Disclaimer: I own nothing…besides the kittens and Tabitha.

A/N: Another YGO fic?! Man, I must be on a roll…

Well, this one is a Christmas present to Always a Bookworm, because she's just awesome like that. XD

This is set in the 'Joy of Pet Ownership' universe, sometime after the end of that series. The kittens were named by AAB-san (mostly), DeathMax-kun, and myself. I hope y'all enjoy!

.:.

Chaos Is What We Aim For

Or:

Christmas With The Bakuras

.:.

As soon as he woke up, Bakura knew it was just going to be one of those days.

The reason for this was simple: the clock read eight-thirty AM. Which was a perfectly typical wakeup time for most normal people, but as anyone can testify, Bakura is as far from normal as it is possible to be. He wasn't usually up until well past eleven, so this early wake-up call put him in a bad mood.

The second annoyance was discovering, about five seconds later, just what had woken him up.

Christmas music.

The thief groaned as he remembered that it was that time of year again. Christmas was only a few days away (he knew because Ryo had bought an idiotic Advent calendar at the beginning of the month-Bakura had promptly relieved it of all its chocolate, but that didn't stop Ryo from opening the little doors anyway), and that could only mean one thing: his hikari was decorating.

He groaned again. On the long list of things he loathed about Christmas, decorations were fairly high up, and that was saying something.

Bakura rolled over and made the executive decision to go back to sleep and not leave his bed until Ryo had gone (weekend be damned; the boy had to go somewhere eventually) and he could escape without being dragged into hanging holly. Unfortunately, a very pressing matter trashed this plan almost immediately.

His stomach began growling.

He attempted to ignore the hunger at first, but it was futile. His innards were persistent. Deciding there was nothing else for it, the thief climbed out of bed and slipped out of the door slowly, determined to grab some food and get back to his room before Ryo saw him.

One step…two steps…carefully avoid the creaky floorboard…

"Bakura!"

Damn!

Bakura turned grumpily to face a disgustingly cheerful Ryo.

"Morning," the boy said brightly. "What do you think of the décor so far?"

Bakura glanced around. It was as bad as he had feared. Holly garlands were framing every doorway and window. Gingerbread men and little angels were scattered about at random, smiling sickeningly down at him. Every piece of furniture had been adorned by at least one snowman-covered blanket or throw pillow, candy canes were everywhere, and the small living room had been all but filled by Ryo's prized plastic tree.

Aforementioned tree wasn't decorated yet, which struck Bakura as odd until the 'Oh, no' thought hit him.

Sure enough: "I saved the tree decorating for last," Ryo said, smiling. "I figure you're a member of this household too, you should have a chance to put up some ornaments."

'A member of the household'? Bakura almost snickered. If Ryo was admitting any kind of connection to him, then he must really have been in a good mood.

"So get a move on!" the younger boy continued. "I've already got the ornament boxes set out!"

The thief's amusement died. "Put up ornaments?" he sneered. "Me? The King of Thieves? I would sooner swallow every last one of them."

"Yes, yes, you're very evil, we understand," Ryo replied airily. "Now come on."

"Bite me."

"Tabitha will."

"Ta-what?"

A weaker man in Bakura's position would have paled. As it was, he merely got a very strained look on his face.

"The rat?" he snapped furiously. "You invited the rat?!"

"Cat, Bakura. Cat. And of course I did. Aineko's almost certainly going to be busy with college-she's graduating soon, you know-and Tabby deserves as good a Christmas as anyone."

"But if the little demon is coming over," Bakura continued, his eye beginning to twitch madly, "then that means-"

"Yes," Ryo responded simply. "Her kittens will be coming as well. Naturally."

Forget eye; now his whole head was twitching.

"I was just about to call Aineko and ask if she wanted me to take the cats for Christmas Eve also," Ryo was saying, "but I might be persuaded to spare you that, if…"

Bakura was digging into the ornament box faster than you can say 'roasted chipmunks'.

.:.

"No, not there…the composition is all wrong."

Bakura gritted his teeth. He was definitely starting to regret ever giving in to his hikari's blatant blackmailing. "It is," he snarled, "a tree. A-bloody-tree. Who gives a-"

"I do," Ryo interrupted disapprovingly. "I want it to look nice. You can't put every decoration at the bottom of the tree; never mind that it'll break off those branches, it makes the whole thing look bottom-heavy. Haven't you ever decorated a tree bef-"

The thief turned and raised an eyebrow.

Ryo flushed. "Sorry, sorry. Forgot."

Muttering swearwords somewhat less than quietly, Bakura adjusted the glittering Santa ornament whilst resisting the temptation to break it in half. He gestured to the re-positioned piece vehemently. The angry 'Well?!' went unspoken.

"I suppose that'll do," Ryo sighed. "You can quit now, Bakura; thanks for the help."

The thief snorted and went to raid the refrigerator; he never had gotten his breakfast.

.:.

Christmas Eve came, and with it a fresh wave of near-holiday giddiness from Ryo. Bakura was constantly on the verge of gagging, between that and the onslaught of Christmas decorations (hell, his own room had been invaded by a sprig of mistletoe; it had adorned the case of his pet scorpions-surely someone's idea of a very nasty joke). Not to mention the constant 'Merry Christmas' greetings coming from everyone on the street. And the fact that the tree in the living room was blocking the television entirely, therefore keeping Bakura from watching his horror movies. The whole thing was getting extraordinarily tiring and irksome, and he was counting down the hours until it was over.

As the night came, Ryo started going back and forth between his bedroom and the living room (where Bakura was lounging listlessly on the couch) and putting colorfully wrapped boxes and tissue-paper-filled bags under the tree.

Bakura sat up.

"The gifts," Ryo explained unnecessarily. "For Tabitha and her babies. And for you, of course."

The thief blinked and promptly began digging around in his ear for copious amounts of wax. Ryo saw and rolled his eyes.

"Yes, you," he sighed, and offered no further comment.

.:.

'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas…'

Oh, crap, Bakura cursed without opening his eyes. It's begun.

It was the same every year. First, the radio turned on (a Christmas station, of course). Then the smell of cooking ham (which was indeed beginning to float through the house). Then the inevitable. Resigned, Bakura began mentally counting down.

Three..two..one..and a half..

"Merry Christmas!!"

The door to Bakura's bedroom burst open right on cue, admitting Ryo. Bakura didn't have to look to know that a wide, thoroughly idiotic smile was spread across his hikari's face.

"Get up, hurry, Aineko will be here soon!"

"And I should care why?" It was no secret that Bakura openly loathed Tabitha's (technical) owner.

"Bakura. Bloody ham, remember?"

"…May the kittens-"

"-'nibble my fingers off in my sleep'; yes, for heaven's sake, we've heard it all before!" And he left, yelling "Ten minutes!" over his shoulder.

Grumbling, Bakura headed for the shower. The things I do for my bloody ham.

For a few holidays now, since Ryo got sick of literally dragging his yami out of bed on the morning of the event and Bakura got fed up with getting nothing out of it, the two had reached an agreement. If Bakura was up and ready in a suitable amount of time, then Ryo would put aside a sizeable slice of the ham he made and leave it rare, seeing as bleeding meat was the best meat in the former's eyes.

Aforementioned thief had just finished throwing some clothes on when the doorbell rang, signaling the beginning of the veritable hell known as 'Christmas: Ryo and Bakura Plus Kittens.'

.:.

"We meet again, rat."

Tabitha, a big red bow tied around her neck, almost seemed to nod.

Ryo stepped in before things could go any further. "Alright, I just set out the ham. Your bloody piece is wrapped up on the island, Bakura. I'm going to go get properly dressed up. Leave Tabby and the kittens alone, and don't you dare even think about getting out the scorpions."

Bakura scowled as his hikari exited the room. Fun ruiner.

And any further mental tangent was discontinued by a streak of pain across his lower back, which effectively replaced all thoughts with silent yelps.

"The hell?!" Bakura managed to growl. He turned quickly and saw one of Tabitha's kittens, wearing something that looked suspiciously like a smile on her smug little face.

That was fast…

"I am going," Bakura stated, sounding remarkably calm, "to take one of these holly garlands-" he rolled up his sleeves "-and strangle you with it."

The kitten darted forward, clawed at his exposed ankle, and darted while her opponent was still too pained to grab her.

Bakura shot Tabitha a glance. "You've taught your brats well," he said coolly, before bolting into the living room after the kitten.

.:.

Bakura entered the living room and instantly found himself under attack. The instigator kitten (Mittens, was it?), along with all of her brothers and sisters, went for his feet and legs, swiping sharp little claws at every bit of skin they could reach. Then they scattered.

He saw the things out of the corner of his eye as they flew towards the tree, then pounced into the dark green branches. Bakura lunged forward without a second thought, leaping onto the tree that was harboring his enemies and attacking it.

The tree fell with a crash-this in part due to the fall itself, but also to the fact that in collapsing the tree had knocked over one of Ryo's lamps. Shards of glass flew everywhere, but Bakura scarcely noticed, involved as he was with tearing through branches in pursuit of the fluffy little felines.

"Bakura? I heard a crash-what's going on in there?"

Crap. Inevitably, Ryo had heard the commotion. "Nothing," Bakura yelled back, keeping his voice firmly level. "One of the pygmy rats knocked something over."

There was no answer back. Danger apparently averted, Bakura looked back down at the tree he was attacking, just as a furry blur leapt up at his face.

The thief fell backwards as kitten instigator number two (it was Inky, wasn't it; oh, how he hated Inky-they had a long history; on their first encounter the little fuzzball had bitten off the leg of one of Bakura's scorpions) pawed his face furiously. Key word here being pawed, not clawed; apparently the diabolical ball of fluff had decided to put Bakura through as much torture as possible by making his cat allergies act up first.

Bakura smirked. "Too bad for you," he said. "I knew you were coming, and I knew you would exploit any advantage you were given, so I swallowed an entire bottle of anti-allergy medicine this morning." Ryo hadn't been at all happy about that one, but ah well.

The kitten, apparently getting the message, gave a startled mew and ran next for the kitchen. Not a moment later, the rest of the brood flew from the wrecked tree and followed their sibling into the kitchen. Which meant, of course, that Bakura followed as well. He grabbed a decorative box of matches (How the hell did those become decorations?) as he went.

A horrible sight awaited him. Whiskers, the tiniest of the demonic brood, was standing before his carefully wrapped slice of bleeding ham, clawing at the wrapping without mercy.

Without a second thought-or indeed, a thought at all besides 'Burn the little fuzzball to a crisp'-Bakura whipped a match out of the box in his hand, lit it with lightning speed, and chucked it forcefully at the kitten.

Whiskers darted neatly to the side; the match soared over his little head and Bakura watched as if in slow motion as it fell on Ryo's carefully cooked ham.

Oh, sh-

The expletive hadn't even fully formed in the thief's mind before the meat caught the flame. The small fire spread with an alarming speed. The kittens had vanished from sight, leaving Bakura shell-shocked and not quite sure what had just happened.

A loud and obnoxious noise startled him from his frozen position-the smoke alarm. Ryo would be coming any second now.

Suddenly calm, Bakura shrugged to himself, sat in a chair, and leaned back to watch the display of pyrotechnics while he could. He did love fire, after all.

As expected, Ryo was in the kitchen in about seven seconds flat. He froze in the doorway, eyes wide.

"The-you-what-?" he babbled, struck speechless by the spectacle unfolding in his formerly peaceful kitchen.

After a second or two he came to his senses and, yelling like a maniac for no apparent reason, snatched a small fire extinguisher out of the corner and proceeded to put out the flames like a man possessed.

The crisis had concluded for the time being, and Ryo slowly turned to the one who, no doubt in his mind, was to blame for it.

Bakura raised an eyebrow as innocently as he knew how.

"What are you looking at me for?"

.:.

Ryo had been unable to summon any adequate reply to that. He retreated to his room. For the next ten minutes or so Bakura was treated to a half-muted symphony of sounds from his hikari's bedroom, including (but not limited to) loud crashes, bangs of the possessions-being-hurled-against-the-wall type, and the occasional little sob.

Eventually Ryo made his reappearance and, seeming bizarrely collected, announced that delivery pizza was now on the menu.

Bakura realized after a few minutes that eviction was not in his immediate future, and decided that perhaps there was such a thing as Christmas miracles after all.

.:.

The pizza was delivered promptly. Dinner was undoubtedly a rather somber affair, but Bakura couldn't confirm this. He took his slice of bloody ham to his room and ate it there, in case Ryo changed his mind about the whole eviction thing.

After some time the thief was summoned by a moderately more cheerful Ryo, who told him that it was time for presents.

Human, spirit and feline sat around the (newly repaired and redecorated) Christmas tree like some mockery of a normal, happy family. Ryo presented the first gifts to Moppet and Rag-Tag, who were twins and the eldest of the kitten brood. Next was Tabitha, who occupied the place of honor at the head of the room (for reasons the thief could not fathom). Next was Bob-The-Blue (nobody could understand what had possessed Aineko to settle on that name). Then Quill. After which Bakura fell asleep out of boredom.

He was roused what felt like seconds later by an insistent "Bakura."

"What do you want?" he muttered grumpily.

"It's your turn," Ryo replied, sounding somewhat affronted. He dropped a wrapped box onto his yami's lap, causing all of Bakura's breath to leave him in a whoosh.

"What-the-hell?" he wheezed.

"Just open it," Ryo responded wearily.

Bakura eyed to box skeptically. It was covered in shiny blue paper, and the top was adorned with a gold bow. Shrugging to himself, he started shredding the wrapping paper. Which was fun. The thief had come to the conclusion over 3,000 years that shredding things was pretty much always fun.

When the hapless paper quit flying everywhere, Bakura found himself looking at a tin, wherein lay a boxed set of every Saw movie to date.

"You have no idea how hard it was to wrap that thing without looking at that stupid clown," Ryo stated with a shudder.

Bakura blinked a few times, unsure of how to react. Something he absolutely refused to acknowledge as guilt (because thieves do not feel guilt; never, never, never!) started squirming in the pit of his stomach.

"…"

Abruptly, the thief stood and left the room in a hurry.

.:.

Less than fifteen minutes later he returned to find a perplexed Ryo still sitting in the living room with the kittens and Tabitha.

"Bakura, what on earth-ouch!"

Bakura had unceremoniously dumped a large plastic grocery bag on Ryo's lap. When Ryo looked inside, he saw a freshly cooked ham burning a hole in the bottom of aforementioned bag (such was the extent of Bakura's cluelessness).

"The last ham in the last grocery store open on Christmas," Bakura muttered in a surly tone. "I had to threaten the butcher with mutilation to get him to cook the damn thing for me; honestly, it's so difficult to find good customer service these days.."

Ryo's mind, working furiously, had finally come to the conclusion that-although he would never admit it-Bakura was actually trying to be nice.

Well, Christmas is the time for miracles, he decided, and grinned. "Thank you, Bakura."

"Oh, shut up," Bakura grumbled, plopping back down on the couch. "If you ever mention this again, I'll cut off your toes while you watch."

Ryo laughed nervously. "Fair enough."

.:.

Strangely, the rest of the holiday passed without incident. Aineko eventually came to take her furry little spawn home, but not before Tabitha decided it was unfair that her babies got to have all the fun and snuck into Bakura's bedroom, where she promptly ate a second leg off of his prized scorpion.

Bakura resolved, after finding out, that he was going to steal his hikari's credit card again in order to buy some arsenic. It could be his Christmas gift to himself.

But for the time being, the havoc had ended and their lives could go back to whatever they considered 'normal'.

"Now," the thief muttered in a relieved sort of way, "I can sleep."

"Yes, you can," Ryo said cheerily. "I, on the other hand, need to start making plans."

Bakura stopped in his tracks. "Plans?" Slowly, he turned to look the younger boy warningly in the eye. "What plans?"

Ryo was already walking away, a smile on his face.

"Why, plans for the New Year's Eve party! Naturally."

Dead silent and still, Bakura stood in place exactly two seconds.

And then he darted into the kitchen for a meat cleaver.

.:.

Fin

.:.

A/N: And that is that. Hope you all liked, especially AAB-san. ^.^

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

-Sky