Tears rolled down Ryou's cheeks as he sat in the quiet darkness of the closet, stuffed deep into the corner for the fifth time in the last four weeks. Marik and Bakura were going at it like animals while Ryou's naked body stung with welts from the seventh belting he'd received from his yami. His wrists were duct-taped together to keep him from getting dressed while he waited for his yami to decide his punishment had reached an end, and his mouth was gagged to keep him from crying for help. He shivered, and pulled his legs up closer to his chest. He wished that he could cover his ears to keep out the sounds the other two were making almost as much as he wished he could have been allowed the dignity of wearing clothes while he awaited freedom.
There was a faint amount of light in the closet trickling in from the cracks between the closet doors and the door-frame, enough for Ryou to stare at the angry red cuts covering the insides of his wrists. He shuddered as he contemplated them. The last time that he'd seen Yami was the first time Bakura had used the belt on him and the first time that he'd been raped. Ryou had retreated to the bathroom to clean himself up afterward, and ended up on the floor sobbing in pain and shame. When Bakura had stepped into the bathroom and found Ryou, he'd paused for a moment before crouching down and sitting beside him, making Ryou hold his breath in fear.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" The cold, smooth voice cut through the silence with an odd, almost kind tone. No, it wasn't kindness, but something imitating it… Ryou couldn't place his finger on it. He just nodded in quiet assent. "I can help with that." He took Ryou's left hand in his and slipped something into Ryou's right hand. A pocket-knife. He lay his hand over Ryou's own, which gripped the knife's handle shakily. He guided it to Ryou's wrist, which was held steady so that he couldn't pull away. "When the shame and depression get to be too much to handle," the silky, venomed voice continued as he lowered the knife to Ryou's skin, "Do this." Ryou watched in detached horror as the blade slid across his skin, leaving behind a stripe of bright red. Bakura repeated the action again and again, Ryou whimpering in pain as the blood began to flow down his arm and the ache in his chest seemed to ease. After a half dozen cuts, Ryou was shaking beyond control, ready for this nightmare to be over. Bakura stopped, then, carefully lifting the steel to his lips and licking Ryou's blood from the cool metal. Ryou closed his eyes, unable to watch. Once the knife was clean, Bakura ran his tongue over Ryou's arm, greedily lapping up each rivulet of lifeblood spilled onto his hikari's skin. Ryou choked back a sob, squeezing his eyes tightly closed until it was all over. Bakura slipped the knife from Ryou's fingers; he knew better than to leave it in his host's possession. Without another word, Bakura stood and left, leaving Ryou on his own again.
Bakura had come and done the same thing to Ryou after the second time. The third time was the first time he'd bound the boy and stuffed him in the closet, but when he did finally let Ryou out, he would sit him down with the knife and repeat the experience, the cuts climbing further up his arms, more blood flowing each time. At the end of their last cutting session, he'd been rather light-headed and unable to stand for several minutes. He anticipated it being even worse this time around. He also didn't expect to be let out until morning. As he tried to scoot himself more comfortably against the wall into a position that would be at least somewhat conducive to sleep. He winced in pain as the movement aggravated the injuries his yami had dealt him. Bakura only belted and bound him when he verbally resisted his forceful advances; the belting had happened seven times, the binding five. But Ryou had been raped more times than that. How many was it now? Twenty, twenty-three times? It made his arse ache even more than it already did just to think of it.
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply as he struggled to find the peace of mind to sleep. He managed to doze off into a light sleep, but was awakened by his yami roughly grabbing him and hauling him to his feet. Ryou stumbled, half-conscious, out of the closet and through the bedroom, noting Marik asleep in bed in his periphery. Bakura guided him to the bathroom, not even bothering to flick on the light. He shoved Ryou to his knees, following suit in front of him as he picked up the pocket knife from the bathroom sink. He cut the duct tape binding the boy's wrists and peeled it away, undisturbed by the pained cries the action elicited. He slipped the knife into Ryou's hand, closing his reluctant fingers around the handle, then proceeded with their ritual.
Ryou's stomach churned as the blood began to flow down his arm. It was even more than last time. When it started to drip onto the floor, Bakura paused in his slashing to slide his tongue across Ryou's skin, drinking up as much of the blood he could get. He didn't like wasting it by letting it fall to the floor. As he licked the knife clean, a wave of dizziness swept over the victim. "Ba-Bakura," Ryou whimpered, swaying. Strong, cruel arms encircled him, keeping him upright even as he shushed the fellow teen's cries.
"I'm not done yet," he growled into his ear before nibbling it playfully. His hikari's stomach became even more unsettled as he pulled back and lowered the knife to his skin again. Even in the semi-darkness, he could see the glint of the metal as it reflected back whatever light hit it. Ryou cried out as Bakura delivered one last deep cut to the wounded arm. His ears were greeted with the gentle hushing sound that sent chills of dread down his spine, quickly followed by the feeling of Bakura's tongue on his skin, lips pressed to the wound as he sucked the flow of blood directly into his mouth, gulping it greedily as if his very life depended on it.
Reality was quickly slipping away from the white-haired teen's grasp, but he did manage to gasp out one word: "Vampire." The last thing he heard before he blacked out was the cruel laughter of his yami.
The abused hikari was home alone, scrubbing the bathroom floor as Bakura had ordered. He'd woken up on the bathroom floor in drying puddle of his own blood.
He felt nauseous as he looked down at himself, noting with burning cheeks and a heavy heart what Bakura had done to him while he was unconscious. He stood slowly, stretching his aching limbs before he pulled on his bathrobe and turned on the shower. Once he was cleaned up and dried off, he pulled on his bathrobe and slunk to his own bedroom—a place that was hardly touched these days. As he was putting on clothes, Bakura burst into the room, a newly-lit cigarette between his fingers. He had a habit of doing that, bursting in when Ryou was dressing; Ryou believed that it was just because the more he degraded his victim and made him feel vulnerable, the more power he held over him, and Yami Bakura was all about exercising total domination over the people he came into contact with. Sometimes Ryou wondered if he didn't in fact believe himself to be a god. There was a name for that, wasn't there? Homicidal maniac with delusions of grandeur. The phrase popped into Ryou's head, though he couldn't think of where he'd heard it before.
He finished pulling on his sweatpants as he turned to face Bakura, standing upright with clenched fists at his side. The criminal just smirked at him, enjoying his hikari's daily bout of spirit. Every morning he was like this: straight-backed, calm, confident, defiant almost. That flash of resentment in his eye that spoke of the strength he'd once had, strength of mind, body, and spirit. Every day he started out that way, and every day Bakura broke him down to a puddle of pain and torture. He rather enjoyed the process, liking that each day was a fresh challenge to break his spirit all over again. Bakura took a deep drag from the cigarette, flicking the ashes onto the floor carelessly, before giving Ryou his orders for the day: that he was to scrub the bathroom until it sparkled, do the same with the kitchen, then cook steak for Bakura's dinner. He was also under strict orders that he was not to eat that day, but Ryou had expected as much. His captor only allowed him to eat very little every other day. It was just enough to keep him going, but not enough to keep Ryou's weight from plummeting, his muscles from deteriorating, or his ribs from showing. The teen was emaciated as well as injured, just another fact that made him feel thoroughly ashamed of himself and what he'd become.
When he heard a knock on the door, he froze, startled and unnerved at the sound. Nobody ever knocked on their door because they never had visitors. Marik was the only other person to ever come over, and he just let himself in with the key Bakura had given him. He had no need to knock. Ryou knelt on the floor, praying that whoever it was would go away. The sound came again after minute, then again after two more, as if the visitor knew with certainty that the inhabitant was home. After the third knock, though, they finally gave up and left, which made Ryou let out a sigh of relief. He couldn't remember when he'd become so wretchedly afraid of strangers and people in general, and that startled him. He didn't used to be this way. He hadn't always been like this. Sad thoughts of the relatively pleasant past swirled through his mind as he resumed his cleaning.
He'd been able to see his friends, back then. That was before the Spirit of the Millennium Ring had been given his own body, and Ryou'd had to fear that he would overtake his body and do something wretched to his friends. He'd spent every Christmas alone, mourning his mother and sister as he waited for the phone call from his estranged father that would never come. He'd suspected for years that his father had remarried and started a new life with a new family, content to abandon his son in Domino so long as he paid the rent until he was 18. At least Christmas had been something that mattered back then. Now, it meant nothing to him. He wanted nothing more than to go back to when missing his family and feeling lonely were the greatest of his concerns. Now, he wasn't sure how much longer he could suffer this torture before he decided to end his own life.
He'd contemplated it with no serious intent on several occasions. Then he'd begun his affair with Yami, and things had gotten better. He had something to look forward to, something to live for. It was hard to think of ending your life when you loved someone who loved you back. Or at least, that's what he'd thought. The events of that fateful day almost a month ago twisted into Ryou's heart like a poisoned thorn, constantly causing infectious pain and doubt so long as it remained, and it would remain until he spoke with Yami again and got the truth from him, which would most likely never happen, not if Bakura got his way.
Now, though, he'd been seriously contemplating it for at least the last week. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could survive. Between the beatings, the cuttings, the rapings, the starvation, the isolation, the lashings, the emotional and psychological abuse, the forced servitude, and everything else, he didn't see how he was going to survive. Bakura had even tried getting Ryou hooked onto his own addictions: smoking and drinking. Ryou had taken one drag from the offered cig and coughed so hard that his eyes watered, refusing to try it again. He hadn't dared to touch the vodka Bakura's offered him that same day. He knew that strong alcohol could make you sick and that alcohol tended to turn people into monsters. He'd experienced first-hand what it made Bakura do, and he certainly could never live with himself if he let himself become like the very person he hated the most.
Yugi carefully slid the thin envelope underneath the door to Ryou's apartment, then straightened up and knocked on the door for the third time before walking away, exiting and retreating from the unfamiliar apartment building. He and Yami had been working to devise a plan to save Ryou, and this was the first step of it being put into motion. They would rescue their dear friend from the prison of pain he was trapped in. As he walked towards the grocery store, he contemplated their master plan.
First, Yugi was to visit Ryou at a time when Bakura wasn't around and help him to pack anything that he wanted to take with him, then discreetly escort him to the apartment Yami and Yugi shared, where Yugi would feed his friend and tend to any bad injuries, assuming that Bakura was now as abusive as ever and that the boy was indeed hurt.
But Ryou, though Yugi knew he was home, seemed determined not to answer the door. Perhaps he'd been forbidden from doing so? Yugi wasn't sure what to do. If he didn't answer today, he wouldn't answer any other day. Maybe if he slipped him a note, he'd come on his own. He pulled out a slip of paper and a pen, about to write out a note, when he paused. If Ryou was as weak as he and Yami suspected, would Ryou even be able to make it on foot to their apartment? He took a twenty out of his wallet and the envelope he used for holding receipts. He emptied the envelope and wrote a brief note before slipping the bill and the piece of paper into the envelope and writing Ryou's name on the back of it and slipping it under the door. He knocked good and hard one last time before walking away, praying that Ryou would be at their apartment by the end of the evening.
Ryou stared down at the crisp $20 bill that slid out of the envelope. He noticed a slip of paper sticking out from its folds, and read the note: "We want to help you escape. Leave the apartment when you can, take a taxi, we'll be waiting for you." An address followed, the entire note in Yami's neat, angular script. Ryou's eyes watered and he pressed the note to his lips, closing his eyes for a brief moment. They cared. They were helping him flee his abusive Yami. He couldn't possibly go to the offered refuge, though. That would be one of the first places Bakura would look, and he didn't want them to get into any more trouble with the violent criminal on account of him.
Now that he had the resources to leave, he needed to leave as soon as possible. He began to make hasty preparations immediately, throwing some clothes and nonperishable food items into a backpack, grabbing one of the thief's pocket-knives, and adding a few extra band-aids to his provisions, knowing that he's need them. He rummaged through the couch cushions for as much spare change as he could find. Bakura still had his cell phone, and he figured it'd be good to be able to call someone in case of emergency. He stuffed the coins into his pocket and the bill into the bottom of his sock before putting it back on. He couldn't afford to lose it or let it get stolen. Thus prepared, he ventured out of the apartment for the first time in two weeks. He didn't know where he was going, which scared him a little, but he'd find somewhere safe. He'd make it work. He turned towards the sketchiest part of town. It was the last place he wanted to go, but Bakura was well aware of that fact. He knew that Ryou was sick and tired of the sleezy low-lifes and criminals, so it made sense that he would get as far away from that section of town as possible. That made it the best place to hide.
Joey trudged home through the rain after working the closing shift. He was exhausted, but he was in a cheerful mood all the same. It was a relief to know that his father wouldn't be at the apartment when he got home. His alcoholic, drug-addicted father had unsurprisingly gone missing a week and a half ago. Joey couldn't bring himself to mourn the man who'd abused and neglected him since he was a child. Now that his father was no longer stealing his money for booze and pot, he was close to catching up on their late rent. Joey was finally eating three full meals a day, his ribs no longer as prominently visible as they had been for years. Things were finally looking up for the stubbornly optimistic teen.
He was tired, but for once he was happy to be going home, even though his home was a small, dingy apartment in the scummiest part of town. He stumbled upon a fight blocking his usual route, so he slipped into a side alley and took a detour. He pulled his collar up against the driving rain, then stumbled to a halt as as he saw something that shocked him. Ryou Bakura was laying unconscious on the ground at the base of a brick wall—one that happened to be covered in graffiti. Joey quickly ran over to him, glancing into the shadows to make sure that they were alone. He knelt beside his former classmate in the puddles and rolled him onto his back as he grabbed his wrist to check his pulse. He was alive, but the skin of his wrist didn't feel right. He'd have to check it in better lighting.
"Bakura, can you hear me?" His eyelids fluttered, but there was no real reaction from him. "Bakura? Bakura, wake up!" With a pained groan, the white-haired teen's eyes finally opened. He looked pained and confused, but relief eased his features as he recognized Joey.
"Bakura, are you alright? Can you stand?" Joey glanced to either side again, aware that they were in a very dangerous place and that both of them were in a vulnerable position.
"I think so," Bakura answered hesitantly. Joey helped his friend to his feet, but he couldn't stand on his own. Though he was awake and conscious, he was only only half-aware and half-coordinated. Joey was just glad that they weren't too far from the apartment building.
"Come on, pal, we don't have far to go," he said encouragingly as he began to lead his friend to the only place he'd ever called home.
Bakura was still really out of it when he collapsed onto Joey's couch. He was soaked to the skin and shivering like a wet kitten, his hands cradling his head as if it ached unbearably. Joey knew that he needed to get Ryou cleaned up and dried off. He disappeared into his room briefly to get a clean set of clothes, then he brought them out to the living room.
"Bakura—"
"Call me Ryou," he interrupted faintly.
"Uh, okay, Ryou, I have some clothes you can borrow. Do you need help changing?" Ryou immediately shook his head, and even though Joey doubted that to be true, he respected him enough not to push the issue. Joey went into the small kitchen and began to rummage around for food while Ryou shuffled off to the bathroom to change. Joey puzzled over the contents of the pantry and the fridge, trying to think of something he could cook for the two of them, when he heard a loud thud and a sound of pain from the direction of the bathroom.
"Ryou, you alright in there?" Joey called, and when there was no answer, he moved out of the kitchen and knocked on the bathroom door, only to be answered by another low groan of pain.
Joey hadn't been prepared for what he would find. Ryou had somewhat dried his rain-soaked hair and removed his shirt before he'd fallen, which meant that Joey now saw not only how skinny Ryou had gotten, but also a decent amount of the damage Bakura had done.
Ryou lay on the floor, curled up on his side as he clutched his head again. Joey approached him, kneeling beside him with caution. "Hey bud, are you okay? What's wrong with your head?" Ryou's eyes slowly opened to peer up at Joey, his grimace of pain now making much more sense to his rescuer. It hit Ryou in that moment that most of his wounds—things he always fought so hard to hide—were on full display. His cheeks burned with shame as he struggled into a sitting position.
"My head… hit the wall when they stole my backpack…" He spoke with difficulty, slowly and carefully. "It aches a lot, but when I was changing… everything started to blur… and I lost my balance…"
Joey recognized Ryou's experience as vertigo; he'd experienced that himself when he had the flu a few years ago. "You probably have a concussion. We should get you to a doctor—"
"No!" Ryou cried, eyes open wide as he reached out to stop Joey from moving away. As he did so, the sudden burst of movement sent another wave of vertigo sweeping through him.
"Whoah, careful," Joey cautioned as he caught Ryou to keep him from hitting the floor again. He sat back down beside Ryou, leaning him against his own shoulder to keep him semi-upright. "Calm down, I won't do anything if you don't want me to." Ryou relaxed a little, but he still crossed his arms over himself, trying to hide his battered body. "Do you want me to help you get changed?" Joey offered quietly, only to have Ryou shake his head firmly as he stared at the floor.
Joey sighed as he took in as many of the injuries as he could: cigarette burns, slit wrists, bruises spotting him all over, fresh red welts criss-crossed his back, and angry bitemarks graced his pale shoulders. It made Joey sick to think of how all those marks had gotten there, but he understood why Ryou wanted to hide them, why he felt ashamed. Joey understood because he'd felt the same way for so long.
"Look, Ryou," he ordered gently, lifting the hem of his own t-shirt to reveal the ugly yellow and green bruises on own torso. They were healing and fading, but they were a nasty sight. Ryou's eyes looked sad and oddly… relieved, not that he was glad that his friend had suffered too, but he was relieved not to have to try and explain it all to him. "I get it," Joey said with a faint grin. "You don't have to be ashamed, at least not with me." The small smile that found its way onto Ryou's face felt strange, but good. It did much to cheer Joey.
In the end, Ryou had allowed Joey to help him change his clothes. Afterward, Joey had swathed Ryou's forearms in antibac and gauze. They'd decided on pancakes and eggs for dinner, and Ryou could not remember the last time he'd enjoyed food so much. Joey had been kind enough to let Ryou sleep in his room, taking the couch for himself. Ryou had been trying to sleep for not even ten minutes when he remembered something important. He slowly crept out of bed, using the wall as a support as he made his way back to the living area. "Joey?"
"Yeah, is somethin' wrong?" Joey sat up on the couch, looking up at his guest with concern.
"Can you please promise not to tell anyone that I'm here?" He looked worried.
"Why?" Joey asked simply. Ryou looked uncomfortable, and Joey sat up fully, patting the spot on the couch beside him. Ryou gingerly made his way there, dropping down beside him with a sigh.
"He's looking for me, I know he is. Not because he cares, but because he's so bloody possessive he can't stand the thought of having anything of his taken away from him." Ryou's hands shook as he explained the situation as it stood. "I know he's going to think that Yugi and Yami took me away, and he'll blame them, and they're safer if they don't know where I am. They've been good to me, and I don't want them to be punished for their kindness."
"I promise not to tell anybody that you're here. You can count on me!" Joey smiled brightly at him, and Ryou smiled weakly back, then covered his mouth as he yawned.
"I really hope he doesn't find me here," Ryou murmured as he rested his head on Joey's shoulder tiredly. Joey put a reassuring arm around his shoulders.
"Don't worry, pal, I'll protect ya, even if he does find us." Joey couldn't help but wonder if his father might return. The chances were slim at this point, but he'd have to have a plan just in case. He glanced down at Ryou, who'd fallen asleep on his shoulder, and smiled as his heart softened. He still didn't know any details of Ryou's situation, but he didn't want to press him. If he wanted to talk, he'd open up in his own time. Tristan had tried to push Joey to talk before he was ready, and it had gone disastrously, creating a rift between the friends that had since been mended. Joey eased Ryou down into a laying position beside him on the couch, wrapping his arm around his waist to keep him from falling off. Joey fell asleep almost immediately.
"Where the bloody hell is he?!" Bakura demanded and shook Yugi again, pushing him up against the wall as his grip on the front of the hikari's shirt tightened. There was a crazed look in his eyes that Yugi had never seen before, which said something, considering that he'd seen the villain in states of full-blown psychosis.
"I told you, Bakura, I don't know," Yugi was trying to calm the other man down by speaking calming himself. He pressed his hands to Bakura's shoulders carefully trying to push him a little bit away from his face, but that only aggravated Bakura even more. Quick as a cat, he snagged Yugi's wrists in a tight grip and held them above his head in one hand, while he reached behind himself to pull out a savage-looking knife. Yugi's breath hitched in his throat at the sight of the knife, terror striking into his heart. Yami was almost here; he'd summoned him for help using their mind link, so he just had to hold out until then. Once Yami got here, they'd have the situation under control.
"Lies!" he hissed. Yugi flinched as Bakura slapped him, his cheek stinging. Okay, Yugi was done trying to calm him down. He felt Yami's rage through the mind link at the injury done to his beloved, and knew that Bakura would have hell to pay when the pharaoh got there. Yugi kneed Bakura in the stomach, making him grunt in pain. Yugi wrenched his hands free and gave Bakura a hard shove, wrestling him to the ground and trying to pin him down. But Yugi had forgotten that Bakura had a high pain tolerance, and that it was very hard to make him feel any kind of pain in a fight. Well, there was always the one obvious place you could hit a man in a fight, and Yugi managed to knee Bakura in the groin before he gave him the chance to do the same. Bakura swore, and that was when Yami burst in. Yugi had already retreated from the thief's body, which allowed Yami to stride forward and seize the Thief King by the front of his shirt.
"What have you done to him?" Yami growled fiercely in Bakura's face, only to have the criminal start laughing at him.
"As if you don't already know," Yami Bakura answered in a mocking tone, which made the pharaoh's violet eyes flash with violence.
"We don't have him. I haven't seen him in over a month, and whose fault is that?" Yami shoved Bakura against the wall, holding him with both hands now as his anger mounted.
"That's your own fault, Atem," the thief hissed back, further scorning his adversary with the illicit use of his personal name. "If you hadn't been stealing him away from me, I wouldn't have had to separate you two in the first place."
"What are you talking about? He never loved you!" Yami shouted in his face.
"I still need him, though!" the cocky thief shouted back. "And that's something that you'll never understand." The Thief King's scarlet eyes held unfathomable secrets, secrets that Yami knew he'd never want to know. All of the crimes, the perversions, the abuse he'd accumulated throughout the centuries. It revolted him just to think about it.
"If you need him so much, then why don't you find him yourself?" Yami demanded, goading him, trying to get any information out of him that he'd be foolish enough to share. Judging by his current state of mania, that could end up being quite a lot.
"Don't you think I'm trying? He's been gone a full week, and my informants in human trafficking haven't picked up anything about someone with his looks turning up in the market." Yugi flushed crimson upon hearing the thief's words, even as he figured that he should be reassured, because it meant that at least Ryou wasn't being sold into the slave-trade. "I found his backpack on a mugger, so even though he took supplies with him, he lost them pretty quickly. I haven't heard about any white-haired boys turning up dead either. There's no other place for him to be but with a friend or a good Samaritan, and how many of either exist nowadays, huh?"
The thief was cynical, but Yugi had to admit that he was right. Ryou didn't have many friends, thanks to Bakura, and good Samaritans were hard to come by, especially in a big, crowded city like Domino. Yami sneered with frustration and threw his nemesis to the floor. "Get out, and don't come back. If we do find Ryou, you'll be the last to know."
The Spirit of the Millennium Ring chuckled to himself as he got to his feet. "But I'll still know," he tossed over his shoulder before fleeing the apartment.
Yami let out a sigh, all of the anger and tension flowing out of him with the air. Then he strode over to Yugi and kissed his forehead, putting one finger under his chin and tilting his head to the side. "He hit you, didn't he?"
"Yes, but I'll be fine," Yugi breathed out unconvincingly. He was still very shaken up by the whole incident.
"Come on, let's get some ice on that," Yami said gently, putting an arm around Yugi's shoulder and guiding him to the kitchen, where Yami got an ice-pack from the freezer and wrapped it in a towel before pressing it to Yugi's cheek. He lingered there, staring into his partner's eyes with immense sorrow.
"Thank you, Yami," Yugi murmured, touched by the gesture, but worried by how all of this was affecting his beloved.
"This wouldn't have happened if it weren't for me," he murmured regretfully. "Ryou wouldn't have gone missing, you wouldn't have gotten hurt, Bakura wouldn't have attacked you."
"Don't blame yourself," Yugi whispered tenderly, cupping Yami's cheek and caressing the skin with the pad of his thumb, "You gave Ryou something he never had before. You gave him love and a reason to live. You kept him from giving up on everything, and that's something you should never regret."
Yami smiled with tears standing in his eyes. "Thank you, love," he whispered before leaning in to give his boyfriend a grateful kiss.
"Where could he possibly be?" Bakura whispered as Marik cuddled closer to his lover. The white-haired thief sounded pained, but Marik struggled to understand that pain, and why it was torturing him so much that Ryou was gone. Bakura had always mistreated Ryou, never caring about how his hikari felt, emotionally or physically. He seemed to enjoy torturing him, but he'd never gone so far as to torture Marik. His attentions had been getting harsher in the past two weeks, though, since Ryou'd disappeared. Maybe the thief had needed Ryou in order to have someone under his thumb and at his mercy, and now that he lacked a designated victim, the only person he had at his disposal was his lover. This made Marik nervous, especially because he knew that Bakura's mind was neither stable nor sane.
Marik ran his fingers through Bakura's hair, leaning in to kiss him hungrily, nibbling on Bakura's lower lip until he tasted blood. That got the thief into a better mood. He seized Marik by the hips and positioned him on top, straddling Bakura's own body. His hands slid to Marik's ass as he roughly kissed the tomb-keeper, pressing their hips together so that he could grind against him.
A few hours later, when they'd finished having their fun and Marik was starting to drift off to sleep, Bakura was laying awake thinking of Ryou. Had he been too hard on him? Had he gone too far? He'd known that Ryou was unhappy, but that had been the whole point. Bakura thrived on Ryou's misery and pain, he got off on the taste of his hikari's blood, got high on the total dominion he held over the boy, got drunk on his tears. That's what it meant to be a sadist.
In Bakura's dream that night, Ryou had come home and crawled into Bakura's bed to join him. Bakura yelled at him angrily for leaving even as he hugged the pale angel close to his body. Ryou cried, feeling guilty for leaving, and Bakura lapped up his tears greedily. Bakura rolled Ryou underneath him, snagging his favorite knife from underneath his pillow and slashing Ryou's offered wrist so that he could drink the red liquid that started to trail down his arm. He licked the cut clean until it stopped bleeding, Ryou groaning in pleasure as much as Bakura was, and moved to the boy's neck to mark him with possessive bites and nips. The sensual torture continued, and just as they were both about to get what they wanted, Bakura found himself waking up.
"Damn," he whispered as tears formed in his eyes. "Bloody hell, Ryou, where are you?"
Ryou pressed a chaste kiss to a sleeping Joey's forehead, pulling a blanket up around him in an attempt to make his nap on the couch more comfortable. Joey worked hard at two jobs still, even though his father had ceased mooching off of him. He wanted to get out of here, to escape the rat's nest he'd lived in most of his life. As soon as they'd paid off the late rent and had the savings to do so, they were going to find a nicer apartment in a less sketchy part of town and move there. Ryou looked forward to not having to look over his shoulder at every turn, watch his back like he'd done something wrong. He'd actually caught a homeless man trying to pick his pocket the other day. He'd stopped the man and gotten away with his wallet intact, feeling awfully proud of himself.
He wasn't a victim anymore, and he was eternally grateful to Joey for teaching him to break the cycle, pointing out that by starving him, his yami'd reduced Ryou to a pile of skin and bones physically incapable of fighting back. So, while Ryou worked on restoring himself to a healthy weight by eating anything he so desired, Joey became his work-out partner, challenging Ryou to become stronger than he'd ever given himself credit for. After all, Joey was doing the same thing: after being half-starved all his life by his father's constant drinking, he was finally bulking up so that he could never be beaten down again. It was uplifting and cheering and an over-all great bonding experience. For once, Ryou knew what it was like to have somebody looking out for you all the time, what it was like to have a best friend so close he was like a brother to you.
He never would have guessed before that he and Joey would have gotten this close, that they had so much in common and would get along so well. It almost made up for having lost Yami. Almost, but not quite. He'd need more time before that wound fully healed. He didn't think he and Joey would ever get involved romantically. He wasn't picking up any vibes from his friend that his interests swung that way, but still, he hoped that he and Joey remained roommates for a long time just the same. A month wasn't enough; he wasn't ready to live without him yet. He wasn't ready for this bubble of safety to pop.
Author Notes: Sorry to disappoint you, but no, Yami Bakura is not literally a vampire in this story. Just thought I'd clear that up before people asked.
