A/N: La la la. Chapter two of da Egypt fic. The slaves' language, by the
way, is Japanese, because that's the only foreign language that I both have
enough background in and can safely write in without being harassed by my
dear friends Anie and Bex about my tenses and plurals and so on, since they
know jack shit about it. ^__^ No worries for the (mostly) monolingual;
there won't be much of it anyway.
Still AU, and now with added shounen ai! -^__^-v
"Dust, Sweat, And Roses"
The blonde was beautiful, Bakura had to give him that. Even draped in chains and fetters, he was still that kind of dangerous, infatuating beautiful that one could too easily become addicted to. But he was proud too, and appeared quick to anger, and really not at all the tomb robber's style. Too high-maintenance.
And "high-maintenance" meant that selling him would be difficult for the market's managers, especially with the hundreds of other new slaves they had to deal with. Bakura, however, knew of a few buyers that specialized in breaking disobedient property- especially such attractive property. If he purchased the boy, he could make a killing in privately selling to one of them. He certainly had enough money: he had gotten an indecent sum off the gold earrings and ankh he had stolen from some nameless pharaoh's tomb not a month before. He still had an armband left from the haul, in fact- a delicate silver thing, and it'd sell damn well too with how rare silver was around here.
Still . . . he felt almost guilty at the thought of doing that to this boy. And he never felt guilty.
But this time, there was that OTHER boy . . .
That other boy's skin was remarkably fair, and the sun had already scorched it almost crimson, making his hair appear literally white against it. But really, he was a lovely creature despite the burns, even more so than the blonde. And yet he clung to that young man like a child afraid of losing a favorite doll.
For some reason, Bakura did not want to make that boy sad, and it was clear that losing the blonde might well kill him.
He wasn't the only one in that little group beside the blond- there was another youth with short, dark hair and a build that would've made a Greek weep for joy, and a brunette girl with chopsticks in her tresses, curves that went all the right ways, and startlingly large blue eyes. Neither of them had left the blonde or the lovely one's sides since they'd arrived in the courtyard.
Bakura found that he was getting rather jealous of the blonde, actually. He would've liked very much to hold that pretty white-haired slave. Logically, of course, he knew that the boy's hair could not actually be white. His own might've been, true, but he was one of a kind. A freak, in less polite terms. He had been assured of that often enough.
But no one as lovely as that boy could be a twisted thing like he was.
A moment passed as he just looked at the slave-to-be, and wished more than anything to be the blonde, just for a little while. Just long enough to see what the lovely one's skin felt like; what his hair smelled like.
And then, before he knew it, he'd slipped out of the crowd of citizens and into the crowd of slaves. The risk, he knew, was insane. He'd be luckier than he deserved if he didn't get snatched up and sold too, especially with his unfortunately exotic looks. But he had to see. He had to know . . .
He had to know something about that boy. Anything, so long as it was about that boy.
A hand suddenly clamped onto his wrist; he jerked in shock and automatically went for his knife, but a voice hissed, "/Ryou-kun, it's me!/" in both the soldiers' tongue and his ear. He was never more grateful to be bilingual as he turned to face the speaker and nearly fell over.
It was a boy, or little more than one, with a slight frame, intense eyes, and spiked hair. His bangs hung in his eyes, a brilliant blond, though the rest of his hair was black and highlighted by both that same blond and a color that could've easily been either purple or magenta or something else altogether.
And his resemblance to the pharaoh was flawless, save that slightly more sun-streaked hair and his startling eyes. His were deep and a harsh crimson, where the pharaoh's had always been flat, cool violet.
"/Ryou-kun, where is Katsuya? Do you know if he escaped?/" the pharaoh's look-alike asked urgently, tightening his grip.
Bakura just stared at him blankly. 'Ryou-kun,' he had called him? Wasn't that a name of some kind?
There was a shout, and the blonde he had seen earlier suddenly forced his way through the crowd. The look-alike's expression was torn between horror and joy, and he flung himself at the taller boy with a strangled, grief- filled cry.
"/Yami-kun!/" the blonde said in delight. "/Thank the gods you're alive!/"
"/I have,/" the look-alike- apparently "Yami-kun"- answered ruefully, hugging the blond even harder and squeezing his eyes shut. He really did look remarkably like the pharaoh when he acted like that, Bakura noted with a detached sort of bewilderment.
The blonde's other companions appeared from among the throng a moment later, crying out in relief at the sight of Yami and embracing him, even as he gave the lovely boy a puzzled look and automatically turned his head towards Bakura.
"/Who . . . ?/" he asked bemusedly, and four more pairs of eyes turned towards the tomb robber.
"/Goddess!/" the lovely boy gasped, eyes widening, and Bakura saw that his hair truly was white after all. "/You look just like-!/" A voice suddenly shouted above the crowd in Egyptian, interrupting him, and Bakura paled at the words.
"/The auction is starting,/" he whispered even as the others' faces turned grim.
"/Then let's end it, eh?/" the blond said lightly, though his eyes were cold and betrayed his tone. He tugged experimentally at the manacles around his wrists, scowling with displeasure at their strength.
"/If you want . . . I'll pick the locks,/" Bakura offered quietly, though more to the white-haired boy than the blond.
The former's eyes lit up. "/Could you really?!/" he asked excitedly, and if Bakura had held any hope of getting out of this without breaking any more laws than absolutely necessary, it all went straight to hell right then, along with his common sense and madly screaming survival instincts.
"/Yeah,/" he said softly, and to his horror felt himself blushing even as his hands reached out and grabbed the other boy's manacles, a lock pick already out from behind his ear and in the mechanism. A sharp twist, and they popped open.
"/Thank you!/" the white-haired boy cried, beaming at him and giving him a brief, grateful hug.
His hair smelled like dust and sweat and roses.
"/My name is Ryou,/" the boy said in an amiable sort of way even as Bakura shivered and moved on to dealing with the dark-haired girl, praying that his blush would be mistaken for sunburn. "/What's yours?/"
"/Bakura, if you must know,/" he replied tersely as the girl's manacles followed the fate of the last pair, too embarrassed to maintain the quiet, gentle tones that he had held earlier. The other didn't even seem phased and just smiled brightly at him. Bakura gave the remaining soldiers a suspicious look. "/Any particular reason as to why the three of you together are wearing enough restraints to keep down half an army?/" he inquired coolly.
The blonde laughed a bit nervously. "/Ah, we mighta killed a few guards,/" he said, voice sheepish.
"/And perhaps we ruined a soul or two . . . /" Yami coughed delicately.
"/And we definitely caused enough property damage to get whatever fool was in charge of guarding us executed twice over,/" the dark-haired boy added with a smug little smirk. "/The only reason that Anzu and Ryou aren't chained up just as much as we are is because they were still unconscious while we were at it./"
"/Otherwise, we would've killed ALL of the Pharaoh's precious little guards,/" the girl- Anzu, he'd called her?- put in with a slightly feral grin of her own as she pulled out the chopsticks holding up her hair. It fell to just above her shoulders and sunlight glinted off the sticks' edges, making them look like needle-thin daggers.
Oh wait. They WERE daggers.
After that little trick, Bakura had no trouble believing that she and the lovely Ryou could kill him just fine on their own and went to work on the rest of the group, careful to stay away from any pockets or jewelry that might've concealed or been another hidden weapon.
"/Thank you so much,/" Ryou said warmly as the last of the chains fell open, and it was so hard to see him as a soldier. "/Is there anything that we can do for you?/"
"/We'll thank him properly when we get back home,/" Yami cut in, suddenly focused and razor-sharp- as if he hadn't been sharp enough before. "/For now, we need a plan./"
"/My personal favorite: run like hell and don't get caught,/" Bakura advised with a smirk and a mocking salute, feeling a bit more like himself on such familiar ground. "/See ya, kids./"
"/Wait, where are you going?/" Ryou asked, confusion in his eyes. Bakura would not let himself believe that he saw disappointment in those eyes as well.
"Home," he replied in his mother tongue, and though Ryou and the dark- haired boy didn't seem to understand, the others clearly did.
"You is an Egypt?!" Yami exclaimed in broken Egyptian.
"Hai," Bakura affirmed with a slightly ironic smirk.
"/What is it?/" Ryou asked with a slightly bemused frown.
"/He's not a soldier,/" the blonde explained calmly. "/He's an Egyptian./"
"/What?/" The dark-haired boy exclaimed. "But he looks nothing LIKE-/"
"/Shut up!/" Bakura yelled at him and barely kept himself from lashing out at the other. A fight at this point, however, would draw attention that they really did not want.
"/Honda-kun didn't mean anything bad by it, Bakura-san,/" Ryou said earnestly, eyes pleading. "/Don't be upset./"
"/Just forget it,/" Bakura muttered, shoving away from the others.
"/Wait, please!/" Ryou grabbed his arm and gave him an imploring look. "/Let me thank you, at least./"
He gave the boy a dubious look. "/And just how do you intend to-/"
Ryou kissed him. Just once, lightly on the cheek and so chastely that it wouldn't have satisfied a virgin.
To Bakura, however . . .
To Bakura, it was more than he could ever have hoped for.
* tbc . . . *
. : review, like a good love slave : .
Still AU, and now with added shounen ai! -^__^-v
"Dust, Sweat, And Roses"
The blonde was beautiful, Bakura had to give him that. Even draped in chains and fetters, he was still that kind of dangerous, infatuating beautiful that one could too easily become addicted to. But he was proud too, and appeared quick to anger, and really not at all the tomb robber's style. Too high-maintenance.
And "high-maintenance" meant that selling him would be difficult for the market's managers, especially with the hundreds of other new slaves they had to deal with. Bakura, however, knew of a few buyers that specialized in breaking disobedient property- especially such attractive property. If he purchased the boy, he could make a killing in privately selling to one of them. He certainly had enough money: he had gotten an indecent sum off the gold earrings and ankh he had stolen from some nameless pharaoh's tomb not a month before. He still had an armband left from the haul, in fact- a delicate silver thing, and it'd sell damn well too with how rare silver was around here.
Still . . . he felt almost guilty at the thought of doing that to this boy. And he never felt guilty.
But this time, there was that OTHER boy . . .
That other boy's skin was remarkably fair, and the sun had already scorched it almost crimson, making his hair appear literally white against it. But really, he was a lovely creature despite the burns, even more so than the blonde. And yet he clung to that young man like a child afraid of losing a favorite doll.
For some reason, Bakura did not want to make that boy sad, and it was clear that losing the blonde might well kill him.
He wasn't the only one in that little group beside the blond- there was another youth with short, dark hair and a build that would've made a Greek weep for joy, and a brunette girl with chopsticks in her tresses, curves that went all the right ways, and startlingly large blue eyes. Neither of them had left the blonde or the lovely one's sides since they'd arrived in the courtyard.
Bakura found that he was getting rather jealous of the blonde, actually. He would've liked very much to hold that pretty white-haired slave. Logically, of course, he knew that the boy's hair could not actually be white. His own might've been, true, but he was one of a kind. A freak, in less polite terms. He had been assured of that often enough.
But no one as lovely as that boy could be a twisted thing like he was.
A moment passed as he just looked at the slave-to-be, and wished more than anything to be the blonde, just for a little while. Just long enough to see what the lovely one's skin felt like; what his hair smelled like.
And then, before he knew it, he'd slipped out of the crowd of citizens and into the crowd of slaves. The risk, he knew, was insane. He'd be luckier than he deserved if he didn't get snatched up and sold too, especially with his unfortunately exotic looks. But he had to see. He had to know . . .
He had to know something about that boy. Anything, so long as it was about that boy.
A hand suddenly clamped onto his wrist; he jerked in shock and automatically went for his knife, but a voice hissed, "/Ryou-kun, it's me!/" in both the soldiers' tongue and his ear. He was never more grateful to be bilingual as he turned to face the speaker and nearly fell over.
It was a boy, or little more than one, with a slight frame, intense eyes, and spiked hair. His bangs hung in his eyes, a brilliant blond, though the rest of his hair was black and highlighted by both that same blond and a color that could've easily been either purple or magenta or something else altogether.
And his resemblance to the pharaoh was flawless, save that slightly more sun-streaked hair and his startling eyes. His were deep and a harsh crimson, where the pharaoh's had always been flat, cool violet.
"/Ryou-kun, where is Katsuya? Do you know if he escaped?/" the pharaoh's look-alike asked urgently, tightening his grip.
Bakura just stared at him blankly. 'Ryou-kun,' he had called him? Wasn't that a name of some kind?
There was a shout, and the blonde he had seen earlier suddenly forced his way through the crowd. The look-alike's expression was torn between horror and joy, and he flung himself at the taller boy with a strangled, grief- filled cry.
"/Yami-kun!/" the blonde said in delight. "/Thank the gods you're alive!/"
"/I have,/" the look-alike- apparently "Yami-kun"- answered ruefully, hugging the blond even harder and squeezing his eyes shut. He really did look remarkably like the pharaoh when he acted like that, Bakura noted with a detached sort of bewilderment.
The blonde's other companions appeared from among the throng a moment later, crying out in relief at the sight of Yami and embracing him, even as he gave the lovely boy a puzzled look and automatically turned his head towards Bakura.
"/Who . . . ?/" he asked bemusedly, and four more pairs of eyes turned towards the tomb robber.
"/Goddess!/" the lovely boy gasped, eyes widening, and Bakura saw that his hair truly was white after all. "/You look just like-!/" A voice suddenly shouted above the crowd in Egyptian, interrupting him, and Bakura paled at the words.
"/The auction is starting,/" he whispered even as the others' faces turned grim.
"/Then let's end it, eh?/" the blond said lightly, though his eyes were cold and betrayed his tone. He tugged experimentally at the manacles around his wrists, scowling with displeasure at their strength.
"/If you want . . . I'll pick the locks,/" Bakura offered quietly, though more to the white-haired boy than the blond.
The former's eyes lit up. "/Could you really?!/" he asked excitedly, and if Bakura had held any hope of getting out of this without breaking any more laws than absolutely necessary, it all went straight to hell right then, along with his common sense and madly screaming survival instincts.
"/Yeah,/" he said softly, and to his horror felt himself blushing even as his hands reached out and grabbed the other boy's manacles, a lock pick already out from behind his ear and in the mechanism. A sharp twist, and they popped open.
"/Thank you!/" the white-haired boy cried, beaming at him and giving him a brief, grateful hug.
His hair smelled like dust and sweat and roses.
"/My name is Ryou,/" the boy said in an amiable sort of way even as Bakura shivered and moved on to dealing with the dark-haired girl, praying that his blush would be mistaken for sunburn. "/What's yours?/"
"/Bakura, if you must know,/" he replied tersely as the girl's manacles followed the fate of the last pair, too embarrassed to maintain the quiet, gentle tones that he had held earlier. The other didn't even seem phased and just smiled brightly at him. Bakura gave the remaining soldiers a suspicious look. "/Any particular reason as to why the three of you together are wearing enough restraints to keep down half an army?/" he inquired coolly.
The blonde laughed a bit nervously. "/Ah, we mighta killed a few guards,/" he said, voice sheepish.
"/And perhaps we ruined a soul or two . . . /" Yami coughed delicately.
"/And we definitely caused enough property damage to get whatever fool was in charge of guarding us executed twice over,/" the dark-haired boy added with a smug little smirk. "/The only reason that Anzu and Ryou aren't chained up just as much as we are is because they were still unconscious while we were at it./"
"/Otherwise, we would've killed ALL of the Pharaoh's precious little guards,/" the girl- Anzu, he'd called her?- put in with a slightly feral grin of her own as she pulled out the chopsticks holding up her hair. It fell to just above her shoulders and sunlight glinted off the sticks' edges, making them look like needle-thin daggers.
Oh wait. They WERE daggers.
After that little trick, Bakura had no trouble believing that she and the lovely Ryou could kill him just fine on their own and went to work on the rest of the group, careful to stay away from any pockets or jewelry that might've concealed or been another hidden weapon.
"/Thank you so much,/" Ryou said warmly as the last of the chains fell open, and it was so hard to see him as a soldier. "/Is there anything that we can do for you?/"
"/We'll thank him properly when we get back home,/" Yami cut in, suddenly focused and razor-sharp- as if he hadn't been sharp enough before. "/For now, we need a plan./"
"/My personal favorite: run like hell and don't get caught,/" Bakura advised with a smirk and a mocking salute, feeling a bit more like himself on such familiar ground. "/See ya, kids./"
"/Wait, where are you going?/" Ryou asked, confusion in his eyes. Bakura would not let himself believe that he saw disappointment in those eyes as well.
"Home," he replied in his mother tongue, and though Ryou and the dark- haired boy didn't seem to understand, the others clearly did.
"You is an Egypt?!" Yami exclaimed in broken Egyptian.
"Hai," Bakura affirmed with a slightly ironic smirk.
"/What is it?/" Ryou asked with a slightly bemused frown.
"/He's not a soldier,/" the blonde explained calmly. "/He's an Egyptian./"
"/What?/" The dark-haired boy exclaimed. "But he looks nothing LIKE-/"
"/Shut up!/" Bakura yelled at him and barely kept himself from lashing out at the other. A fight at this point, however, would draw attention that they really did not want.
"/Honda-kun didn't mean anything bad by it, Bakura-san,/" Ryou said earnestly, eyes pleading. "/Don't be upset./"
"/Just forget it,/" Bakura muttered, shoving away from the others.
"/Wait, please!/" Ryou grabbed his arm and gave him an imploring look. "/Let me thank you, at least./"
He gave the boy a dubious look. "/And just how do you intend to-/"
Ryou kissed him. Just once, lightly on the cheek and so chastely that it wouldn't have satisfied a virgin.
To Bakura, however . . .
To Bakura, it was more than he could ever have hoped for.
* tbc . . . *
. : review, like a good love slave : .
