Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this fanfic unless I created it myself. Anything that I did create was inspired by something owned by someone else. This is done for fun and entertainment, not for profit.
Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh
Title: Designs To Follow
Romance: Yami no Bakura x Bakura Ryou
Word Count: 2,126
Genre: Romance, Angst||Rated: PG-13
Challenge: 12_stories: prompt #7: loyalty
Summary: The Spirit of the Millennium Ring has preparations to make once Battle City is over: preparations that involve his host.
Bakura Ryou closed his apartment door behind himself and locked it without thinking about it. Doing so was not all that necessary, but he did it anyway. Anyone who tried to break in here would regret it, for the entire five minutes or less that they had before he killed them.
"I wouldn't kill them." He didn't jump. He was too used to hearing the voice now, especially when it was just the two of them. "There are many more interesting ways to punish intruders than just killing them."
Ryou said nothing. He tried not to talk to the other at all if he could get away with it. Sometimes he could. Sometimes he couldn't. He touched his arm for a moment and wondered how the injury had been inflicted. It wasn't like his unwanted tenant to let him get hurt.
Except in certain cases. His chest twinged for a moment and he brushed his hand across the all but invisible scars. The injury itself was cleaned and dressed now, thanks to a visit to the hospital before he'd come home. Battle City was over with, and he had only sketchy memories of what had happened.
He'd dueled Yuugi, hadn't he? Or the other had dueled Yuugi while in his body. His reasons for that were even sketchier, but he was certain that it had happened.
"Yes, I dueled him. You should be grateful. I saved your life in that duel." Ryou's eyes flickered to the image that leaned against the counter of his kitchen, then he looked away again. He had never been able to look at the spirit for long ever since the being within the Ring had started to manifest before him.
"Why would you do that?" Ryou asked as he headed into the kitchen. He wanted a very strong cup of coffee and to get some rest. He checked the calendar as he passed, then checked his watch. He'd only lost a couple of days this time, and he marked them off with the marker he kept there.
He couldn't have said that he had expected an answer to his question, but he received one anyway. "Because I still need you. Now more than ever."
"If I was dead then you would have the body all to yourself," Ryou said. He began to brew the coffee, keeping his back to the spirit at all times. "You don't need me." Saving him made no sense.
Insubstantial though those fingers might be, Ryou felt them regardless as they touched his hair. "I do. I've always needed you, since the time that I died. You are who I've waited three thousand years for."
The Spirit seldom touched him and Ryou shuddered every time that he did. This couldn't be happening. Even if spirits existed, and he was forced to admit that they did, they shouldn't be able to touch the living. Everything that he'd ever read indicated they could do nothing but appear.
And yet, those fingers were there in his hair, trailing down the side of his face, cupping his chin. He turned away and reached for the coffee, hearing a light chuckle as he did so.
"What would you need me for?" He didn't know if he wanted to know, but he would far rather talk than feel that touch on him once again. Chills ran down his spine and wrapped through his guts before extending lower, and that was something that he didn't want to think about very hard, if at all.
"I can't borrow your body without you in it, first of all." The Spirit sat on the counter now, just within Ryou's sight, but in a way that he couldn't just ignore his tenant. "I also need you. Your hands, your skill, your talent."
Ryou shook his head. "I'm not that good of a duelist." He liked the game, but it wasn't the core of his life, not like Monster World was. He glanced to where the laptop was, with the files for the latest escapade safely stored. He wasn't sure about asking Yuugi and the others to play again, but he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it lately. The script was only the beginning. He needed to do quite a bit of carving and designing to have everything ready.
"I don't need you to be a duelist, and that isn't the talent that I need." The Spirit leaned forward, his eyes burning into Ryou's. "And you knew that anyway, didn't you?"
Ryou's own eyes dropped and he found the cup before him to be utterly fascinating. He had known. That would have been too easy.
"You're going to start making it tonight. The palace, the city, the tombs." The Spirit paused for a moment, and his voice wrapped around the next two words with emotions that Ryou couldn't name and wouldn't have expected the other to feel in the first place. "Kul Elna."
Words failed Ryou. They usually did when he spoke to the Spirit. The other had insisted that his name was as much Bakura as Ryou's was, but Ryou could never call his tenant by that name. It was far too wrong to call that creature by his family's name.
Again fingers went through his hair. Ryou's hand trembled on his cup and he moved away. He'd thought once that he could escape this creature and live his life free.
"I won't be around that much longer," the Spirit whispered in his ear. Or perhaps it was in his mind. Ryou didn't think that it made that much of a difference. Dislike it as he did, they were woven together far too well. "You'll be free one day, if you cooperate now."
Hostage situation. Ryou closed his eyes and sipped at the coffee. That was what it sounded like to him. He'd written more than one situation for his games where that had been a plot point. The villain held someone or something valuable to the heroes and demanded their cooperation in exchange for the return of the treasure.
"Who do you think inspired those?" The Spirit chuckled and was now in front of him. Ryou could go nowhere without seeing him. For that matter, he couldn't go anywhere without knowing he was there. They were one and the same, bound together until whatever goal his tenant required was achieved. "I've been doing this for a long time, host."
Three thousand years, or so he'd claimed, since the time of the Pharaohs. That would give him experience enough to outthink almost anything that Ryou himself could have come up with.
I live in your mind, host. There is nothing you can think of that I don't already know. This is your only path. You'll be free of me. I promise.
Icy brown eyes stared into his own. It was a great deal like looking into the face of his twin. No, his reflection. This ghost, this image from the past wasn't his twin. Amane. What would she think of how his skin tingled at those looks, those half-crazed smiles, those touches that sent fire burning through him no matter how much he hated it?
"Does it matter what she would think?" The Spirit was behind him now, and again his fingers combed through Ryou's mane of pale hair. "What matters is what I think, host." He paused for the briefest of moments. "And what you think. Have I really hurt you?"
One hand went to Ryou's chest, the other to his arm. He still had to fill that prescription for pain medicine. "Yes."
"You call those injuries?" That resulted in a snort of contempt. "This age is soft and weak, host of mine. Those are mere scratches, hardly anything to call a doctor about. I've never beaten you or broken any of your bones. I take care of what's mine."
That wasn't the first time the Spirit had made claims such as that. In some ways, it was probably true.
Ryou drank more of his coffee and settled himself in the living room. His drawing pad lay on the table, his pencils scattered beside it. He'd drawn a few outlines for the city and palace the night before...no, a few nights before now. He needed to finish it so he could begin the actual building.
"Start building tonight," the Spirit insisted, now beside him on the couch. How could Yuugi live with the Spirit of the Puzzle doing this? Or perhaps that one didn't? Ryou had only encountered that Spirit a few times, and they had never had so much as a private conversation.
Those intruding fingers tightened on his chin, having gripped it without warning. "Why are you thinking about him?" Anger coated his voice and Ryou tried to jerk away. Tried and failed as the grip only hardened. "He is the reason why the Millennium Items exist in the first place, he and his famiy. He is the reason why I am trapped in the Ring." His other hand clasped the Ring around his neck, the spiritual image of the one around Ryou's. "He is the reason that you have to deal with me in the first place."
Ryou's lips moved but no words at all came out. He didn't even know what he wanted to say, or if he could say anything. Hate had replaced the anger, hate that the Spirit would not show to anyone else. He doesn't want them to know how much he hates the other Yuugi.
"No, I don't. I need Yuugi right now, as much as I need you. Together, you're going to give me what I've been wanting for all of these eons." He still held Ryou's chin and continued to stare into his eyes. "That one is my enemy. Your enemy. Our enemy. You have no reason to be grateful to him for anything."
Now words came to him. "He saved my life once." That was one memory that would never fade. He'd only been in Domino City for a few days when it had happened, that game of Monster World where he'd given up his own life for the people he had only known for those few days. His White Wizard avatar, holding the last spark of his life, had had the power to revive him but the other Yuugi had rolled the dice to restore him.
It had been the other Yuugi who he had seen when he'd opened his eyes, standing in front of him, his own eyes warm and concerned.
The Spirit jerked his head up a little. "If I hadn't been placed in this Ring, then you would have never needed to die in the first place, and he is the one who is responsible for that. Keep your thoughts where they belong, host: helping me." He dropped Ryou's chin, but didn't move away. His lips twisted like those of a feral beast, baring white teeth that hauntingly reminded Ryou of vampires in the movies. These weren't as sharp or as fierce, but the attitude was the same. A hunter stood before him, ready to feed in some fashion that sent chills down Ryou's spine, be the nourishment it wanted blood or flesh or something else altogether.
He was a spirit. The remnant of someone who had lived and died thousands of years ago. He shouldn't have been able to affect anything in the world, much less Ryou. But if there was someone he could affect then it was Ryou. He seized Ryou's shoulders and held him still. Ryou's mind blanked out. Fear rocketed through him, though not fear of pain. Fear of something far worse, something unnamable.
Cold lips descended onto his, sucking and nipping with possessive passion that Ryou had never experienced in his life and had never thought he could. Shock rippled through him as the kiss went on and on and his eyes fluttered closed. He wasn't kissing back, but his knees went weak and he was glad that he was already on the couch. Otherwise, he would have been on the floor.
At last the kiss ended and Ryou gasped for air, his blood burning. The Spirit still was in front of him, and he gestured to the sketchpad and pencils before him. "You have work to do, host."
Ryou reached up to touch his lips. All thoughts of the other Yuugi were gone from his mind, replaced by the scorching memory of that single kiss. Then he reached over to his tools. He turned to a blank page and looked at his tenant. "What did Kul Elna look like?"
The smile held far more mocking than it did anything else. Ryou wasn't surprised. And as the other began to speak, he began to sketch.
The End