Summary: "[for Nek0-chan] {Yami no Bakura x Yami no Malik} Because there is pleasure in pain. And sometimes we are drawn to what will destroy us."

Yup, my first Yami no Bakura x Yami no Malik ;; Sadism 'R us. Rating for weird crap.

Anyway, as I said, I would like to dedicate this to Nek0-chan ;; Who, though she probably doesn't even know I exist, has influenced a lot of FF.Net writers. Her "Lamb" obviously influenced me to write this; I borrowed the line, "The lamb shall never lie down with the lion and not fear for its life" line from that.

I'd also like to recognize my best friend, Meriah ::glomp:: Because if she didn't get me rather obsessed with this pairing, I probably never would have written it.

So…here ya go, hunnies! :D

Quote Note: The excerpt at the very beginning is from a Nightwish song, a very odd and very talented band that I like a lot ; Kinda opera/rock. Try them sometime.

Shadow Play

"For always shall the wolf in me desire the sheep in you."

- Nightwish, "The Beauty and the Beast"

In our deepest soul, there is a river. Cool and deep, completely pure. And this river is called darkness.

In everything, there is darkness. Beneath all our intellect, virtues, facades, there is darkness. It is in darkness that our truest nature lies.

It calls to us always, offers itself up to us, our only salvation, our only true peace. Hate, avarice, lust, cruelty, and all the other things humans claim to revile and loathe, and most truly are.

They are fools, they who say that the games of love are fit only for starry-eyed youths. Love is as all-consuming as the darkness in our souls, and a hundred times more cruel.

Love, like darkness, comes for us all in the end.

And you. Avatar of the shadows, God of darkness. All this you are to me. For in darkness is your glory.

Skin dark as your fathers', tanned by a thousand lost suns. Crowned by the starburst of your strangely spiked hair. And your eyes, eyes the color of the sky when darkness falls, a hazy twilight. Half-lidded, sensual, and utterly terrifying.

A lion's eyes, the eyes of a hunter, a killer - the eyes of one who holds complete domination over all he sees.

You draw me in with your darkness as a flame draws a child in with its light; inexorably, irresistibly, into the beauty of shimmer and shadow alike. A beauty that kills.

If you play with fire, you get burned.

But there is no pleasure without pain. There is no love without loss, whether it be of body or soul or sanity. And besides, sometimes we are drawn to what will destroy us.

The lamb shall never lie down with the lion and not fear for its life.

Ah, perhaps, but I'm no lamb, and you're nothing so simple as a lion.

Yet it's true I fear you. I fear you every moment that I'm with you. And that makes this so much more delicious.

Never have I found such a one to match me in my darkness, to play my games with me. Together, we might well take the world.

This is our partnership. And the greatest and best thing we have to gain from such a partnership is each other.

We have one goal, you and I, and if we use one another to accomplish it, well, so much the better.

Never have I found such a one to play my games with me. For love is always a game, and the stakes are your very heart and body and soul.

Stolen lover is a stolen body; this is what we are. Body arched over mine like the night, limbs intertwined. Waves of pleasure and pain beat at me like the dark sea tides at midnight.

Even here, across a landscape of black silken sheets, patterned by firelight and shadow, shimmering along chains and blades, we play out our shadow game.

You draw the blade with its silvered edge over the planes of my body; lap the blood like wine from my heated skin.

Kissing my wounds, only to deepen them. Healing my hunger, only to cause me more.

Always you have understood the full extent of what I am, better than any living or dead.

You lower your mouth to mine, lips and tongue possessing me. And I rise to meet you, body arching against your own.

A kiss of blood.

Red, red of my blood. Do you think it's any mistake that red is the color of both love and death?

I knew it all along, didn't I? I knew that the price of this was my destruction. For it is destruction that you love, and death. And darkness.

The darkness that binds us both.

For indeed, that is what I have become: a sacrifice upon your altar of darkness.

You catch me from behind, binding my arms behind my back, trapping my body against yours. Your voice is hot and sweet as a feel your lips against my ear. "Love comes to us all, of a surety. But even more sure is the darkness that comes for us all, in the end."

A threat, a lover's promise.

Oh, but don't think you've seen the last of me, my dearest. Love doesn't die, and neither do I.

You can't kill what was never alive. You can't kill darkness.

For in darkness all things are one. Darkness, like love, is eternal.

FINIS

Review, me pretties! :D