A round broken in two
Till your eyes shed into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust.
- Mazzy Star, 'Into Dust.'
1.
Abduco.
Something like iron hangs heavily in the air.
The rays of the sun don't quite reach the quiet back-alleys and streets that litter the outer edges of Domino city, and the temperature drops suddenly as he steps into the shadowed corner of an abandoned building; to further the cliché, a rat squeaks in a corner and dives deeper into the trash it was going through, and Bakura snarls in disgust.
The fine hairs on his arms stand up as he ventures further into the shade, and the glare of the sun temporarily cuts over the top of the building and blinds him for a moment - half-squinting, he turns his head and looks around.
The streets are still empty; most people are enjoying the sunshine, even the ones usually against it - rumour had it even Kaiba had left his office to spend an hour or two with his brother out in the sun.
Bakura prefers it in the shade.
The cold doesn't bother him as a draft comes from an odd angle and sweeps over his arm, and his skin finally sets into goose bumps. He barely notices.
A tree comes up after he's walked a few yards, around a corner, and the leaves are dry and peeling despite it being only late August; the fallen leaves crunch under his sneakers, and a door slams a few yards back from the wind.
Half-curious, he cranes his neck to reassure himself it was only the wind, and he continues slowly on his way, skin settling down as the sun slowly rises over the corner of a grocery store and warms his skin.
The docks are close by; Bakura can smell the salt in the air now, and he thinks he's hearing seagulls, but that could be a sound his imagination has plucked from memory.
He walks faster.
Bakura begins hearing footsteps after taking a turn and finding himself in a familiar place; the deserted stretch of ground has been filled with boxes, and it's easy to make his way through them. He does so with fluidity, and leans against a large upside-down wooden box; scrawled on the side is Fragile in large, choppy letters.
Bakura feels the splinters against his back and makes no attempt to move. He closes his eyes, and feels the wind softly blowing from his left, even hears it - then it's replaced by those footsteps again and a warm breath against his ear.
Flinching, he schools his expression into indifference.
The man never did know boundaries.
He slowly drags open his eyes, realizing he's half-sluggish due to the calm and heat, and looks straight into blank lavender orbs and a smirk too close for comfort.
"Malik," he greets, ignoring the breath still hitting his cheek.
He tells himself it bothers him.
Malik steps away, and the wind hastens through his hair, leaving it dishevelled and Bakura squirms half an inch away from him as discreetly as possible.
Malik steps back, finally, and sits himself down on a large bucket sat upside-down and rusting heavily.
Bakura wants him gone.
"Did you follow me?" he asks.
His voice comes out accusing and when Malik only stares with a dead grin and amused eyes, Bakura doesn't want to hear him say no.
He shudders, half because of the wind, and Malik stands up after Bakura stops feeling cold.
"I did," he croons; the sound makes Bakura feel sick to his stomach, and it churns unpleasantly and he swallows loudly through the parched texture of his throat as Malik steps closer.
His shadow takes away any heat in Bakura's body and he feels the unforgiving bite of shame wash over him - stop acting like you're at his mercy runs through his head at a hundred miles per hour, and the intensity in Malik's eyes is surprisingly strong despite them looking like they're part of the Shadow Realm itself.
(Vacant and hollow. Endless.)
Bakura stares up into those eyes and stops himself from recoiling.
Malik has gained the upper hand; Bakura's let him close enough to his own body to be able to feel the smell of the taller man, and he smells like sewers and abandoned dolls left to rot in the gutter.
His heart picks up speed slowly as Malik leans in closer, tongue sliding over Bakura's ear and teeth biting down painfully on the shell of it. Bakura tenses painfully, holding his breath unintentionally.
"You like it," Malik laughs, and Bakura sees blood on his lips when he draws away - the painful throb of his ear doesn't worry him for the moment, but the stifling humiliation and anger threat to drown him in it, so he slaps away the hand Malik attempts to place on his shoulder.
"I don't like it," he snarls, lips curling hatefully.
(He doesn't like it because he craves it- he doesn't like it because he needs it and dreams it and BREATHES it.)
Malik looks into his eyes again, and it unnerves Bakura to see them calm despite the black tar he sees moving behind the lavender, and he turns his head away and wills his heart to stop (forever) beating so fast.
The taller man finally walks away, shadow long and pointy behind him, and Bakura notes that the seagulls he thought he heard earlier have fallen silent.
And just like that, his feelings have, too.
2.
Abscido.
There are ants on the floor.
Amidst the echoing silence, he hears the pitter-patter of a thousand tiny feet like pins on a glass surface, dropping one after one rapidly, and he can't make out the shape of a single lone ant; they're clustered together like a grotesque rat king, and they smell like one that's been out in the sun for too long. He can pick up the sour flavour in the air, and it makes him dry-heave through his rapidly closing up throat.
He looks at them through misty eyes, and realizes that they're the colour of sand - if he were a distance away, he might mistake them for a finely combed layer of sand you might expect to find on the beach, and he racks his brain for any type of ant of that colour.
He comes up blank.
The almost-buzz of the ants' feet has him backing up, but a wall that wasn't there before presses against his back and he scrabbles with his hands against it, head half-turned to get a better look, and through the glass he sees a million beetles, all squished against each other and squirming wetly against the glass, blind eyes staring at the other side.
The beetles are humongous, almost comically so - but he isn't laughing.
There's a panic quickly spreading through him as he realizes the ants are pressing closer, climbing on one another to get to the top and they come closer, closer, as if an invisible force is forcing them forward and he'll rather believe that than the one thought of they want to kill me that's looping through his head on fast-forward.
The cold wall presses steadily against his back, and he thinks it's because he's trying to get away from the ants; blind panic is overtaken by a cold rationality and he realizes that despite him not moving, both the ants and the beetles behind the wall are coming closer.
He screams as the hoard of ants rise up in front of him, going from a two-inch high almost-pile to a three-foot tall tidal wave, and his head hits the glass wall behind him hard and a sharp crack alerts him to the realization that the glass must've broken where he hit his head - and on pure impulse, he turns to look at the beetles.
(He thinks his eyes must be deceiving him. The beetles have purple eyes.)
A tremor slices through the floor, and he suddenly falls through it at speeds impossible, and he screams again from either terror or surprise and the heat from underneath him scorches his feet; golden flames reach up to get him, and the flesh on his feet turns black within seconds and the pain overwhelms his senses - he numbs almost immediately and his eyes drag shut as the heat engulfs him from all sides and the music is coming slowly to him-
Bakura opens his eyes.
There's a moment of pure shock when he blinks his eyes a second time, and then his mouth acts before his brain does and goes to let out another scream, and he smothers it down - it would do no good to wake anyone.
His heart is still racing when he looks up, and the old saying that you can feel it slamming in your throat turns out to be true, and it beats even faster when he sees a shadow peek from the corner of his room.
Malik looks like he's been part of the shadows forever.
"Get out," Bakura snarls, ripping the sheets away from his cold-sweating body and backing up against the wall unconsciously.
Malik never does.
Bakura is breathing heavily, and the clothes he went to bed in are drenched - he feels the fabric stick to his skin and he would open the window if Malik wasn't there.
He won't move while Malik is there.
He grins at Bakura, teeth sharp and eyes dull, and Bakura swallows and reaches for the glass of water at his bedside, gulping down half of it before he stops mid-gulp, feeling sick to his stomach.
The glass wasn't there when he went to sleep.
"Get out, now," he says through gritted teeth, hand threatening to break the glass it's holding; and he almost wishes it would so he could feel the slow pain of shards slicing into his skin just for a reason to scream.
"How do you like your dream, Bakura?" Malik asks, grinning horribly at him from across the room.
Bakura glares at him, hand trembling around the glass still held high.
"I'm not dreaming," he answers scathingly, and his mind is a hundred percent sure of that - except his conviction begins to waver as Malik's mouth stretches wider and the shadows seem to grow darker at the action.
"Maybe you aren't," Malik agrees, and they look at each other for a stretch of time that could be millennia long, and when Bakura blinks his eyes, Malik has melted away.
He stares at the shadows for the rest of the night, trying to separate between dream and reality - and as the sun rises, he begins to believe that he is wrong.
(The sun looks impossibly lavender.)
3.
Abeo.
Bakura comes to him.
Malik always knew he would.
The day he comes is remarkable in the sense that it's not; clouds are scattered overhead in the light blue sky, the streets are half-empty, and there's something anticlimactic about the way Bakura approaches him - there is no tension in the air, only a slight disturbance in the way he breathes as he keeps his distance.
Malik had expected violence. He had expected shouting. He had expected to taste blood.
He doesn't.
Malik is almost disappointed.
"What have you done?"
Bakura asks it with a finality; a silent promise that if Malik doesn't tell him, he'll feed him back to the Shadow Realm.
Malik considers not telling him - considers letting him use every trick he has, because Malik knows he can still win - but his mouth quirks into a grin and his eyes close momentarily, and when they open, he's looking right into Bakura's eyes.
They don't waver.
"Do you like it?"
Not an answer, just a question, and Bakura seems disgruntled by it - he glares and steps closer, muscles bunched up tight in his back and arms steady at his side. His lips are pale around the words he tries to shape, but after a few seconds, he closes his mouth and resumes staring into Malik's eyes.
He senses their unrivalled power.
"What…what have you done?"
He asks again, harder this time, and he walks a few more steps until the distance between them has closed to five feet; too close, too near, and Bakura regrets it almost immediately.
Malik laughs like he can't believe the audacity of the question, and it makes Bakura feel stupid for asking it for a second.
He hates the power he's given the other man.
"What I've done, Bakura…"
He smirks, and it's mocking and Bakura mirrors it right back with more anger and hate than ever before. He feels the need to claw his way into Malik's skin for answers, hoping they're buried somewhere between bone and tendons, and the very idea makes his hands twitch.
Malik notices.
"Do you want to hurt me?" Malik mock-coos, and Bakura bites his lip to keep himself from throwing out meaningless insult after insult. It won't make a difference, he knows it.
"You answer my question and I'll answer yours."
Bakura feels the weight of his own words, and the world seems to spin slower; he's acutely aware of everything Malik does, and can even feel his own sweat start to form.
He bites back a snarl.
Malik looks at him, face a mask of seriousness and distrust, and he walks closer, slowly advancing on Bakura.
"What did I do?" he murmurs, crowding Bakura, and he's surprised that the other lets him stand so close when he knows he wants to kill him.
He takes a wrist into his hand, slowly dragging a nail over the blue veins beneath, and he's satisfied when Bakura inhales sharply and glares deeply.
"I rotted you. I distorted you. And you let me in like I was one of your pathetic Gods." Malik looks him in the eye the entire time; Bakura thinks he can see the sun reflecting in them and he feels cold to his core.
"So, Bakura…" Malik says, and Bakura feels like strangling them both.
"…do you want to hurt me?"
"Yes," he whispers, and Malik is on him, hard and fierce, his teeth sinking into Bakura's shoulder, and he feels weightless, right then, not like he's flying but like he's dissolving into dust, and nothing keeps him grounded but the fury and shame.
Malik bites hard and he kisses filthy, and he feels like water and stone at the same time as he presses into Bakura, and there is no pleasure, no pain, nothing but regret and a hand in his hair that pulls so hard he feels the strands pull out.
He knows he should feel something, even expects his senses to wake up, but they're dulled and stolen from him and he surges forward, desperate for something.
Malik looks at him with eyes burning with hate and curiosity and fascination, and Bakura waits for the sight to lurch his own hate into motion.
He waits.
He finds nothing but ashes.
Fin.
Bit dissatisfied with this, but it was a request and I tried my hardest to keep them in character and the storyline obvious; I suspect I failed at both.
Please leave a review if you liked it; I grow weary of seeing people adding my fics without even dropping a "I liked it," as a review. It would mean the world to me and give me incentive to write more.
Any and all critic is welcome.