"Ryou get up, the mail's here."
Ryou practically fell out of his bed at these words, pulling on his jeans with difficulty and almost bashing his head on his wardrobe as he stumbled about. "I'm coming. Don't open it without me!"
Bakura scoffed loudly enough that Ryou heard it from his room, which he had just left in favor of speeding into the dining room where Bakura sat at the table reading a Chinese takeaway leaflet boredly. "It's illegal to open other peoples mail."
"Like something being illegal would ever stop you." Ryou remarked, eyebrow raised at Bakura's innocent act. He had changed, but surely not enough to actually respect the law.
"Touche Hikari mine." Bakura smiled, picking a slim cream envelope off the table and running it through his fingers teasingly, deliberately holding it just out of Ryou's reach.
"Bakura!" Ryou whined, "give me my letter!"
"Did nobody ever teach you manners? I won't be giving you anything if you're so rude." Bakura snorted, exaggerating his British accent and giving a teacherly look.
Ryou sighed exasperatedly, giving up on trying to grab the ever evasive hand of the Thief and instead sat back in his chair, glaring stubbornly.
"If you say please I'll give you the letter." Bakura explained, eyes glinting as he watched Ryou get aggravated. "It is an important letter after all."
Ryou's mouth twitched up at the corner, a sign of one of his rare explosions. As someone who'd always prided himself on his British good manners and general politeness, Ryou considered it standard to say please and thank you in most situations. But somehow when it came to Bakura, Ryou didn't feel the need to be so polite.
"Please." Ryou spat out through gritted teeth, annoyed at having given in so early.
Bakura raised an eyebrow, thoroughly enjoying tormenting his Hikari, who he could see was getting steadily angrier. "Please, what?"
Ryou was virtually pulling his hair our with frustration by now, and he could tell that the moment he spoke his voice would be whiny and childish. "Please can I have my letter Bakura."
Bakura's smirk grew, satisfied with the response he slid the letter across the table towards Ryous fidgeting fingers. "Since you asked so politely."
Ryou simply shot him a quick glare before opening the envelope with trembling yet careful hands and removing the neatly folded letter. His hands froze and he suddenly felt sick. He swallowed thickly then looked up in alarm as he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Relax, it'll be fine." Bakura reassured, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze before moving round the table to sit beside him in a show of support.
"Okay." Ryou muttered, though he didn't feel sure at all. "It'll be okay."
"Do it quick, like ripping off a plaster." Bakura advised sagely.
Ryou nodded. He liked that idea.
He took one last look at Bakura, checking for confirmation, which came in the form of a nod and a smile. He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and, in one quick movement that undoubtedly creased the paper, unfolded the letter.
He heard a sharp intake of breath from the Thief and screwed his eyes shut tighter, feeling his life disintegrating around him. His hands began shaking more violently and his knuckles tightened round the paper, tiny ripping noises filling the otherwise empty room.
"You know Ryou, it might help if you opened your eyes." Bakura said, a shade too patronizingly for Ryou's liking.
"No thanks, I'm fine like this." He announced stubbornly, deciding it was better to not know than to risk the chance of a bad result.
There was an exasperated sigh and before Ryou could judge the Thief's changing position hands were on his face, forcing his eyelids to flicker open. Ryou blinked and found his vision filled with a slightly pissed off looking Thief with a disbelieving expression.
"You studied for these exams for hours. You had a week long panic attack during them and you've been waiting for this letter for a month. Read the damn thing!" Bakura spat, thrusting the letter into his alarmed face.
The numbers and words were blurry at first as his eyes adjusted to the light again, but all too soon they came into focus and Ryou had to blink again.
"I.. I passed." He stuttered clumsily, staring at the letter in shock, tears forming in his eyes.
"You did more than pass! You got A*'s in all of them, and this note here says you were top of your year."
Ryou blinked again, eyes filling with water as he re-read the letter and the specially written congratulations from the Principal for breaking the schools record for exam results.
Ryou tried to speak but all that came out was a choked sob, the next thing Bakura knew he had a happily crying and very high pitched Ryou clinging to his waist.
"I passed Bakura!" Ryou squeaked between noisy hiccups and loud sobs, "I really passed!"
Bakura couldn't help but grin as he hugged Ryou back, only slightly annoyed that his T-shirt was becoming damp. "Nerd." He smiled affectionately, lifting one hand to ruffle Ryou's white hair as he pulled back and wiped his face dry.
"This is a cause for celebration!" Bakura walked over to the fridge and returned a moment later with two beer bottles and a bottle opener. He opened one and pushed it towards Ryou, who wrinkled his nose at the smell and pushed it back.
"I'm not eighteen yet."
Bakura rolled his eyes as if Ryou was being deliberately picky, but took a swig from the beer himself.
"Well then, cigarettes!" This time he reached into his pocket and flourished his gold lighter and an opened packet of Richmond superkings.
"I didn't become eighteen in the last two minutes Bakura."
"Then I guess, Chinese takeaway?" Bakura suggested with a grin as he raised the takeaway leaflet he had been reading
"Yeah!"
Bakura chuckled and pushed the leaflet towards Ryou, "order whatever you want, just get chow mein for me."
Ryou's brow furrowed slightly, "is that all you want?"
"I'm not very hungry."
Ryou couldn't hide his surprise and Bakura rolled his eyes before heading out of the back door for his celebratory cigarette, leaving a relieved Ryou to spend approximately twenty minutes studying the menu before finally deciding to order what he always did.
Bakura let his thoughts wander as he smoked his way to an early grave, occasionally tapping the ash onto the ground to disperse into the wind. He was happy that Ryou had done well in his exams, and from the looks of it Ryou was happy too. But there was a strange feeling in his stomach that he couldn't quite identify, he quickly ran through all the emotions he knew, which were surprisingly few.
Jealousy.
That was definitely one part of it, the way his stomach had churned and he had momentarily hated Ryou. He wasn't sure why he was jealous though, was it because Ryou was smarter than him? Surely he had always known that, Ryou was something of a nerd, always doing homework or researching or watching boring documentaries. It was also no secret that his career aspirations tended to be of a professional level, vet, doctor, and briefly, astronaut.
A sudden pang of something akin to fear shot through Bakura's stomach and he almost dropped his cigarette, raising it for a shaky drag. Surely if Ryou still wanted to get a good job he would need more education, that meant going to University in a couple of years. Bakura knew from watching crappy TV shows what University meant. University meant parties, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and sleeping with anything that moved. University meant freedom, independence. University was the way to break free of oppressive parents and to take your first steps into the world. University was, as far as Bakura knew, a virtually permanent residence for three years, or more.
"Three years." He muttered to himself quietly, staring at his cigarette as it slowly burnt down in the light wind.
Three years was a long time. Of course, University meant meeting lots of people too, people who could all too easily replace Bakura. Ryou didn't have any real friends in school, and Bakura knew that was his fault. How was Ryou supposed to keep friends if they could never go to his house, if he was never allowed out, if he had to spend all his time at school doing work instead of socializing because he was a mixture of slave and punching bag at home.
Before the accident, Bakura would have simply refused it. Told him he wasn't going and that was final, but the accident had made him realize something. Reverting back to his old ways would only make Ryou hate him again and undo all the hard work he had put into gaining Ryou's trust.
In a state as near to panic as the Thief had ever felt, he flung open the back door and walked over to Ryou, who was, as anticipated, studying the leaflet with an indecisive pout.
"Ryou." He said, trying to sound calm.
"No smoking in the house." Ryou flat lined, eyes not leaving the leaflet even as his nose wrinkled slightly.
Bakura blinked, then realized his cigarette still smoked between his fingers, growling lightly before throwing it out of the open window by the sink.
"Are you going to University?" Bakura asked, sounding more demanding and alarmed than he would have liked.
Ryou lowered the takeaway leaflet to the table in surprise, eyes studying Bakura in slight suspicion. "Not right now. I need to get A-levels first."
"But you are going?" Bakura pressed, annoyed at the evasive answer he had been given.
"Well." Ryou sighed and shuffled in his seat. "I don't really know any more. I did want to, but..."
"But what?" Bakura demanded, earning a small glare from Ryou, who looked torn.
"Well, I don't know if I want to go away for that long. I might just do it from home."
"You can do that?" Bakura queried, feeling hope bloom in his stomach.
Ryou nodded, "they send you all the work and you do it then go to summer school."
"But don't you want to get independence and stuff?"
Ryou looked at Bakura like he'd just grown a second head. "I've been looking after you for years, I think I'm independent enough."
Bakura felt suddenly guilty, an emotion he generally ignored or didn't even experience.
"So don't you want to get away from that?"
"You mean from you?" Ryou said, reading between the lines expertly. "Not really."
Bakura frowned, "why not?"
"You'd be hopeless without me." Ryou responded teasingly, standing to grab the house phone. "Now be a good Thief and get out some chopsticks."
Bakura gave a mock bow which made Ryou giggle as he left the room to phone for the Chinese. He couldn't help but wonder if there was a second reason to why Ryou didn't want to leave, but he quickly brushed it away as wishful thinking and retrieved chopsticks like he'd been told.
