"Ryou."
A voice floated into his ear, soft and lyrical and gentle. Heavy heat emanated from deeply tanned skin. Ryou melted in response. His eyes turned to liquid, dark chocolate dripping into clandestine pools of bitter sweetness.
"Yes?"
A gulp. A shudder.
"Come here."
A hot flash of panic.
Nothing within Ryou's body or mind was solid. Everything that was supposed to be solid had liquefied under the intense pressure of the other boy's presence combined with the heat of his skin. Fingers grew numb. Limbs sagged. Every particle swam inside an ocean of lava. In this moment, Ryou developed a hypersensitivity to every last particle inside him, aware to a fault of the nervous networks overlapping inside of him.
He couldn't move.
"Hey."
Closer.
More heat.
"It's okay."
A brush of bronzed fingertips on a canvas of pallor.
Fire.
An infinity of neurons.
The fingertips began to paint a picture at the base of his neck. They traced tentative, delicate, archaic patterns into the unstained skin. The skin flushed beneath the white-hot touch of another, causing Ryou to jump back in hesitation and alarm.
Marik stepped back.
"Is this okay?"
The voice crashed into his brain, reverberating within the chambers of his soul. His consciousness solidified once again.
He was in his apartment. Alone.
Almost.
He had agreed to give Marik a place to stay while the Egyptian sorted out family issues. Ryou didn't want to pry, having been raised in a culture that valued pristine etiquette, so he did not inquire about specifics. In hindsight, he found himself regretting the decision to let Marik stay with him at all. He knew he wouldn't be able to resist the boy for long. Marik was the only one who held the power to send Ryou's heart into such a frenzied, inconsistent tempo. His very skin whispered promises of heat and passion; his powerful eyes sang bold melodies of tempestuous longing.
He responded by hesitantly reaching towards Marik's face, brushing cool fingers against a warm cheek. Eyelids drooped seductively, a spark reigniting the steadily growing flame.
In a rush of heat, Marik grabbed Ryou's face and pulled it closer to his own. Lips crushed against lips, slender fingers fumbled desperately for a stronghold until they stumbled upon sturdy arms and well-toned muscles.
In Ryou's brain slammed an odd combination of nothing and everything. His crippling tendency for overthinking was overridden by a rush of sandy, sultry passion. This need to satisfy a long, deeply-buried craving began to occupy Ryou's brain, as it spread through the rest of his body, thick, slow, and deep.
All logical thought shut down. Ryou found himself struggling to stifle a moan as Marik prodded further, explored wet caverns with a devilishly dexterous tongue.
That damn tongue.
It was enough to drive the other boy absolutely mad.
In response to the overflowing heat, Ryou kissed back. Hard.
He knew precisely how the game was played. There were rules, yes. This was by no means a arbitrary game of child's play. This was the most strenuous of games in that you had to control yourself. You must always be on your guard. You couldn't let the other know he had this ability to make you melt. It was a power struggle. If you let him know that the way his serpentine tongue maneuvered skillfully around your mouth, or even better, lapped persistently at your ear, drove you up the wall, he caught you. He won you. It turned into a conquest, through which he gained the ultimate satisfaction: having you wrapped around his little finger. If he stopped, you were entirely at his mercy. You were left no choice but to beg for more.
Fueled by heaven and hell and all that lay between, Ryou leaned wholly into the kiss. Everything around him began to blur as longing began to consume him.
Marik broke away abruptly.
"This isn't your first time?" His voice dripped with heavy desire.
Ryou felt a flush return to his face.
"No, actually." Much to his chagrin, his voice caught as Marik rubbed a hand slowly down his spine towards the small of his back, increasing in speed and pressure upon the sight of undeniable pleasure flickering through his eyes.
Ryou bit his lip in an attempt to fight back another groan. A faint whimper managed to escape. He chastised himself mentally as Marik grew bolder still.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just give in. After all, Ryou had never claimed to be particularly good at this game. He never came out on top, no matter how he fought. In spite of this, he was grateful for the experience that had adequately prepared him for this moment.
A sinister laugh, quiet at first, reverberated in a crescendo as it encroached upon Ryou's innermost thoughts.
/You're welcome, yadonushi./
Ryou's galloping heart skipped a beat.
No no no, not you, anyone but you, Ryou hissed through his link with the spirit of the Ring. Not you, no no no. Get out.
Ryou shoved the spirit out of his consciousness using all the willpower he possessed, including that which he had amassed in a vain attempt to resist the dark-skinned boy pressing steadily against him. The spirit left Ryou's thoughts as abruptly as he had entered.
Growing comfortable with the idea of being alone with Marik, Ryou gripped the Egyptian by the arms and pinned him against the wall. His newfound strength surprised them both. This time, he was the one exploring, tongue travelling beyond wet mouths and into new territory.
"Nggg…"
Marik growled lowly as Ryou slowly licked an earlobe. The ability to elicit such a response from the other boy sent through Ryou an indescribable surge of confidence doubled with pleasure.
He moved down from Marik's ear to the base of his neck, where he licked tiny, endless, meaningless circles. He shifted down to his collarbones, increasing the speed in response to Marik's tiny moans of pleasure.
Why had he waited this long? Why had he fought so hard? He could've had Marik this whole time.
Marik gripped Ryou by the shoulders and shoved him onto the unmade bed.
Or, rather, Marik could've had him.
Bronzed hands willed away the troublesome striped shirt. The stronger boy immobilized the other's slight frame. Tan legs locked around the pale torso. Sturdy hands pinned skinny wrists to the mattress. His tongue maneuvered its way around the boy's squirming frame with a skill and sensitivity that was both terrifying and rapturous.
Behind an ear. Around the neck. Along the crevice of a clavicle. Down, down to the rapid rise and fall of the lean chest.
Disjointed thoughts chugged through Ryou's mind on a train without tracks. Ordinarily a painstakingly articulate fellow, Ryou was distressed by how inarticulate he had become within his own mind.
Bogged down by fragments, Ryou began searching desperately for whole, sound words. "Don't" and "stop" came immediately to mind. The issue, then, was not in finding the words; it was in whether he intended the words to be understood in conjunction.
Dark eyes darted about frantically. The world grew fuzzy. He tried in vain to make sense of his surroundings. Reality became increasingly hazy the farther down his torso Marik moved.
God, this was a heavy game. Every move you made was irrevocable; every move had the potential to encourage the other to dominate you in a game you never had a chance of winning. If you ever let escape how unspeakably divine were his lips on your neck, or his tongue in your mouth, or his fingers brushing against your hip, you became his forever. Although Ryou would argue, as he always argued, that a few minutes of paradise would repay him in some form of eternity in hell.
Bakura would see to it.
Ryou knew from experience the spirit did not take kindly to being silenced by anyone, especially not by his pathetic host. But Ryou had stood up for himself before, so the pressing issue was not that he'd done so this time. The issue was that he wanted Marik in the first place. Then again, Ryou told himself, Bakura didn't have a monopoly on him, simply because Ryou was his host. He was free to do what he wanted. If anything, the spirit owed the boy indefinitely for giving him a body when he had no means of achieving his goals otherwise.
However, Ryou knew that logic was borderline useless when dealing with the spirit of the Ring. He knew that these measurable moments of pleasure, tiny pockets of time, would inevitably lead to an indeterminate existence in the irreconcilable inferno that was Bakura. For these few seconds, or minutes, or centuries of pleasure, he told himself, the hefty price would be hell as inflicted by Bakura for however long he deemed appropriate for Ryou's sin.
Squeeze rub pinch melt moan
Marik's hand had found its way to Ryou's back pocket, making it difficult for Ryou to bring himself to care about hell, or the spirit, or anything but the Egyptian's hot desert breath on his chest. Here, he could drown himself in endless ecstasy and asphyxiate himself in saccharine sensuality.
But were these moments worth it all, the certain damnation he would face? Of what little remained, Ryou's capability for rational thought told him no.
Maybe it wasn't too late to stop. He hadn't yet committed to the passion. He could manage an existence in which the spirit of the Ring was all he would know. All he could know.
Maybe limbo wasn't so bad. After all, they said ignorance was bliss.
Then what was this? If ignorance was bliss, certainly, then, the converse was true. This culmination of sensations – nip, skin, kiss, tongue, suck, mouth, touch, fingers, blaze, eyes, trace, chest – nothing short of heaven. Bliss was ignorance. This state of uncertainty, lack of coherent thought – a nip here – inability to form sentences – several tiny kisses there – this was his heaven.
The notion of giving in to the passion, racked with sin and lust and dire need, was overwhelmingly tempting.
Marik seemed to read Ryou's mind at that moment.
Fierce purple shot daggers of desire into conflicted brown.
Hunger. Power. Yearning.
"Stop fighting."
A request.
A hand rested dangerously on Ryou's hipbone. A thumb hooked into a belt loop, tugging, urging, insisting, commanding.
Begging?
They both wanted it, Ryou was certain. But now, an escaped gleam in Marik's eye indicated that he, Ryou, was far from the only one who needed it.
Ryou obliged by kissing the boy deeply. In this kiss, they exchanged more than they ever could – he remembered coming across the phrase in Latin, when he took a class the previous summer at the community college a few blocks away – per sola verba: through words alone.
From the kiss emerged the age-old union of lust, forward motion, heat, and tenderness. Ryou melted anew as the other boy tugged at his heartstrings.
Be mine, whispered steamy skin.
I can't, confessed a wilting heart.
Hungry fingers pleaded at belt loops.
But fuck, I want you.
Ryou let the ever-growing wave of wanting wash over him entirely. He appeased the eager fingers by removing the jeans which had for so long served as a barrier between him and his sun-kissed lover.
From there, Ryou completely lost it. Any sort of intelligible thought evaporated as a ravenous tongue ran along the inside of his thigh. Impatient hands grasped hips, pulling them closer, closer still. Bones grinded against bones. Insistent fingers yanked clumps of hair. Marik initiated another saturated kiss, but at this point, they were both too excited for it to be anything but a purely physical endeavor. Teeth bit down on tongue, as if to claim it for its own. Ryou cried out but did not let the abrupt pain deter him from enjoying the sensations below. Marik was clearly dominating physically, but it had ceased to be a mental game manifested in physical maneuvers. They were both approaching their peak and, at this point, would do anything to reach it.
You are so good so far.
Hips fell into a rhythm as Ryou peaked closer and closer to unparalleled ecstasy. Or, rather, temporary paradise doubled with the promise of hell. But he couldn't stop. If he stopped now, he'd never be able to start again. Logic would rush to clean up the mess he'd made. Rationality would win. They kept at it consistently, moaning and convulsing and gasping against each other.
Hips lurched forward.
Mouths parted to moans of pleasure.
Harder.
Faster.
Oh Ra more hard more Marik more tongue more want more sweet skin more more more -
A sharp cry.
Overflowing ecstasy.
Eyes prickled with pleasure.
After he came, Ryou lay with eyes closed tightly as his body slowed down. To open his eyes was to lose the sensations entirely. He chanced an embarrassed glance at the other boy. Marik wore a hard-earned smirk, although there was no sneering condescension behind the wide smile.
"You know, you weren't bad yourself, Ryou."
Ryou couldn't help but laugh. While the tension was broken, Ryou couldn't help kicking himself mentally. Later, he knew, Bakura would destroy him. Bakura would mock him. Bakura would –
"Hey."
Sensing a source of grief rooted deep within the boy, Marik rolled over from on top of Ryou to on the bed next to him. He lifted a graceful hand to Ryou's face and gently pulled it toward his own. His thumb traced tender circles on Ryou's flushed cheek. He was answered with jagged breathing and panicked blinking.
"Marik, I can't – "
Firm lips silenced soft uncertainties as Marik planted his own mouth over Ryou's. He ran a hand quietly through Ryou's hair, until his breathing slowed and his eyes closed once again.
As the kiss deepened, dripping with tender sweetness, all Ryou could think was how lovely it all was. It would never end. Any torment inflicted on him by the spirit of the Ring would be worth it. Hell, the whole world was worth it.
Ryou slowly broke from the kiss to say so.
"This is… this is really nice," he said softly, gazing endlessly into piercing purple eyes.
Marik responded with a smile that made the other boy melt as though it was for the first time. He brushed Ryou's hair out of his eyes and tucked it behind an ear as Ryou pulled him as close as the physical world allowed.