***Oooops. I forgot to post this. I had it done a few days ago. Thanks a ton to Revengineer and Supersteffy for beta-ing!***
The thunder woke Ryou. His eyelashes fluttered open at the noise. Black covered the room save for the blurs of street light filtering through Ryou's opened window. Rain glimmered as it fell past the glass pane. Each drop refracted the street lights as they dropped towards the streets below.
A sound like the crack of a whip hit the air, followed by a moment of pure gold as lightning near blinded Ryou. He blinked, and when his eyes focused again, he realized the Spirit within his Ring sat at the foot of the bed. Ryou sat up, staring at the translucent form that resembled his own, only sharper, like a jagged, white bolt of lightning.
"Are you afraid?" the Spirit asked. His tone was neither caring nor mocking. It was a neutral question and not some bait for a trap.
"No," Ryou said. "I love lightning storms. They're violent, and destructive, but beautiful, and the rain helps things grow. Can I watch it with you?"
"I don't care what you do."
Ryou crawled to the foot of the bed and sat beside the Spirit. Ryou rested a hand on the Spirit's shoulder.
The Spirit turned. "What?"
Ryou blinked at his hand. "I thought it'd go through you. You look like a ghost."
"No, I'm not a ghost. I'm a demon. You shouldn't touch me."
"Do you really believe that about yourself?"
"It's true. I'm part of Zorc Necrophades."
"I don't think so."
"What you think is irrelevant," Bakura sneered.
Ryou only smiled. "During Battle City . . . remember what you said to Marik? 'Even I have ways I like to win and ways I hate to win'."
"What of it?"
"That's not something Zorc would say."
The Spirit snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "What do you know?"
Ryou straightened his pajama top, rumbled from sleep. The fabric fell over one white shoulder, but Ryou didn't bother adjusting it. "I know," he said, voice more than a little prim, "that Zorc wouldn't say something like that."
Another crack and another flash interrupted their conversation. When the shadows returned, Ryou grabbed the Spirit's face and kissed him.
The spirit didn't push away, but kept his mouth still. When Ryou pulled away, the Spirit asked, "why did you do that?"
"Because you said you didn't care what I did."
"That was a very liberal interpretation of my words, yadonushi."
An innocent glimmer of mischief sparked in Ryou's eye along with reflected lightning. "I was hoping to get a reaction out of you."
"Did you expect to find that lost, buried kindness hidden inside my soul?" Bakura laughed, a cruel, bitter noise. "This is not a fairytale. A kiss won't turn the demon into a prince."
Ryou laughed as well, soft, and musical, and coy. "It's amusing . . . we share the Ring, you take my name and body whenever you want, I see your dreams when I sleep, but you still think I'm a naïve, little boy."
Something in Ryou's words set the Spirit off balance. " . . . you see my dreams?"
"Yes. I can see the flames, feel their heat, hear your family screaming, smell the smoke, and taste the ash. I know why you hate the Pharaoh. He was a prince, wasn't he? And then a king. I don't want a prince. The least you could have done was push me away."
The Spirit swallowed, his expression disturbed. Ryou felt the turmoil in the Ring, demon and thief struggling with different motivations. The wind shifted and the rain sprayed them from the open window, but Ryou didn't care, he kept his gaze trained on the Spirit.
A stubborn expression seized Ryou's face. He held the Spirit's shoulders and kissed him again, and again Ryou stirred no response from the Spirit.
"Kiss back or push away," Ryou hissed, his voice thick. "Kiss me back or push me away."
"Why do you want me to push you away?"
He didn't. He wanted to be kissed, but he answered. "I'll stop if you push me away, or if you tell me to stop, or if you do anything – just stop sitting there doing nothing. I can't stand it."
The Spirit's eyes flashed, catlike, more red than brown. "That isn't my problem."
"You're a coward!" Ryou screamed, his voice drowned out by a peel of thunder.
That evoked a response. The Spirit grabbed the lapel of Ryou's pajama top, accidentally pulling an additional button free from the ones already loose. "Don't presume to know me because you've seen a few memories. You have no idea what I've been through, what I've endured. I am not a coward."
"Then react." Ryou pulled his shirt away from Bakura's fists. "Unless you're afraid of the stupid demon watching from the Ring?"
"What do you expect to accomplish with this?"
"Nothing." Ryou stood up, walked to the window, and stared at the black of clouds, and the white, bleary raindrops. Rain coated his face, making him shimmer. "It's just a storm. It sweeps through in the night and then by morning everything is back to normal. I'm not stupid. I don't have expectations. Tomorrow I will still be friends with Yugi, and you'll still be enemies with the Pharaoh, but right now it's storming, and what other time is there for the dark and light to mix?"
Even as he spoke it, it happened outside the window. Black storm clouds and white lightning writhed against each other, calling out with shouts of thunder or screams of wind. Ryou tackled the Spirit against the mattress, kissing him again. This time, he felt the Spirit's mouth open. The Spirit's tongue, surprisingly warm, reached out and searched Ryou's mouth. The thunder and the wind hid their moans and their whimpers. They clawed at the fronts of their shirts, snapping buttons away from fabric in a desperate race to get to soft, white skin.
Ryou felt the anger from the Ring. Zorc's fury at their actions.
He's not your slave. Ryou thought with bitter, bitter thoughts at the Ring hanging from his neck. You'll have your last Shadow Game whether I like it or not, so from now on, leave us alone.
In the end, the demon couldn't stop them, only bristle in his golden, cursed prison – angry, but impotent against the storm raging on Ryou's mattress.
Ryou bit at the Spirit's neck. Bruises darkened on the ethereal skin, as faded and transparent as the rest of him. Ryou could have been gentle, would have enjoyed being gentle, but that would be cruel to the Spirit, and Ryou knew it. So he bit, and scratched, and pulled at long, white spikes of hair. Ryou made the Spirit call out in pleasure even as the Spirit clenched his teeth to try and hold his lust inside himself.
Ryou's nails scratched against the Spirit's hips and he yanked down the Spirit's pants. Even his bones seemed sharper than Ryou's, similar to how their hair differed. Ryou swallowed the Spirit's cock, all the way down to the base. Ryou made a ring of his lips, and used that to make the Spirit forget all about the Ring around their neck. Ryou used his mouth to pull the Spirit to the precipice of release and then pulled away.
The Spirit groaned, fisting the sheets below him and arching his hips up in a vain attempt to come back into contact with Ryou's mouth. Ryou placed a few, soft, affectionate kisses along the Spirit's transparent thighs. He grabbed the Spirit's thighs above the knees and spread his legs out wide, exposing the Spirit to the cool, misty air that blew in from the window. Ryou stared at the Spirit, and the Spirit stared back.
"Do it," the Spirit growled.
Ryou dipped his face down, teasing the Spirit's sack with the tip of a warm tongue. Ryou looked back up even as his tongue worked.
"Do what?" he asked, his voice sweet like the chime of a bell.
"I kissed you back," the Spirit said as if that exempted him from further verbal participation from what they were doing.
"Please," Ryou asked, his licks turning broad and deliberate between his words. "Ask for it – better yet, demand it."
The Spirit gnashed his teeth, growling. He hiked his hips up again, phallus twitching and head glistening with pre-cum. "Fuck. Me."
"You say it so dirty." Ryou laughed, unabashed and flushed from excitement.
He licked the Spirit's swollen head. The Spirit hissed as Ryou's tongue glided along the sensitive skin. Ryou shifted closer to the Spirit's ass. Without a corporeal body, Ryou didn't need lubrication or preparation. He aligned himself and pushed inside, moaning at the consuming, claustrophobic warmth of Bakura's ethereal body wrapped around Ryou's erection. He pulled out almost all the way and then pushed back in, repeating his moan. Each time he pushed in, a little moan tumbled from his mouth.
The spirit pursed his lips in a stubborn knot, holding his breath and forcing himself not to react to Ryou's movement. Ryou noticed. He shifted his weight deeper into the Spirit, completely sheathing himself before pulling back only half way and then plunging into the Spirit once again. The Spirit threw his head back and gasped. He didn't call out, but each breath trembled from his mouth as a harsh, needful sigh.
Ryou slipped his scarred, left hand between their bodies and began stroking the Spirit. His sighs grew rapid, verging on wanton groans instead of sighs.
"Hurry," the Spirit whispered, his voice a tremulous wreck. "Hurry. Finish."
"I'm waiting on you."
A foreign expression flicked across the Spirit's face in the mix of street light and lightning. Worry bordering on fear. Ryou continued to thrust hard, and he continued to stroke the Spirit's twitching cock, but he also watched the Spirit's face. In that moment, Ryou realized the Spirit had never allowed himself to lose control, not even for an instant. He was so used to being strong, putting up a defense against the world, and preparing for the next attack that he'd never had a chance to rest, to recover from the pain of life, and three-thousand years was a long time to be hard.
Realizing it made a few tears slide down Ryou's cheeks. Lightning caught the tears and gilded them to drops of molten gold. "It's okay," Ryou whispered as softly as he could while moving fast. He settled his body a little closer to the Spirit's. "It's okay. It's okay. I've got you. You can let go. You can. I've got you."
The Spirit grabbed Ryou's sides, digging his nails into Ryou's white, satin-soft skin. "And in the morning?"
Ryou shuddered with pleasure as the nails punched into his sides. The thrill of it made him move a little faster, but he still whispered to the Spirit beneath him. "In the morning you'll get up and fight the Pharaoh, but tonight I'm here, and I've got you."
"I can't."
"I've got you," Ryou said again.
"I . . ."
"It's okay."
A lusty whimper broke through the Spirit's defenses. His face flushed coral as his own moans mingled with Ryou's. His moans grew louder until they were screams and his nails drew drops of blood from Ryou's ribs. He came onto both his and Ryou's bellies, sinking into the soft mattress when finished, body relaxed and face still flushed.
"Good," Ryou whispered, going as fast as he could while still holding a rhythm. "Good, good, ooooh – you feel so good!" Ryou's core trembled as his pace and rhythm unraveled. He arched his back and threw up his head, screaming into the storm. When Ryou came down from the high of his climax, he crashed down onto the Spirit's chest. Their hair twisted together, a storm of white. No light or dark or good or evil, just white, white, white, white mixing together until the strands became a single, white tapestry, not belonging to either one of them, but to both together.
Ryou rolled over. The urge to cuddle overwhelmed him, but he didn't want the Spirit to feel more vulnerable to emotion than he already did, so Ryou lay on his back, panting and feeling the excited thrum of his still-pounding heart.
Ryou breathed out a long, eager sigh when he felt the Spirit's arm slip across his chest. The Spirit curled into the crook of Ryou's arm and chest. He didn't speak, merely laid curled against his host. Ryou gave into his own urges, knotting his arms around the Spirit's body and holding him in a tender embrace.
Outside, the storm passed, leaving only the sound of gentle, autumn rain.