Hi everyone!

This is my first published work of fiction in about four years, give or take, so it may be a little under par. Constructive criticism is completely encouraged! And even just a few words are appreciated!

This isn't exactly your typical romance, so if you're looking for fluff, turn back now, lol.

I wanted to write a sort of in-depth relationship study between Ryou and Bakura at various points throughout the series. The timeline is never specified, as I wanted the focus to be on their forming relationship.

Typically, I tend to write those sort of quieter, deeper emotional stories, so if you think this turned out well enough, please drop me a word or three to let me know!

Enjoy!

=o=o=o=o=

-Sight-

What everyone always noticed, what they always commented on, was their similarities: hair the exact same shade of angel-wing white; pale moonlight skin; the high cheekbones and slightly rounded off chin, though these sharp angles were softened in the younger; and the rise and fall in intonation when each spoke in that soft melodic voice.

But the eyes were strikingly different.

His own were the standard brown, for which he thanked his genetics—at least this way he was less of a freak when compared to the rest of the Japanese population. His eyes were a little rounder than those of most boys his age, usually friendly and open and sparkling, matching the neutral pleasant smile that naturally hovered on his lips. When he cried, and this wasn't often, they became dark with unshed tears as to seem pitch black.

The other's eyes were tilted up at the ends, lashes thick for his gender but not enough to distract from the dark red irises, pupils narrowed as if not to miss a single movement from anyone. His gaze was carefully veiled, blank with countless years' worth of hiding his true thoughts. When he was angry, and this was often, they seemed to deepen to an almost unearthly red, bright and sharp enough to pierce through anyone and anything.

Typically, as if by an unspoken agreement, their eyes did not ever meet.

But Ryou remembered the first time it ever happened.

His body slept, unconscious, while his inner self was dwelling in his "soul room"—that was what Yuugi-kun called it—waiting for the midnight hours to pass, because the nights sometimes seemed endless with that crueler, deeper darkness lingering inside his own head. He shook his head, trying and failing to dispel the vague unspoken fears that sat heavily in his chest, standing up and crossing to the door, wanting to explore some other part of his mind in safe meaningless dreams until the sun rose. His hand thoughtlessly turned the heavy door handle, cold and smooth against his palm, and as his door squeaked open he heard an echo of it across the hall of his mind.

Instinctively, Ryou looked up, brows lifted in faint surprise, and saw the spirit of the Ring turning the door to his own soul room, a dark shadowed thing that clearly seemed out of place with the rest of the hall and its doors; the brick around the doorframe was broken and crumbled, as if the room had crashed in from another planet like a meteor, leaving behind a crater with an alien feel—'this doesn't belong here'.

The spirit lifted his own disinterested gaze as if by old habit, and surely it was for a man who had previously murdered and robbed more men than Ryou could count, a man who was always, always aware of his surroundings. When red irises met brown, Ryou felt his lungs squeeze inside his chest, feeling pummeled with the weight of thousands of years, breath choked in his throat, burning like sand in his mouth and nose, eyes watering in reflex, his body suddenly, seemingly aflame, back and arms and legs alive with what he felt to be an eternity of cuts and bruises and broken bones—

And then Ryou blinked.

The world righted itself again, the clean, fresh air from his soul room rushing into his throat as the door shut behind him, and the spirit stared at him for a moment longer, eyes widening for a fraction of a second. Ryou saw the echo of a car crash and a rainy night and a flash of understanding in that blood-drenched gaze before the other's door slammed shut. Ryou was left to his own devices again, shaken, left with the unsettling feeling that perhaps their doors did nothing to separate them from each other after all.

=o=o=o=o=

The spirit had discovered he could exist outside of Ryou's body in a mostly transparent, fairly intangible form, and had taken to doing so for quite a few months now. Since the incident from before, Ryou had steadfastly refused to look at the spirit straight on, preferring instead to use his peripheral vision to locate the other, and to avoid him as much as possible. It was dark outside that day, rain pummeling loudly and threateningly against the windows of Ryou's apartment, lightning flashing ominously every so often. He had been engrossed in making himself a soothing cup of cocoa at the kitchen counter before he realized he couldn't find the sugar, and upon turning to look for it, he found himself backed up against the stove by the spirit.

Ryou froze like a rabbit under the shadow of a hawk, mind whirling frantically. They had no protocol for this. This was never supposed to happen. They were not meant to meet outside of his head, their worlds didn't interact here. And yet the spirit stood in front of him, not moving but not allowing Ryou the room to slip away. Ryou cowered when a hand lifted to him, but it paused mid-air, as if its owner was not quite sure what to do with it. Ryou held his breath, and then blinked a few times before, hesitantly, not knowing why, he raised his own hand, fingers trembling, as if drawn unwillingly by a force he could not name.

He expected his fingers to meet empty air, as the spirit was unable to form a solid body in this world, but instead they met surprisingly rough, calloused fingertips, and in the same moment Ryou inhaled sharply as his head jerked up in surprise. Their eyes met again.

Only this time, as his body burned and ached and his breath wheezed painfully in his throat, he saw his house burn to the ground. He saw fire leaping through his bedroom door, saw the air fill with smoke, heard screams that instantly chilled him to the bone. He saw gold, boiling and white-hot, and there were—

Dear God, there were human hands reaching out of the molten mess.

Ryou jerked violently, bile instantly rising in his throat before he suddenly saw the comforting walls of his own apartment again, the red glare of the flames replaced by the grey light of the Japanese summer rain. His body remained in place, however, due to his fingers being tightly—impossibly—intertwined with those of the spirit's.

"Bakura," the spirit hissed, and it took Ryou a moment to process the shaken tone of his voice; he had never heard the spirit sound like that before, or even known it was possible. He blinked then, confused as to why he was being addressed by his last name, and looked up at the spirit properly. He saw a funeral written in the other's eyes, the roses Ryou had placed in his dead sister's hands, heard the ear-splitting sound of the car skidding off the road and crashing, the beep of the hospital monitor and the nurse's sorrowful face when she told him he was the only survivor, that his father was on his way...

Thunder shook the apartment, lightning illuminating their faces in harsh clarity. Ryou swallowed thickly, and the spirit averted his eyes, tugged his fingers free as though Ryou were poison.

"My name is Bakura, not spirit," the other hissed more tightly. "You had best remember that." He then vanished, though Ryou felt him faintly at the back of his mind, closed off tight and shrouded in impenetrable darkness, leaving the boy alone to process what had happened in the dim light of the kitchen.

The cocoa ended up splashed messily in the sink, the sugar untouched and pristine on the counter.

=o=o=o=o=

Time passed, and though Ryou tried his best to ignore the spirit—Bakura¸ he reminded himself—he found his skin tingling in a nervous sort of thrill whenever the other appeared, his face burning with a mix of fear and of anticipation. Ryou hid himself in his soul room each night, trying vainly to convince himself that they were still separate entities, himself and the spirit of the Ring. But the spirit had a name now, and Ryou was starting to feel blurred around the edges, as if he and the other were unwillingly diffusing into each other. Ryou never wanted to see anymore of those horrible images, what must have undoubtedly been Bakura's secretive past, but he felt it in every nerve of his body—the strange urge to reach out and touch the other, now that he knew he could, whenever he was near.

Bakura seemed to have taken a violent dislike to Ryou nowadays; he visibly stiffened when the boy was near, and his voice became clipped and cold when they spoke inside his mind. Once, Ryou had been able to feel his presence at the back of his mind like a heavy, uncomfortably warm shadow; now he felt as though he encountered a tightly locked cage, something that promised danger to anyone fool enough to touch it. Ryou knew this had something to do with having his memories exposed—after all, he knew how it felt, though Bakura gave no outward acknowledgement of seeing Ryou's own past when they had made contact. Ryou didn't exactly mind; he didn't know what to say to the spirit about what he had seen, and he didn't know what he would have wanted the spirit to say to him, either. For the time being, it seemed best that they didn't mention the strange things that had been occurring between them.

It was a late night when things began to change. The light of the television was flickering over Ryou's face while barely glowing around Bakura's form, the spirit reclining on his back on the only couch, his arms crossed behind his head and his eyes closed. Ryou sat with his back to the couch, trying to stay focused on the gory crime drama that was playing. Keeping his back to the other was the only way he could stifle the urge to make contact again. Neither of them spoke, the show droning on, and Ryou thought to himself that perhaps Bakura had fallen asleep. He was about to turn around and peek when he heard a faint stirring noise, then a weary exhale.

"I hate Destiny."

Ryou blinked, hearing the capital letter in the word, and he was confused by the statement. "Pardon?" He didn't quite dare to turn around yet; they never spoke much these days, and Bakura never initiated anything that could pass for normal conversation. Ryou found himself holding his breath. He was afraid to ruin this moment, but was suddenly yearning desperately to hear the other's voice.

Bakura shifted, the fabric of the couch scarcely making a noise due to his barely-there presence. When he spoke again, the voice was closer to Ryou's ear, breath stirring his hair and making him shiver. "There have been so many who have found the Millennium Ring. So many, and all of them were weak." He scoffed, and Ryou could imagine his mouth twisting up in a bitter not-smile. "None of them survived, none of them could be the vessel I needed. Things never…matched up." There was a long pause, and Ryou again fought the urge to turn around. "Then it fell into your hands. So young, you were just a child." His voice was curiously soft, and Ryou fancied it was weighed down with a sad sort of feeling, of someone who had seen a lot in his lifetime. "Just a child, but you had my name. You didn't know, of course, not then. You were so soft, and you cried all the time. I hated whatever cruel fate had landed me with someone weak like you…but you had my name." Bakura sighed again, softer this time, and Ryou shivered at the sound. "I told myself it wasn't important, but even I couldn't deny it was Destiny. Somehow, you were the one who would be the means to my revenge."

Ryou meant to not interrupt, he really did, but his curiosity awoke at the word and he turned to look at the spirit, eyes rounded and wide. "Did you say 'revenge'? For what? What happened?" Bakura opened one eye, fixed him with a blank lidded gaze for a split second before closing it, and Ryou felt cold skitter down his spine. Of course, all those things he had seen. Those things he had felt. "So all that was real, then," he whispered, and Bakura shrugged. Ryou saw the tightness in the other's mouth though, saw where his shoulders came down heavier than before, weighed down with memories, and suddenly Ryou wondered if Bakura had thought about the death of his village, of his family, every day for the past three thousand years.

Ryou thought about his sister, his dear beautiful sister, and his equally beautiful mother every day.

For Ryou, it had only been a handful of years, but it still twisted hard like a knife through his side.

And if that was how Ryou felt, then Bakura must have felt…

Ryou did what he had been trying to avoid doing for weeks now, and with barely a thought behind it, lifted his hand and gently, very gently, rested his hand on the other's head, letting it lay there for a moment. Bakura's eyes shot open, both this time, fixed on the boy, his entire body tensing and Ryou prepared himself for the verbal assault for daring to violate their unspoken rules. But the words never came, and Ryou met the other's gaze steadily. This time, though they both held their breaths, there were no images, no memories of someone else's past horrifically painted on the backs of their eyelids.

So Ryou let his hand relax, brushed his thumb over the other's forehead and smoothed his hair back silently, gentling him like one would a small animal. Bakura stared at him all the while, as if unsure whether to tear him apart in rage or not, as if he were struggling to understand this kind of touch. Ryou imagined—no, he knew with a sudden clarity that his compassion was the main issue that made the spirit tense under his touch. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name, just as he knew Bakura could see inside him too, could hear his silent apology for what had happened to them both, for saddling the spirit with someone he despised, someone young and impossibly ill-suited to any kind of revenge.

There was a moment, fleeting yet endless, in which they both looked into each other with an understanding wrought with sadness, with the sands of the past stinging them both, and they each knew that yes, Destiny was at work, and neither would be free until they both passed on.

Perhaps not even then, Ryou felt the other think, and he gentled his touch even more.

Ryou didn't remember falling asleep, but he awoke on the couch with a blanket pulled up to his shoulders and a pillow under his head. The spirit was quiet in his mind, but it was not in anger this time, and Ryou was equally silent about the previous night.

As always, their rules were unspoken, so the following night, when Bakura roughly pulled Ryou against him, calloused fingers being careful not to tangle in his hair while clumsily stroking it back, Ryou said nothing.

Words would have been painfully insufficient.

=o=o=o=o=

Things couldn't stay peaceful forever, unfortunately.

Ryou sat in the corner of the living room, knees tucked up to his chest as Bakura raged, stalking the length of the small one-bedroom apartment with an unholy fury borne of years of pain, flinging plate after plate against the kitchen cabinets as he cursed the Nameless Pharaoh to Hell and back, that idiot who thought he understood, who looked at Bakura with confused almond-shaped eyes and tried to offer his help. "Help!" Bakura snarled, his hair fanning out in sharper points with his anger, "as if he could ever—" He broke off again, punctuating his statement with a powerful kick to the oven, denting in the door. Ryou winced a little but said nothing, just waited until the tantrum had run its course.

Much later, the early light of predawn found them tangled up in each other's arms, Bakura's fingers curled tightly into the back of Ryou's shirt while Ryou ran calming fingers through the other's hair and smoothed down his shirt collar, resting his cheek against the other's head. It was quiet in Ryou's room, as it always was during these times, only disrupted by breaths and heartbeats, or the soft scrape of Ryou's jeans against his sheets. Ryou was only half-thinking, acting on instinct when he pressed his lips to the other's hair in a comforting gesture, when the body against his froze.

Ryou blinked, startled, and Bakura's fingers twitched before uncurling from his shirt. "Ryou." His voice was suddenly flat and low-pitched, though not with anger but with a quiet lack of emotion that was somehow much worse. Ryou felt his stomach twist in nervousness and guilt, letting go and pushing away, trying to curl into the sheets and hide his face. "Ryou," the voice repeated, this time more insistent, with an edge to it that he couldn't identify. Ryou shook his head, almost wildly terrified, not wanting to name this moment, this feeling, trying still to deny it in hopes that he could keep it from happening at all.

Strong calloused fingers grabbed his chin and forced his face up, Bakura now towering over him in the darkness. Ryou still slid his eyes away, hands pushing weakly at the other's chest, heart beating too fast for him to breathe, let alone think straight. "Don't!"

"Ryou!"

Startled by the unmistakable command in the other's voice, Ryou's wide eyes locked with Bakura's.

They never had needed words.

Ryou tried to look away, tried to undo the damage, but though Bakura's eyes widened in disbelief, his hold on the boy's chin remained firm. "Ryou, no." Ryou whined in spite of himself, shot clean through with terror, convinced he had ruined everything and that now the spirit would really leave him, now that he had broken the rules, now that he had become so weak. "Ryou, you bloody fool." And the voice this time was not angry. Not—not at all.

Ryou knew this tone of voice.

Tense, but…scared?

He looked up again, black-brown meeting intense scarlet red, and Bakura's eyes were just as wide and afraid as his own. "Ryou, you can't. You can't."

Ryou's heart uncurled itself, began to beat stronger now, in double time, and he suddenly became aware that the fingers on his chin were trembling. He reached up to cover those fingers with his own, steadily. "I already have."

The hand on his chin yanked itself away, and Ryou found himself pinned down by strong hands on his shoulders, practically forcing him back into the bed while Bakura leaned down further, hair falling forward to shield them both from the starlight, his words sharp and pointed with urgency. "I don't love, Ryou. I don't know how. And I can't learn now, not after everything."

"Will you leave?"

Ryou's voice was so quiet it was barely a thread of a whisper, but Bakura jerked like he had been punched, his grip momentarily tightening. "You know I can't."

The silence that followed was longer than any they had encountered before: Ryou lax against the mattress, hair splayed out, completely calm but unblinking while Bakura pressed him fiercely into the bed, fingers dangerously close to his throat, arms tense and shaking, knees making sharp pressure points on either side of Ryou's hips.

For a long time, they looked into each other, Time and memories and Destiny shifting them back and forth between Egypt and Japan; between a bedroom and a burning village and a rainy night on the road; between the looming Palace of the Pharaoh and the first reverent touch of small hands against the Ring; and for a staggering dizzy moment between two boys staring in disbelief and heartbreak as their lives were torn apart in a matter of moments, the precise point in which their fate was sealed to each other.

They breathed.

Bakura's arms weakened all at once, his not-quite-form collapsing on top of Ryou's, neither making a move beyond hearing each other's hearts, the mingling of minds they never could quite escape, and the unnamed feelings that lay long and stretched out between them both. He didn't promise any declarations of love; he didn't say he could change, or learn; he did not promise himself to the incredibly young boy who lay warm and breathing underneath him.

Ryou didn't need any of it.

Words were never quite right between them—words could never quite define them.

It was always in the eyes.