Three days later Ryou was carefully dabbing a wet cloth on his neck. Hissing with satisfaction, he watched the so-called 'bruises' disappear, and laughed as he thought of how carefully, and lovingly, Kaiba had applied them. They had been good enough to deceive Bakura even, and Ryou took a lot of secret pleasure in that fact.
It had worked at any rate, and Bakura was now trying to apparently kill Ryou with kindness. It made sense after all, for having people think he loved Ryou was probably what the tomb-robber feared most. Luckily, it wasn't true, and now the rumors of abuse weren't either. Ryou might have continued musing in that vein, but he had to go meet Kaiba for their next date.
Before he could leave the house though, Bakura bounded after him, and handed him a book to give to Kaiba. Ryou didn't really pay much attention to it, since it seemed to be a part of the uneasy truce that existed between the three of them – Ryou and Bakura would be civil to each other, Ryou and Kaiba would love each other, and rather surprisingly, Kaiba and Bakura would be fast friends. Apparently the two of them had more in common than Ryou ever thought, their sense of humor being one of those things.
Glancing at the title of the book, Ryou noticed it was by some Marquis or another, and then skipped off merrily to meet Kaiba. Only after he was out of sight did Marik emerge from behind the house, still not fully dressed and slightly displeased one of his favorite books had been lent out with his permission.
Authors Note: Hm, well, I know said it was going to be a one-shot, but I wanted to have happy ending for once. I was feeling kind of bad about making everyone die all the time, although seeing how awful this ending is, I can see why I tend to just kill everyone off in the end.