Note: Hiya, everyone! Yes, here it is, my un-awaited and non-demanded first yaoi story! It is a one-shot! It makes use of tendershipping, as I believe romances between Ryou and Bakura are called! This is my first Yaoi EVER, not to mention my first romance story, so, please, tell me what you think! I blame my undead muse for this story. She's the only one who's weird enough to suggest this sort of stuff, in my mind, at least. Hope you enjoy! Remember, reviews are required!
Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh, or its characters. I do not own a Millennium Item of any sort. I do not own any lobsters. I don't even like lobster. Crustacean is not a member of any food-group in my diet. That is all. Thank you for listening. Tune in, same time, same place, next time on, Tie-dyed Trickster's Disclaimers.
Bakura growled to himself as he went over his list again. It had all sounded so easy in the cookbook! Just required a quick trip to the store to pick up a few ingredients. That's all.
He'd been planning this for over a month. He'd gone and gotten a job so that when Ryou asked, he could tell him that he hadn't stolen anything in the meal, not the money, not the ingredients, nothing! True, it would have been easier to go out and steal the stuff he needed or the money to buy it, but Ryou seemed to be irreversibly hung up on the idea that 'stealing was wrong' and that Bakura shouldn't do it. The thief thought back to how it had all started…
FLASHBACK (wow, that's TWO stories I've used flashbacks in now!)
Ryou was doing the grocery shopping at the supermarket and Bakura had decided to come along. There were several motives behind this action. The first was that he wanted to see if the place had any sugarcane (he'd read about it in a book, then seen a TV show on it, and the stuff sounded interesting. And tasty. He'd made up his mind that he was going to try this strange plant, supposedly extremely sweet, yet healthy, no matter what it took.) The second reason was to make sure that no one made a move on his Ryou.
The grocery store didn't have any sugarcane (to the thief's disappointment) but it did have a lobster tank. Bakura (who had wandered off on his own to look for the sugarcane) stared at it for a couple of minutes, then went off and got Ryou.
"Bakura? Could you please just tell me what all the fuss is about?" Ryou pleaded as the pale-haired thief dragged his light through the store.
"You won't believe me."
"I promise I will."
"You didn't believe me when I said that the pharaoh and I were just having a friendly drink together."
"That was different. I saw you put the laxatives in his drink."
"Whatever." Bakura hauled Ryou up to the lobsters. "See? Look at this! They're keeping live animals here! You told me that people didn't do that anymore and that was why I couldn't choose a nice cow to cut a steak out of last time I came here!"
Ryou began laughing. Bakura scowled. "What's so funny?" he didn't like being laughed at.
"This is different than cows." Ryou smiled at his dark affectionately. "Lobsters have to be kept alive in order to keep them fresh, because they go poisonous for some reason if you kill them before you get them ready to eat."
Bakura scowled. "Why?"
Ryou shrugged. "How should I know? You're the one who's always watching the nature channel." He looked at the lobsters with a sad smile. "My father and I had planned to have lobster for my birthday this year. Before he got called away to that important dig. I wish I knew how to prepare them, I was really looking forward to it."
END FLASHBACK!!! (but, in order to celebrate its wonderfulness, I'm going to set off a bunch of fireworks, first!!! (Trickster sets off some fireworks.) YAY!!! Now, on with the story!)
That was when the idea had sprouted in Bakura's fertile (if highly warped) imagination. He could make his light lobster for his birthday!! THAT would make him happy, and Bakura had had no idea what to get him. After all, how much harder could getting a crustacean ready to eat be than tomb-robbing? And Bakura was the best when it came to tomb-robbing! This was perfect!
And because the idea had been perfect, Bakura had wanted every single detail of the plan to be perfect. 'An un-researched tomb kills the thief', as Bakura himself so often said, and casing a tomb was part of planning. It was the little things that ruined good takes, and thieves who didn't worry about details didn't live long. So, as the King of Thieves, Bakura had taken every precaution. He'd gotten a job as a night watchman for a warehouse a few days after finding out about the lobsters. Yes, it was painful to stoop so low as to do honest work for cash, and it had been a strain to keep from helping himself to a little sample of the merchandise, but he'd do it for his Ryou.
Besides, it had been kinda fun (not that Bakura'd EVER admit to this); he'd met some interesting people, like those wanna-be thieves, who he'd given some pointers to, and those kids who'd been using the grounds as a shortcut to get home before curfew, who he'd sent to the Shadow Realm. Besides, it had occurred to him late one night that this was an excellent way to case a joint. He figured he could do this again at several other places, one after the other, and keep notes and stuff, then rob them! If he quit then robbed the place he currently worked, he'd probably get caught quite quickly, and wouldn't be able to use this technique again, whereas if he waited, he could probably pull it off. He was called the King of Thieves for a reason, after all. And, this way, it was like the people were paying him to rob them! He liked that idea.
So, once he'd earned enough money, he quit. Since then, he had slowly been assembling the necessary supplies, so Ryou wouldn't catch on. It had gone beautifully. He had nearly everything he needed. Now, here it was, the day of Ryou's birthday, and he couldn't find the damn parsley! He'd seen it in the herb section, but the stuff there was all dry and crumbled, and he wanted to get the fresh stuff, to make the dish look like it was coming from a really fancy restaurant.
Hmmm… if I were fresh parsley, where would I hide…
A bit later
Bakura carefully set the candles in the candleholders and stepped back to admire his handy-work. Perfect. That was the only word for it.
The messy table where Ryou normally ate had been replaced with a table-clothed, bedecked piece of furniture that looked like it had come out of a magazine, complete with matching plates, polished silverware, and folded cloth serviettes. So what if the napkins were shaped like skulls instead of birds or fans? Bakura didn't know how to make birds. He knew how to make skulls.
Bringing the bowls with the vegetables and rice and potatoes out and putting them on the table, he was just turning to go back to the kitchen when the door to the hall opened.
"Hello, Bakura! I'm back!"
"GAH!" Bakura leapt straight up in the air. "WHY DO YOU HAVE TO WALK SO DAMN QUIETLY?!?"
"S-sorry, Bakura…" Ryou stammered, looking frightened.
Bakura slapped himself in the forehead. He was trying to make Ryou happy, not terrorize him! He didn't need to try to do that, anyway; it was easy. He forced himself to smile kindly at his light. (he'd been practicing in a mirror for ages to get it right…)
"No, I'm sorry, Ryou. I shouldn't have shouted at you."
"Oh… okay…" Ryou took in the scene before him. His kitchen table arrayed so finely, the junk that was normally on the table in a heap in one corner, Bakura himself, standing there in an apron with various stains on it and something think, brown, and dribbley splashed on part of his hair. What's going on with him? The pale youth wondered to himself. (as far as Ryou knew, Bakura had either forgotten or chosen to ignore Ryou's birthday.) "What have you been doing?"
Bakura's carefully practiced smile turned into his slightly more familiar smirk. "You have to sit down at the table and wait if you want to see."
"O-kay…" Ryou decided to chance it, and sat down.
"Are you ready?"
Bakura seemed to be… bouncing up and down slightly. Bakura did not normally 'bounce'. It was one of the things he 'didn't do'. Ryou gulped. "I g-guess so."
"Great! Wait right there!" Bakura ran into the kitchen. Ryou heard crashing sounds, then the yami came running back into the room, without the apron, but with two covered plates. He set one at his own place, then formally placed the second plate in front of Ryou. "For your pleasure, freshly prepared lobster! Happy Birthday, Ryou!" and he swept the lid off the dish and hurried and sat down at his place.
"Ba-Bakura… I don't know what to say…" Ryou smiled hugely at his yami. "Thank-you so much! This is the best thing you could have ever gotten me!"
"Eh, I know, hikari." Bakura shrugged, but he was blushing a bit, and very obviously pleased with himself. "Dig in," he added, taking a bite of his own lobster, "It's really good."
Ryou nodded and looked down at his plate. The lobster on it blinked up at him and began to eat the garnish of parsley. "Um, Bakura…"
"Yeah?" the thief looked up expectantly.
"I-I think you're supposed to cook the lobster before you eat it…"
"Oh." Bakura wrinkled his forehead. "How?
"You drop them live into boiling water, I believe."
"Oooo, that sounds like fun." Bakura's eyes gleamed demonically. "I'll get a pot of water going."
In a couple minutes, Bakura set the nice, red lobster on the table in front of Ryou.
"Thank you." Ryou smiled, then broke off a claw and teased to of the meat out with a fork. "You're right, it is good!"
Hearing a crunching sound, Ryou looked over at Bakura and Bakura's own partially-eaten, still uncooked lobster. "Um, Bakura?"
"Hm?"
"You're supposed to take the shell off before you eat it."
"But it's so nice and crunchy!"
Ryou decided not to push the matter.
The meal was very good, excellent, even. Ryou had spent the day with Yugi and the gang after Bakura shooed him out of the house early that morning, and the yami and hikari talked about what they'd done while Bakura had been deciphering cookbooks and hunting for the elusive fresh parsley.
When it was over, Ryou sat back with a sigh. "That was wonderful, Bakura. I couldn't have come up with a better way to end today in my wildest dreams." He began to help clear the table. He gave his yami a light kiss on the cheek. "Thank you so much."
Bakura looked back at his hikari, eyebrows raised. "End? But I'm not finished yet!"
It was Ryou's turn to be surprised. "You aren't?"
"Of course not!" Bakura smiled, only allowing a tiny bit of demonic gleam to enter the expression. "You haven't had desert yet!"
"You did desert as well? You certainly are spoiling me, Bakura! What did you make?"
The smile widened. "It's a surprise."
Ryou began to smile as well. "Do I have to sit at the table and wait again?"
"Nope, not at the table," Bakura scooped Ryou up in his arms and they nuzzled noses. "Tonight, desert will be served in the bedroom…"
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Ta-DAAAA!!! Anywho, I hope you enjoyed that! And, if you are wondering WHERE the HECK I got this idea I'll tell you, because, marvel of marvels, I actually know the exact thing that triggered my inspiration to write this! As was mentioned in the disclaimer, I don't enjoy shellfish of any kind in my meals , but my mom enjoys lobster every now and then, and one of our local grocery stores has a sale where it sells cooked lobsters once or twice a year, and sometimes she gets one for herself. This occurred last night, and my sister and I had to endure the sight of lobster guts at the dinner table. (WHY do they sell the things WHOLE, anyway?) That's when it struck me. It was such a strange, gross way to have a meal (no offence if you enjoy lobster or other shellfish… I don't, and I'm working with it)… Bakura would love it! And, being Bakura, he'd probably forget to cook it too! So I hissed to my sister, across the table, 'Hey, what's betting Bakura would eat the lobster alive?' she laughed and said he probably wouldn't take the shell off, either. This set in motion a series of trigger events in my mind that led to this sort, strange romance. Hope you enjoyed it! Please review and tell me if you did!