bakura was a novelty; his darkness let no one into his world. "You like feminine things."

Uncertainty rose in his throat, like hope, but less toxic. "But the card…"

"I said what I meant."

"But the roses—"

Bakura rolled to finally face him, dark gaze and dark voice enough to steal his breath away. His muscles rippled, tense, beneath his own night-pale skin, and Ryou noticed the smudges of purple hidden just beneath his eyes. "Take care of them, yadonushi. It's fair enough warning."

And then he rose fluidly and was gone, leaving Ryou to nurse an injured confusion that was only so much better than the crystal edge of clarity.

…

Bakura caught up to him in the bedroom that night and explained, words burning against the back of his neck, hands rough and scarred over the expanse of his flesh. His tone was a mockery of tenderness, breaking once in the heat of the moment. Ryou could not see his eyes, could not discern the truth from the lie, could not recognize that for once, there was nothing between them but moonlight and shadows. Nothing between them but Bakura's plans, laid out in blue-frigid detail.

Bakura told him everything, but somehow he could not understand. In the morning, that was all he could remember.

…

The roses shuddered softly as the door slammed shut, petals drifting like the fragments of thought in his head. Ryou paused for a moment, listening, straining to catch the near-silent footfalls of his other soul, but any sound he might have heard was drowned out by the sparklings of dust motes floating across the sun. Like tongues of flame, it blazed through the window, cast across his armchair and puddled at the floor, a slice of scarlet dying against the cream of his carpet.

Someone breathed beside him then, angular and gaunt, skin purpled beneath sharp eyes. Ryou had no need to glance upward to know. He saw them each morning in the mirror. He saw them each night in his unconscious wonderings. The man beside him was weakening, almost imperceptible, impossible to ignore. He did not know how to stop it.

After a silent moment, Bakura shifted, melted forward to inspect the grouping of roses atop the windowsill, their vase throwing prisms of fire across his pale fingers. Of the eight remaining, he chose three, withered and dried beyond the barest hint of life. His fingers considered them, the softworn leather of their petals, the autumnal crackle of their leaves. They drifted like dust to the carpet at the barest contraction of his fist.

Ryou pictured, sudden and with lucid clarity, two pale hands reaching gently into his chest and lifting out his heart. He imagined, entranced, the spasming of fingers, the rising of tendons, as those hands each tightened around their share. He watched, very literally, as his heart was torn in two.

Blood pooled on the carpet, settling like rose petals. Bakura's rough voice shook him back to reality.

"Five left, yadonushi. It's obsessive, the way you take care of them."

Ryou watched him go from the room, felt the indescribable tug at his soul that yearned for him to follow. "I can't," he whispered soundlessly, curled still with his book in his lap. It was like nothing had happened, like perhaps nothing had. "I can't."

But he could not let him go, either.

…

"Yadonushi," came the voice, soft and rough and utterly exhausted. Ryou turned without thinking, with a cool trickling of water and a settling of petals. They whispered against the countertop like an ancient dead language, golden and forgotten, irrevocably and irreversibly lifeless.

"Two months," said Bakura, and there was something near reverence in his tone. His steps were light across the kitchen tiles, fleeting and soundless as a shadow. Slowly he moved, slowly, but with a residual grace that even death could not capture. There was the ghost of a smirk flitting about his lips. "Two months, when they were dead to begin with."

"They weren't," Ryou said, "they're not. They're still…they're still here."

Bakura came closer. He smelled of time, Ryou noted, of sand and rain and roses. He smelled of quieting blood beneath quieting skin. There was time beneath his eyes, slashing downward, crossed twice. There was time in the beat of his synchronized heart.

Ryou's gaze slipped toward his socks, away from his darkness. The vase crashed behind him, splintered, skittered, and a rainbow fell bright across the floor.

Bakura smiled.

"I told you that day, you know. You remember."

Their fingers met, brushed across skin, brushed across clothing and teardrops and snow-colored hair. Small, precise movements traced a small, precise scar, and crimson flowed into the rainbow, distorting it. The tiny glass slivers were like diamonds in the sun, setting sparks against their kiss.

"I remember," said Ryou.

The final rose lay between them, dried and brittle, its thorns a hollow rattling of what had once been. Carefully, Ryou settled beside it, bloodied knees and empty soul, scorched and raw and half-destroyed. The bones were prominent beneath his skin, bruises smudged beneath his eyes. A streak of blood ran thickly through his hair, unashamed and uninhibited. Brown eyes were dulled, both pairs strangely absent, staring into linoleum.

The roses were dead to begin with.

"I loved you," said Bakura, as a heart stopped beating with a stuttering sound, carried away by the storm.

…

Fin. I know it was a little vague in the ending, so you can either interpret or ask. In the latter case I'll clarify. Reviews are greatly appreciated; it would make me happy to hear from you. Yes, you. Click the button?