Paradocs: If you couldn't tell, this story's been sitting around in my head (and then a notebook) for a while now.
So here's chapter 2. Believe me, it gets better as it gets going. Just wait until chapter 4...
Oh, and, hey. Hope everyone likes the new comers to the story! -wink-
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters except for Saku and Sesaat. And this storyline. I own that, too.
"So, where's your friend?" Saku asked Ryou as the foursome stood in the waiting queue near one of the terminals. Ryou shrugged scanning the crowd.
"Friends," he answered absently. "There're two of them, Saku."
"Two?" Saku echoed, turning away from her own search to face the boy. She gave him a questioning look. The white-haired boy smiled, oblivious to the look.
"Two," he confirmed with a nod. "You know, kinda like you and--" he cut off his explanation as he spotted the friends he'd been looking for. "Malik! Marik!" The boy shouted, waving both hands in the air to catch their attention. That is, until his wrists were grabbed by an irritated Bakura in mid-wave with a small warning growl.
A pair of sandy blonde-haired boys came towards them from the crowd at the terminal one slightly taller than the other, thanks to his upswept, spiked hair. Both were exceptionally tan, and the shorter one, whose hair reached to his shoulders, pulled a rolling bag behind him that, presumably, held their clothes and such.
But, Saku mused, she could be wrong.
In fact, given her luck, she probably was.
"Ryou!" The bag-carrying boy called back, waving at the group until his partner grabbed his wrist with a growl that was eerily similar to Bakura's.
Now that they were closer, Saku noticed more differences about the pair. While both boys were smiling now as they approached, the taller one's smiles seemed more sadistic and cruel than the other's. Involuntarily, Saku shuddered. She had a bad feeling about this.
"Marik," Bakura smirked at the taller of the two. "Still being pushed and pulled around by Malik, eh?"
Marik dropped Malik's hand and reached into his pocket. "And you aren't?" His voice hinted at a personality as dark as Bakura's. "Malik wants to visit your Ryou, he drags me along. Someone's go to watch his damned soft back, right? Wouldn't want it getting all carved up again, now, would we?" Bakura and Marik laughed together, clapsing hands as though they were old friends. Ryou and the other tan boy looked horrified at the comment.
Of the group, Malik was the first to recover from the gristly 'joke'. He smiled congenially at Saku and Sesaat (who looked bemused, but lost, as if she was unsure of whether to laugh, or to frown). "Ryou," he said in a bright voice. "I didn't realize you'd become such a ladies' man since I saw you." Ryou and Saku lit up bright red as Sesaat giggled and the obviously-eavesdropping Bakura and Marik laughed.
"Th-I-They're just friends, Malik," Ryou spluttered, grasping at words despserately. "This is Sakurea," he added, gesturing at the bushing girl beside him. "And that's her--"
"Sister," Saku supplemented, recovered enough to supply the word.
"--giggling over there."
Malik smiled, waving cheerily at Saku. "Nice to meet you, Sakurea," he said. "Saku grimaced at the sound of her full name. The boy stretched out one hand.
"Just Saku," she replied, grabbing the hand and giving it a half-hearted shake. This was getting too strange for her liking. "Ryou likes it more than I do."
Malik's smile twisted into a smirk, as though amused by some hidden joke she couldn't interpret. "That's because Ryou likes names," he said. "I'm Malik, and that's Marik ovr there with Bakura." Letting go of Saku's hand, he looked at Ryou, then at Saku, suddenly looking puzzled. "Are you two--"
"No!" Both replied, with more blushing and emphasis than was probably necessary. Bakura, Marik, and Sesaat stopped laughing long enough to look at the three, amused. Bakura mumbled something unintelligible in Egyptian that made the spike-haired blonde snort, and the dark-haired girl grin, as if she'd been let in on some terrible secret.
"We're friends," Saku added in explanation, crimson-cheeked, in the embarrassed silence between the three. "Just that."
The newcomer shrugged with a lopsided smile. "Just curious." Malik twisted one of his long, gold bangs between his fingers, the color contrasting sharply against the brown of his skin. "But I'd've thought..."
Sesaat turned around, detattaching herself from the laughter to pat Malik's arm with a giggle. The gesture might have been, without the laughter, a gesture of sympathy; instead, it seemed to be more of a gesture of derision. "Malik-chan, you've got a lot to learn if you want to survive around this group. Now," her voice dropped to an almost conspiratory whisper. "If you cold come over, say, Monday, with Ryou-chan, we could give Saku one hell of a birthday and maybe hook 'em u-"
"Don't finish that sentence, Sesaat," Saku said, voice suddenly icy as she gripped Sesaat's arm firmly. "There's no birthday party, we're not celebrating a damned thing, and that's final."
Sesaat rolled her brown eyes, the rest of her face the picture of defeat. "If you say so, little one," she said, adding, with a little chuckle, "But don't bet on it."
"Who wants dinner?" Ryou said quickly, seeing Saku's mouth open to argue. He was eager to divert the conversation to safer ground, before there was a repeat of this afternoon. He nudged Malik, who caught onto the urgency that was in his voice: his hand shot up into the air as his stomach caught on and rumbled loudly. Looking around, Ryou saw Sesaat pull Saku's arm into the air with her own; Bakura and Marik, on the other hand, crossed their arms over their chests in an unmistakable gesture of disregard, as though the prospect of food was as inconsequential to them as a brawl.
Which, Ryou reminded himself, it wasn't quite. They'd rather fight than eat, any day.
"Ryou," Bakura said coolly, "Marik and I are going home--" he spoke the words with a sense of irony-- "to chat and do... stuff. You and your little friends go have fun. And, Ryou?" Bakura leaned in until his touched the identical tip of Ryou's. "Relaz, for Ra's sake. 'S damned annoying watching you act like this." He pulled away, flipping his hair back across his shoulders with a soft crinkle of plastic from his bag and motioned for Marik to follow him out of the airport.
An awkward silence hung over the remaining four, ruined by the typical hubbub of an airport. Their eyes followed the duo as they exited the building. Saku and Malik's eyes widened as Marik shouted something back at them in Egyptian that, Ryou assumed, was more explicit than it sounded.
Saku blinked owlishly. "Did they just say they were gonna go--"
Sesaat clapped her hands together loudly, interrupting her hikari. "Well! Let's go get something to eat then, shall we?" She beamed at the still-uncomfortable trio before her, as though she were a teacher expecting a brilliant answer from a group of clever students. After a few moments of silence, Sesaat gave up her attempt and sighed, running her hands through her hair.
"Right then. The usual fare, huh?"