So, my first story. Yay! This is a tendershipping oneshot.
Contains: Implied rape, self-harm, suicide, character death and hallucinations.
I wouldn't necessarily classify this as 'romance', though there is a certain sort of 'intimacy' between them.
Based on the song Talk Show Host by Radiohead – the lyric excerpts featured in this song are not by me.
I have no rights to Yu-Gi-Oh! or its characters (unfortunately); I'm merely a fan.
Feel free to review or comment!
Thanks!
-Zlae.
It had happened again; that brief period of indecision. He'd wake up, sweating and rattled from his nightmares. Then he'd walk to the bathroom with his feet numbed on the chilly floor. And just as he stood in front of the cracked mirror, he'd wonder what he'd do if the beast inside of him finally took surface. Then he thought, and pondered, and wanted to be cowardly. If he didn't look, he wouldn't find out, right? But that would eat him alive.
And so he would look, ignoring the sunken look of his eyes and the feeling that he wasn't alone.
"But you're not," a voice inside of him whispered. He shivered, though his body was warm and sweat still coated his skin. 'G-go away, go away,' he thought, reaching for the razor.
Nothing held him back.
So he cut, like an artist sculpting a statue. Deep lacerations ran along his wrists, bleeding, raw and proof that he existed.
Sometimes, he needed to reassure himself.
"Why do you do that?" The phantom (made only to haunt him) would always ask.
Every time, as if content with this routine, he would reply, "Because it makes me think I'm still alive, even when I'm not."
Then the phantom would always say, "but you are," and he would pause (still expecting an answer).
Then, finally, he'd always whisper, "I know." The repetition used to comfort him, for some unknown reason. But this time, no conversation took place; the phantom was silent.
And for some reason, his absence was more unsettling.
He reached a decision and turned on the tap in the shower. And he drifted, his mind still thinking. "What are you thinking about?" The phantom asked.
He paused for a long time. "I don't know," he whispered.
"Why are you back?" He asked as he closed his eyes. The shower was still running.
"I don't know."
And it was peaceful inside of his mind for once. But still he didn't think and didn't talk, and he only barely dared to breathe. The water was ice cold, and each droplet of water pierced his skin like needles. Dimly, he was aware of the blood from his cuts mingling with the water. He watched, oddly fascinated by the subdued colour.
The phantom began to sing, "I want to, I want to be someone else or I'll explode," and the man shivered, though all of the ice in the world couldn't touch him.
He ignored everything, even as he turned off the shower and slipped onto the cold, bathroom tiles. His frail body was pale and skeletal, and still he did not move, even as he lay naked and shivering on the floor. The phantom demanded that he stood up.
He did not move.
He could not sleep.
He only realised then that the phantom was repeating a sentence over and over again. "Floating upon the surface for the birds, the birds, the birds…" It echoed within his mind. He was powerless to stop it, just like he was powerless to stop everything else in this world.
He stood up from the floor as pain throbbed from every part of his body. A ghost of a smile touched his pale face, as he realised the vultures did not come for this living corpse.
But then he realised how much he wanted them to.
His hands reached for the razor again.
"Don't!" The phantom shrieked. He froze. Did the phantom not want his precious vessel destroyed? In fact, when did he begin this method of self-destruction? He stopped and looked down at his hands.
They were shaking slightly.
But he ignored that; his gaze was transfixed on something he hadn't seen in a long time. On his left wrist was one of the cuts, gaping and left open. He peered in, unable to help himself. He imagined he could see the bone and look into his tainted veins. He wondered if he could easily peel off his skin layer by layer, like an onion.
But he would not cry.
Instead, he saw nothing, and pain clouded his vision. He dug his palms into his eyes and howled, waiting for the pain to subside. It didn't, but still he waited as his head throbbed, and he-
Something touched his clawing hands.
"You want me, well fucking come and find me," the phantom sung, his voice a whisper.
The man opened his eyes; the phantom stood before him.
The pain disappeared.
"No," he whispered. "No, this isn't real. Go away, go away," he whispered to himself in an attempt at comfort, turning away from the (supposedly) hallucination.
The hand (which was slightly translucent) brushed his neck.
He froze.
Every muscle in his body tensed, and it was as if it was a fight-or-flight situation. He tried to ignore the hand, but still he whispered, his voice rising slightly.
"Go away, go away," he wailed.
There was another hand.
His voice trembled, and he clamped his hands on his ears to block out the phantom's continuous singing.
"I'll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches," he sung next, brushing a hand through the man's white, stringy hair. The phantom got a handful of unwashed hair and forced him to turn around, facing the translucent copy of himself.
Now all of him trembled, and he couldn't get the feel of the phantom's hands on his neck out of his mind. He imagined it now; the phantom wrapping both of his translucent hands around his neck, squeezing and squeezing and his eyes would pop, until-
The phantom leaned down, planting a rough kiss on his lips.
Immediately, he tasted bile at the back of his throat. Pushing the phantom away, he sat with his back to the rim of the bathtub. His vision was wavering, and his body felt too hot.
He leaned up quickly, just as his stomach convulsed. Whatever meagre meal he had previously consumed was wretched up violently into the bathtub.
He sat back down, clutching his upset (and now empty) stomach.
With his naked back cooling on the tiles, he said to what he had labelled unreal, "Would this be labelled as narcissism; to be so in love with myself that I conjured a whole hallucination?" The phantom, for once, had no answer.
Still stunned at being kissed by a body that wasn't even real, he realised how insane and strangely humorous it seemed. He couldn't help himself, he chuckled.
The phantom froze, staring at the man in a combination of wonder and scepticism.
It just made him laugh more; it was just so fucking funny! He was still laughing, and he couldn't stop. His lungs felt like balloons that had been pumped full of air and suddenly popped. Though he wore a grin on his face, he began choking and made strangled sounds.
Sometime, halfway through his momentary lapse of insanity, his chuckles had turned to sobs.
"You're not real," he said to his hands as his shoulders shook. He looked up briefly, and the phantom still stood there, illuminated by the flickering lights.
"What could I do to prove that I'm alive?" He said to the shambles that made this man.
It was barely a whisper, but still he heard it.
"Die."
"And nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing," the man sung to only himself, as he had no one else to share it with.
The phantom had heard it, and those words echoed in his mind.
And nothing, nothing, nothing-
"I hate you," the man whispered, still unwilling to look at the carbon copy of himself.
"I know," the phantom responded.
The man was wrong.
They had hate.
And sometimes, hate was better than nothing at all.
"Who are you, anyway?" The phantom asked.
The man paused for a second. "Who am I?" He said slowly, as if thinking of an answer to a seemingly difficult question. "I am me," he stated, as if that would answer everything.
"No, what do people call you?" The phantom rephrased, as if he was speaking to a child.
"…Ryou?" He said, the pitch of his voice rising at the end, making it sound like a question. Why was he so hesitant towards his identity?
What made him so unsure of who he was?
"Well, who are you?" Ryou asked, looking up, wanting to know if his hallucination had a name.
"I am you, and you are me, and we are the same," He walked forward, and Ryou tried to retreat. "We are Ryou."
He sounded so sure at that statement.
How could he have lied with such a straight face?
He took Ryou's hand, then. Clasping them together, they almost looked like they were supposed to be that way. Ryou's hand was solid and a washed-out colour, whereas the phantom's was bright and luminous.
But that bright light couldn't have had a larger shadow.
Ryou saw something strange as they clasped hands. It was like a shadow had risen up and up and began snaking toward him, with fangs dripping poison, then lunging towards him as-
"You want me, well, come on and break the door down," the phantom sung.
It sounded so absolutely wrong, just then. It sounded like a sweet, little girl singing of cataclysms and tragedies.
Why it had sounded so wrong to him, he wouldn't know.
It was like watching a film, just to see that the audio and the video didn't sync correctly, and you were hearing voices before their lips moved.
Ryou chose to ignore it, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something inside of him was unraveling.
But then he had to think about what was still shut.
It seemed like everything he had thought or experienced was laid bare for the phantom to read like an open book. It was like a naked lover's hesitation before giving themselves over to the other, except they had no trust between them; no hope that they wouldn't be devoured by one another.
That paranoia was the basis of their skewed relationship, and their eventual undoing.
Ryou paused, until making yet another decision. He shook off the phantom's hand (that had all the substance of a real one) and walked out of the bathroom. He picked up a book at random; it had torn edges and yellowed pages.
He didn't mind.
It's not like he'd be able to read at a time like this, anyway.
"What are you reading?" The phantom's voice asked.
He ignored it, still intent on pretending to read.
It wasn't until he looked down at the page that he realised something. The words were moving. The letters were rearranging themselves, writhing and squirming like maggots, and oh god, help me, help me-
"You want me, fucking come on and break the door down," the phantom sung from behind him, just as the phantom placed a hand on Ryou's shoulder.
He froze.
His eyes continued to watch the rearranging letters, his hands shaking as he clutched the book.
Someone- thing. 'Thing,' he reminded himself. 'He- It is not human.'
Someone behind him coughed. He hoped it was a stranger, just before he stood up and shook off the phantom's hand.
He turned.
He was all too familiar with this nightmare.
The phantom reached up, cradling Ryou's bruised cheek in his chilling palm. He was so gentle, as if this man would crumble in his hands.
He couldn't; he was already lost among the rubble. It was getting harder to distinguish himself from the pile.
Ryou stayed still, not willing to breathe nor run. The phantom's other hand reached upwards, tracing Ryou's sharply defined collarbone. How long had it been for someone to touch him and not grimace at the scars that adorned his body?
It looked like his skin was pulled taught over his bones, so sharp and paper-thin that they could be cut in an instant.
And that's precisely what Ryou always did.
Still the phantom was gentle, eyes tracing the man's malnourished stature; his ribs were painfully protruding, his arms boney and long.
Ryou couldn't feel nervous under the phantom's inquisitive gaze – the innermost chambers of his mind had already been exposed to him. What use could his body serve other than as the vessel for their minds to dwell in?
Their minds, which were slowly becoming one.
Ryou couldn't repress another shiver.
"Bakura," the phantom whispered to Ryou's pale, paper-thin skin.
Ryou looked up into the eyes of the phantom; he was met with black.
There was no colour; it was just empty sockets. It was an endless black, leaving no light, no colour, and no hidden messages that begged to be understood.
Ryou wondered; did that reflect the spirit that dwelled within that empty shell?
Was this phantom, Bakura, as empty as him?
Ryou turned his head away; there was something so relatable, so familiar about the nothingness in Bakura's eyes.
And because they were empty, they were unoccupied.
They were open.
And that's what scared him the most.
"Look at me," the phantom commanded; a snap in what was usually a calm voice. Ryou couldn't – wouldn't – refer to the phantom by his name. To do so would admit defeat.
It would mean Ryou was recognising him as a person.
And that thought alone terrified him.
Bakura sighed. It was such a weary, dreadful, humane sound that Ryou couldn't help it; he looked.
Such a huge mistake, to think that the phantom was humane.
Smooth lips smashed into his.
He gasped; whether from shock or disgust, he wouldn't know. Hands traced his skeletal frame, and he could do nothing but stand there.
His clothes were ripped off and still he stood, unresponsive.
The disgust riling up within him was too hard to bear. Continuous waves of nausea found their way into his body, and he couldn't move to throw up. A specific translucent hand held his mouth shut, and tears sprang to his eyes.
"You are such a beautiful mosaic," the phantom whispered into his ears. "So fragile and broken, the remnants of what would have been truly beautiful." His lips trailed Ryou's twitching jawline.
"But I like you like this; you're broken, but you can cut me," he whispered again, his other hand trailing along Ryou's smooth stomach.
"It's a shame you're not glued back together, though; I quite like destroying things," he whispered once more, before he began removing his clothes, completely assured that the frightened man before him wouldn't run.
"I'm ready," the phantom sung in a sweet voice, before taking over the unresponsive man below him.
Ryou woke, his body bruised and aching. The phantom slept on the floor beside him, naked and glowing.
Pictures flashed before his eyes, and he was uncontrollably sick.
He sat up, retching and retching, his stomach continuously convulsing as if convinced there was more in his stomach just to throw back up.
He wrapped his arms around his body and shivered, creating a cocoon that he wished no one could penetrate.
If only he still had a child's naivety.
The noise woke the phantom, whom Ryou was convinced was an absolute monster.
"Are you awake?" He mumbled.
"No," Ryou whispered, shutting his eyes.
The phantom didn't respond, and just lay there; satisfied.
Was that what the phantom had intended all along? To nearly worm his way into Ryou's porcelain heart, just to snatch at it with poison-tipped talons and shatter it?
To Ryou, it didn't appear to matter; now he really was a broken man; spiritually, physically and mentally.
And it seemed the phantom had no problem with that revelation, considering the smirk planted on his lips that he had repressed for so long.
Ryou stood up lightly, grimacing at the pain that shot through his whole body. So as not to gasp or cry out, he clenched his teeth down so hard on his tongue that it drew blood.
"Fuck it. Fuck it all," he whispered as he walked out of his disgusting apartment.
He had no bearings with him, and he had no intention of returning.
He stood at the top of the building; the wind shifted his hair and it flew behind him. His teeth chattered, his lips were bruised and his whole body ached.
"I want to be someone else, or I'll explode," he continued to whisper, mustering up the courage to end this miserable excuse for a life.
The birds were calling; it was time.
Bakura still sat on the carpet, singing and waiting for his pet to return.
"Floating upon the surface for the birds, the birds, the birds," he sung loudly, the pitch of his voice rising with each word spoken.
"You want me, well fucking come and find me!" Ryou yelled, stepping off of the building as if expecting a bridge to appear, or for an angel to catch him.
Time didn't freeze, nor did his uneventful life flash before his eyes.
His strings, which were once tied to the phantom, were snapped and broken. Now he was discarded like a broken marionette.
And he wouldn't have it any other way, even as he felt his limbs torn apart, again and again.
He felt a pair of lips brush against his, and he kept his eyes closed. The time had passed and he was free; living through death.
But every day, he waited for this illusion of freedom to diminish. The phantom haunted him still, even if he was only there through his scattered memories.
And now, Ryou truly was a mosaic, broken and bleeding upon the floor.