Title: Off the Menu
Rating: SFW
Wordcount: 2,697
Summary: Menchi adores the Bakura who adopted her. It's too bad he comes as a package deal with a Bakura who wants to eat her.
Note: Because Fail_fandomanon is having a Woobie-Off, and Round 2 pitted Ryou Bakura against Menchi in the most gloriously pitiful 90s anime collision of our time.
Freedom shone like the unclouded sun, smelled like exhaust fumes and garbage, and felt like hot asphalt and hunger pains. Menchi delighted in everything but the hunger pains, and also the dumpster lid keeping her from what promised to be a stew of unwanted fast food.
She was still futilely pawing at it when a boy darted into the alley, shuddered, and took in his surroundings with wide-eyed bewilderment. Biting his lip, he scrutinized his hands, then began to investigate his pockets.
Menchi jumped down from the dumpster with an inquisitive yip.
The self-examination halted. "Hello there," the boy said. With a soft smile, he knelt to scratch behind her ear. "Are you lost, too? You haven't got a collar."
She whined as homelessly as she could.
"You poor thing. What kind of monster abandoned you?" He returned to frisking himself with his free hand. "I wonder if it's still Sunday."
With a deepening frown, he pulled from his back pocket an assortment of rusty keys, a gold earring, a stained shoelace, and half a wrapped sandwich. "I really don't want to know," he said, putting back everything but the sandwich, which he sniffed. "Do you like ham?"
Menchi made her eyes wide and wet and rose up imploringly on her hind legs.
He fed her the meat in bits, laughing as she licked his fingers. By the time he finished, he'd ended up sitting beside her on the least sticky part of the ground, and she climbed into his lap to nuzzle his face. As hoped, his arms curled protectively around her.
"My lease won't let me have a dog," he said, burying his face in her fur. "I really shouldn't have a dog." He stood without letting go of her. "This is a terrible idea."
He smuggled her inside his shirt during a lengthy bus ride, during which she learned from his external monologue that he frequently found himself in places he hadn't put himself, that he would have appreciated having been left with exact change for the fare, and that he talked to himself as if he expected to be answered. From the reactions of other passengers, she learned that his name was Bakura and that no one wanted to sit near him.
Menchi supposed there was some cause for concern, but he still smelled faintly of sandwich, he was providing high-quality petting through his shirt, and the huge, gaudy necklace she had to share space with wasn't too uncomfortable. And he was unmistakably not Excel.
The sound of a key turning in a door started a parade of unpleasant memories, but it fizzled as Bakura fished her out of his shirt, working her carefully past the pointy parts of his necklace. This was unmistakably not Excel's apartment.
He nuzzled the top of her head and set her down gently on the carpet. She stretched before trotting after him into what turned out to be the kitchen.
"I've never had a dog before," he said as he opened the fridge. "My little sister was allergic. So I'm not sure what to feed you, other than ham."
Menchi yipped and wagged her tail to indicate that she would be content to live on ham.
After a critical exploration of his Tupperware, Bakura asked, "Want to split this tuna salad?"
He let her lick his plate and fork, and afterwards he didn't scold her when she jumped up beside him on the sofa. She snuggled into his lap as he turned on the television. After flicking through a few channels with the remote, he sighed heavily and said, "It's Wednesday."
She licked the tip of his nose. With a quiet laugh, he turned the television off and redirected his attention to giving her a belly rub.
As she dozed off, she let herself entertain the hope that this time, freedom was going to work out.
Menchi woke to the horribly familiar sensation of being salivated over.
Muscles tensed, she opened an eye and found Bakura looming over her with an unmistakable gleam in his eyes. He sniffed twice and ran his tongue over his teeth. "It's about time he brought me a treat," he said with an unnerving chuckle.
When Menchi tried to bolt, he grabbed her by the scruff. Her claws caught him once on the forearm before he held her out of kicking range. As she whimpered and flailed, he jabbed her in the side with a finger and said, "Tender, aren't you? You'll make a delicious—"
His hand abruptly released her. Menchi bounced off the sofa and hit the carpet running. She gathered herself for a leap at the doorknob but botched it when he startled her with by yelling, "Don't you dare!"
Her second attempt got her paws around the knob, but no matter how she swung herself, she couldn't turn it. Behind her, Bakura continued to rant. When her forelegs gave out and dropped her back to the floor, she realized that he seemed to be arguing with someone. Ears pricked, she turned.
There was no one else in the living room. Bakura gestured wildly at the air in front of himself, then staggered backward as if someone invisible had shoved him. With a growl, he said, "You're being very difficult, host."
And here Menchi had dared to hope she'd found someone normal.
For several seconds he jerked and juddered, giving her the opportunity to dart past him through an open door. It led to a bedroom, where within leaping distance of the bed was a window with an obvious latch. The long walk up to the apartment suggested an equally long drop on the other side, but at least gravity didn't have teeth.
Behind her, Bakura shouted in a less guttural voice, "You've never eaten a dog with my body. ...No, you listen! You've never eaten a dog with my body!"
As he went on yelling at himself, she slunk past him into the kitchen, nudged a chair as quietly as she could over the linoleum, and used it to jump up on the counter.
"Putting her soul in a stuffed animal is not a compromise!"
There was a knife by the butter dish, shiny with fat and studded with crumbs. Menchi licked it clean, then nosed the lid off the dish and helped herself to the butter. Knife in mouth, she jumped back down.
"That's incredibly morbid," Bakura said, quieter now. He was silent for several seconds, and when he spoke again, he sounded bitter. "No, I really don't, do I? Fine. I accept. But not Duel Monsters, you've ruined it for me." A door squeaked open. "Definitely not Yahtzee, you always cheat. ...How would Battleship even work?"
Menchi peered around the corner to find him staring into a closet full of board games. As she took the opportunity to slip past him to the bedroom, he continued, "Right, I know your feelings on Jenga. And you know my feelings on one-body Twister. ...Ah, perfect!"
She gathered herself and leapt up on the bed, then threw herself at the window. Her claws scrabbled to catch the sill. As soon as she had her balance, she rose up on her hind legs and angled the knife into the latch.
A bemused growl came from the living room, followed by "Where the hell did dinner go?" Menchi frantically re-angled.
The latch clicked in the hopeful instant before she was snatched by the scruff. The knife clattered against the windowsill. Before she had begun struggling in her earnest, Bakura's grip shifted to cradle her against his chest.
"She is not dinner!" he said firmly, then lowered his gaze to her. He scratched gently behind her ears. "Don't worry. He's going to leave you alone after I beat him at Tiddlywinks."
Bakura's mouth twisted into a sneer to add, "What he means is, he's going to cook you for me after I beat him at Tiddlywinks."
Menchi whimpered.
He winced. "I wish he'd kept quiet about that, but really, you don't have to worry. I'm very good at Tiddlywinks." With a reassuring smile, he carried her with him into the living room. She would have found the return of the butter knife considerably more reassuring.
The moment he set her down, she made a break for it, but a thick, dark fog brought her to a skidding halt. It engulfed the walls, obscuring the features of the apartment, and seeped over the carpet like oil. Menchi backed away from it, whimpering, until it cornered her and rolled over her paws. It didn't feel or smell like anything, which unsettled her more than the cold she'd expected.
"Shh, it's all right," Bakura said as he spread a piece of felt over the darkness where the floor used to be. A little cup went in the center of it. "I promise I won't let him eat you." With a vicious grin, he added, "I promise I'll have your skull for a pudding cup." He scolded himself furiously as he made a little pile of discs in each corner of the felt.
Fleeing into the void failed to increase her distance from Bakura, so Menchi let out a woof of resignation and sat down to watch the game. It began with an argument over whether Bakura had let himself win a "squidge-off" and only made less sense from there. Keeping track of which actions made him cackle clarified nothing.
With smug satisfaction, Bakura flicked one disc on top of another and said, "Kebabs."
His brow furrowed as he repositioned himself near a different disc. "Sorry, what?"
Menchi, who had a sinking suspicion as to where this was going, had already taken off again into the darkness by the time his follow-up reached her: "That's what you're going to make out of it."
"You're horrible," Bakura snapped at himself.
"I'm not the one with half his winks squopped."
There came a clattering of plastic. "Now you are."
"Prepare for a gromping, host."
She wasn't getting any father away. Language itself was breaking down. There was no sense in being the only sane creature in a mad world, so Menchi threw back her head and howled.
"Shut it up," Bakura told himself.
"No, you shut up! You don't understand what it means to have a bond with a pet! I'm going to protect her from you if it's the last thing I—"
"Shut yourself up." Plastic rattled. "And that's another one squopped. I like my dogmeat extra-rare."
Out of breath, Menchi collapsed panting on her side. She still couldn't make heads or tails of the game, or of Bakura for that matter, but it counted for something that he didn't want to eat her at least half the time. At the very least, it was worth rooting for that aspect of him. As he surveyed the clustered discs with a frown, she made her way over to him, tail swishing low, and set a paw on the back of his hand.
Bakura's eyes met hers and briefly matched them for wideness and wetness, then narrowed them with determination. "You are not eating my dog," he told the little cup. "I believe in the heart of the squidger!"
Highly localized dramatic winds blew Bakura's hair out behind him as the plastic disc in his hand somehow reflected light. Head cocked, Menchi watched him slam the gleaming disc down and scrape it backward in slow motion, sending a smaller disc flying into the cup. A different disc bounced out. He flicked another one after it with the eerie calm of a sniper.
Having no idea what was going on beyond that it seemed favorable, Menchi wagged her tail and yipped.
When the flicking finally stopped, Bakura said nothing for several seconds. His left eye twitched. "Best two out of three," he said, before grimacing at thin air. "It's probably stringy, anyway."
He shook his head as the fog began to evaporate. Menchi barked after the receding darkness to make sure it knew it wasn't welcome.
She had just realized that she was free to run for the window again when Bakura picked her up, held her tight, and pressed his face into her fur. "You're safe," he mumbled, trembling and also getting her a bit damp. She twisted to lick his cheeks.
With a deep, shaky breath, he set her down. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and cleared his throat. "I'm so, so sorry about that. I had no idea he'd want to eat you. I suppose it's a good thing I didn't have any pets before I knew about him."
Menchi shuddered.
Looking away, Bakura continued, "So he can't try that again, but I understand if having an evil spirit around is a bit much for you, really I do." He shuffled backward, lip between his teeth, and opened the door. "I won't be offended if you'd rather leave."
Ears flat, Menchi glanced between his face and the doorway. No one had died tragically; there hadn't even been any firearms discharged. Dark magic that didn't twist causality into pretzels was a relatively low-key sort of weird. All things considered, this was probably as good as it was going to get.
And when he wasn't being a violent pet-eating lunatic, Bakura seemed like a boy in desperate need of a dog. Letting her ears relax, Menchi trotted over and pawed at his leg. He grinned and all but wobbled with relief as he sat on the floor to pet her.
"Do you like bacon?" he asked. "I can fry some up for us."
She barked eagerly.
Menchi woke in the middle of the night to find the bed empty. Whining, she dug at the empty sheets and sniffed the air. The window was open, letting in the city's various smells. After an investigation of the apartment turned up no trace of him, she curled up on his pillow. He'd probably appreciate returning to a warm spot.
She must have managed to fall asleep, because she was jolted awake by a knock at the door. When she ran over to bark at it, Bakura's voice carried through from the hallway: "Can you figure out the lock? He didn't bother with my keys again."
After eyeing the tricky doorknob, Menchi made a circuit of the living room and found a ring of keys poking out from beneath the sofa. She carried them to the door in her mouth and nudged them under with her nose, interrupting muttered speculation as to whether it was Thursday.
"You're so clever!" Bakura said brightly. Her tail wagged into a happy blur as he unlocked the door.
When she tried to jump up on him to greet him, she found a large sack in her way. He reached down blindly to scratch her head as he dragged it inside. She circled and whimpered.
"Sorry, he likes to run off with my body while I'm sleeping. I hope you didn't worry when you woke up alone."
Menchi exuberantly licked his hand.
"Ah, that tickles! Anyway, he stole you toys, which I've set my expectations low enough to think was thoughtful." Bakura shook the sack out over the floor, releasing a squeaky flood of rubber and fabric. "And he got you tags with 'KEBABS' on them, which wasn't."
With a yip of partial approval, she nosed through the toys. One shaped like a beardless wizard squeaked satisfyingly in her mouth. As she gnawed on it, Bakura fastened a collar around her neck, then took hold of the wizard's pointy hat to start a game of tug-of-war.
She hopped backward with a playful growl. Her stomach gurgled a warning.
"Maybe we shouldn't have shared that ice cream last night," Bakura said, hurriedly scooping her up and tucking her into his shirt. "We should probably figure out what you're supposed to eat." His voice went guttural: "We'll start with human flesh."
Menchi shifted inside his shirt to lick his belly. He made a startled noise and, judging by his sudden vertiginous lurching, almost fell down a flight of stairs. She whined until he peered down inside his shirt at her with a proud smile.
"Good girl! He hated that."