A/N: This chapter is from Ryou's POV. Sorry bout the slow updates ^_^.

***

Love is sunshine.

It brings warmth to whomever it touches, filling their heart with a soft glow of affection.

Both breed life. Sunshine, in the flowers that literally feed of its energy, and love, in the way it inspires and spurs us even in our darkest hours.

It was sufficient to say that Bakura was my sun.

I was standing in the shade.

I knew, I sensed his love waiting somewhere, waiting. The thought of it made me smile, hell, more than smile, it gave me a reason to live.

Yet I never experienced it.

Strangely enough, our shared body had nothing to do with it.

When most people think of love, they associate it with kissing, cuddling, and most often, sex. What they are actually referring to is kissing, cuddling, and sex. Love is a completely different thing.

No matter how I classified it, love was something I most certainly wasn't receiving from Bakura. The emotion simply wasn't there.

I didn't try and delude myself into thinking he was merely shy. Bakura is not shy. He acts on his emotions, sometimes to the point of being hurtful. Not that he cares. That's the other thing. Along with love, he seems to lack compassion.

Why do I love him, you ask?

Perhaps I'm insane. That seems to be a regular explanation these days. Insanity.

Whatever my mental state, the fact was, I loved him. It was terrible not knowing whether or not he felt the same. Yet I'd chosen uncertainty over the possibility of rejection.

As I denied my own emotions, I was slowly able to banish them to the fringes of my mind. Or so I thought.

Then the dreams began.

In truth, they were only a small part of what I wanted from Bakura. Love was much more important than sex could every be. It was the way he treated me in them that brought me so much joy.

The look in his eyes as he leaned down to kiss me, the respect, awe, and deep love he sent my way. In reality he'd only shot me a scant few looks of scorn, if he looked or paid attention to me at all.

He was so gentle, so caring. That's the difference between making love and fucking. Making love is exactly what it sounds like. Fucking lacks respect, lacks love, lacks all emotion, and is merely physical gratification. Not that the physical gratification wasn't wonderful in itself.

My dreams became my escape from the shade. Like a dying flower, I began to believe that the artificial light really was from my beautiful sun. When I'd wake up I'd pretend that I was really dreaming then, and it was all a terrible nightmare. That in reality Bakura loved me and was waiting for me to close my eyes and escape to our private dreamland.

Night after night I'd seep myself in his faux adoration, always blocking the dream from memory one I'd awakened. I didn't want to find out what Bakura would say if he knew about my secret wish for sunshine.

One morning, I forgot.

Laying in bed, reveling in the wonderful feeling of being loved, I abandoned my responsibility, not able to let go of the wonderful feeling. That's when I felt Bakura's mind link skim along mine.

I quickly closed it, hiding my secret from his probing, and quickly entered his soul room.

He was faking sleep. My dream had probably awakened him, he just had his reasons for wanting me to not know he'd been spying.

"Good morning," I called, hoping to distract him at least temporarily while I thought of an excuse. While my brain's wheels turned, I couldn't help noticing how beautiful Bakura looked, his bare back exposed for my eyes.

He didn't seem to notice. "What do you want?" came his cordial reply.

"I…" I was stuck, " I thought I'd wake you up this morning". He wasn't buying it. Maybe if I got out quick enough, he'd forget.

"Any particular reason?" he inquired innocently, just trying to be annoying. Little did he know how close he was. The closeness was making me nervous. I felt myself blushing.

I searched my brain for lies I knew I couldn't momentarily conjure. I stuttered a few words, then quickly exited, hoping he would leave the subject alone.

To my great surprise, he did. I began finding myself forgetting to shield myself from his mind more and more often, yet he never questioned me in any way.

Though I knew I should be grateful for his naivety, I began wanting him to discover my sweet secret.

In my fantasy, he'd learn, forgive me, and wisk me off into the sunset and love me 'till the day we passed into the afterlife.

In reality, he'd probably get angry, then use his knowledge of my emotions to his advantage. He is, after all, a thief. Thieves never let anything go to waste.

Yet whatever punishment he would inflict on me began to seem better verses the slow torture the secret was putting me through. It was tearing me from the inside out, straddling reality as well as my fantasy.

I was getting desperate. A few times I even sent a small part of it across our soul link. He never said a word.

I was being driven insane by it. The dream which once held such joy now brought pain, as I saw my wish flaunted before my eyes, teasing me.

How could he not know? That question plagued me incessantly. The only possible answer I could come up with was that he knew, he just enjoyed my pain. Or he didn't think I was even worth his time to torture.

In a last attempt, I kept our soul link open during the entire dream, begging for him to interrupt, to do anything that would acknowledge my presence.

Entering his soul room, he played his same game of indifference.

Hopelessness ran rampant through my veins. So that was it. He'd never love me, never mind recognize I even existed. Life just wasn't worth living.

A single tear escaped my eye as I fled the room.

***

A/N: Aaack! That was long! Reviews are my sunshine! I'm a little flower! Feed me!