The Caged Rose
Disclaimer: Magic 8 Ball, do I own YGO? *Shakes M8B* It says 'My Sources Say No.'
Pairings: Malik/Ryou, Bakura/Marik. Other pairings will arrive later.
Warnings/Other: Yaoi, Yuri, angst, school-fic, completely ignores story line... Some OOC.
Summary: Ryou is a depressed yet caring loner who just wants some love. Malik is a popular, 'egotistical' honours student. Malik has a secret crush on Ryou, whose trust is literally impossible to gain. The rest is up to fate when they bump into eachother in the halls. YAOI, YURI.
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Black ink rolled across the paper in precise lines, keeping the pattern of the other lines he had drawn. The ink trail joined with others to form a perfectly sketched face. He was just about to finish drawing the eyes when he stopped, and blinked. Ryou scanned over the paper he had been drawing, staring in mild horror back at the impression of Malik's face. Quickly glancing around to see if any of his groupmates had seen the picture, he was relieved to find they hadn't even noticed his sudden change of atmosphere. He quietly tore the paper out of his binder and shoved it into the mess of his backpack.
"Ryou, why don't you ever do something besides draw?" The harsh and nagging voice of Hitsui, one of the people Ryou had been assigned to work with, broke through the silence Ryou had encased around himself.
"Give me something to do and I'll do it." Replied the silver-haired boy coolly.
As it was, Hitsui, Keiru, and Tsujika had been doing all the work for their project, and hadn't even bothered telling Ryou the topic decided upon. Ryou never liked working in groups anyways; he always got shoved off to the side as if his views and ideas were of no more importance than a peice of paper fallen on the floor.
"Well, maybe if you wouldn't just sit there and do nothing, you'd be more welcomed into this group." Tsuijika muttered, running a hand through his short, spiky black hair.
Annoyance flashed through Ryou's brown orbs, "Unless I'm mistaken, you're the one who failed to notice I was told to work with you... 'people.'"
"Shut up, Ryou. You're so annoying." Keiru scoffed.
Ryou's usually passive nature sparked a flame of heated emotion. "Why don't you?"
Hitsui rolled his blackish eyes. "You're so negative, Ryou. Who would ever want to be your friend?"
"Just leave me alone and shut up, alright? If you hate me so much, I'll gladly work by myself. I'd do better when not in your filthy presence anyways." Ryou snapped, doubling the strength in his protective barriers. Hitsui was right. He had no friends, not even aquaintences. Unless he counted Malik, who he was reluctantly growing more fond of every day, Ryou had no one.
"Okay, fine, you know what, Ryou?" Hitsui said, grabbing his pencil and speaking each individual syllable as he wrote, "By Hi-tsu-i, Ke-i-ru, and Tsu-ji-ka. Not by Ryou."
Ryou's face showed complete indifference when Hitsui looked up, proud. "Is this the part where I begin to care?" asked the British youth rhetorically. His eyes caught those of Mrs. Mashimori and he glared at her for pairing him up with his three worst enemies.
"Baita."¹
Mrs. Mashimori saw the fiery anger crossing Ryou's eyes, and quickly intervened. "Ryou, you may not respond."
This only caused Ryou to become more infuriated, "I'll respond if I want to! Why can't you ever let me work alone; you know I cannot function in groups!"
Pulling back her long, dark hair, Mrs. Mashimori pointed Hitsui and the others out of the classroom. "You may not respond."
"That's not answering my question!" Ryou hissed. There hadn't been a day to pass by where he and Hitsui hadn't tried to kill eachother in one way or another. Usually, Ryou would have let the matter roll off his shoulders, but Hitsui was always starting arguments with him, never letting him have any peace.
"You owe Hitsui an apology,"
A glare. "I'm not going to apologize to him or anyone."
"But you were very rude to him."
"As if he wasn't rude to me?" Ryou gathered his books as Mrs. Mashimori began lecturing again. He turned back around and sent Mrs. Mashimori a look of pure venom. "I'm leaving." With that, he kicked the door open and slammed it hard in his teacher's face. He made a dash to his locker to shove his books in it, and barely made sure it was closed before running outside.
.
When it had started to rain, Ryou didn't know, but he did know that he did not like it. Clad in a short-sleeved, thin black shirt, and loose-fitting black jeans, he was not at all prepared for a rainfall. He continued walking until he reached the chain-link fence seperating him from the freedom of officially being off-campus. With a determined frown, he slipped his backpack off his shoulders, stepped back, aimed, and threw it over the nine-foot-tall fence. When it landed with a soft 'plop' on the grass, he smirked and slid his foot into one of the rungs.
It took a little longer than he had wanted, but after jumping down at about seven feet off the ground, Ryou was free from the concerns about the school police officers and administrators as he replaced his backpack and began walking through the teacher's parking lot. He came across the slick black Mitsubishi of Mrs. Mashimori, and for a moment he considered taking out his keys and keying an offending message into the paint. He decided against it, though; he didn't feel like getting in too much trouble.
.
He walked the lonely streets of Domino City for a long while, not even caring that ice-cold rain was pouring down on him and that he would probably catch a cold soon. Head bowed, he travelled without even knowing where he was going until he looked up and realized he was infront of his house. The empty darkness of the windows peered back at him from the depths of shadowed nothingness. Even though his father still had legal custody of him, Ryou's dad was never home anymore, and so he was left to fend for himself.
Ryou sighed and took small, hesitant steps towards the picket-fence, resting his hand atop the spikes. He stood like that for a long time, shoulders shaking from the immense cold. As he stared with dull, sullen eyes into the moist grass he had taken such great care to cultivate properly, memories from his childhood flooded back into his mind. The only thing he could remember clearly about his mother and sister was that they always did their best to keep him from getting too sad. He could almost imagine motherly arms wrapping around his shoulders and telling him it would be alright when he closed his eyes. But, upon opening those deeply pained orbs, he found the memory vanishing along with the feeling.
He felt the familiar prickle of tears in the backs of his eyes, but he made no motion to wipe them away. Who cares if anyone saw him crying? Ryou certianly didn't as he clutched the strap of his backpack. He raised his eyes to gaze into the misty windows. Frown. The silver-haired youth didn't feel like returning to his house right about now. It wasn't a 'home' to him, because he never had experienced the warmth a home was supposed to bring.
Reaching into his pocket, Ryou unclipped his keys and stared at them for a long while. As he remained statue-like infront of his yard, he failed to notice the silver Mercedes² pulling up behind him.
.
"Ryou! Hey, Ryou!"
He turned around, curious. Arching a thin silvery eyebrow, he noticed that it was Malik who had called his name. Ryou remained silent as he watched the car pull to a stop at the curb.
Malik fumbled for a moment with the hood of his black sweatshirt before opening the driver's door. He quickly closed the door behind him, not wanting to get the seat wet. The rain drip-dropped on to his hood as he stood beside his car, hands in his pockets. "Why're you standing there getting soaked? Want a lift home?" Asked the blonde, a genuine smile on his face.
"This is my home."
"Oh, cool." Malik said, "Did you forget your keys inside?"
"No."
"Why don't you go inside? I mean, you'll catch a cold..."
Ryou sighed. Wasn't it obvious? "Because I don't want to, alright?"
A frown spread across Malik's face. "...wanna come to my place instead?"
"Why not." Ryou said passively, shrugging. He reached over the fence and dumped his backpack in the yard, not caring if it was drowned by the time he got home that night.
Malik smiled and moved to open the passenger side door for his beloved. His cheeks flushed as Ryou's arm brushed against his upon sitting down in the velvet seat. Closing the door once Ryou was seat-belted in, he strode around to the driver's side, got in, and started the car up. The vehicle roared to life, and they were off.
.
Ryou stared out the fogged up window as Malik drove in silence, a distant look in his longing eyes. He watched as each individual rain drop trickled down the sheet of glass, eventually ending its' journey in the rubber shielding the inside of the car from the elements. As he gazed into the very core of nothingness itself, he couldn't help but wonder. "Malik?"
"Hm?"
"Why are you so eager to befriend me anyways? Why do you care?"
Malik was quiet for a long time, fighting down the blush he felt rising in his cheeks while trying to focus on driving. He turned to Ryou once he came to a red light and sighed. "In your eyes, I see a darkness that torments you, and in your head where it dwells." He took his hand off the steering wheel and held it out to Ryou, eyes sparkling with hope and sincerity. "I'll give you my hand if you'd reach out and grab it." Malik gently placed his hand atop Ryou's, "Let's walk away from this hell."
"What?" Ryou asked, suprised when his body didn't automatically flinch away from the touch. He glanced up into Malik's eyes, all his walls and barriers taken down for just a moment. "Am I really... that easy to read?"
Malik shook his head as the light turned green. "Not really. But Ryou, you can't see the desperation in your eyes. It... It hurts me to see you so miserable." The Egyptian risked a glance as he changed lanes. 'If this continues I'll probably end up telling him how I feel...'
"Why's that? You hardly even know me."
"Well... I want to get to know you."
Ryou's eyebrow arched a second time as he ran over the happenings of the last half-hour. Finally, a conclusion popped into his head, and before he could stop himself, he spoke. "You like me, is that it? You have a crush on me or something?"
For a moment, the whole world around Malik went silent as his foot slammed the break, and in the time following that moment, everything went black.
* * *
He didn't know what on earth had happened. All he knew was that his body ached all over, he felt extremely dizzy, and something was beeping in a very annoying fasion. Easing his eyes open, he closed them instantly and made a subtle sound of discomfort as bright lights blinded his vision temporarily. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard the rustling of someone's clothing as they moved. Malik groaned as his senses fully returned to him, a sudden wave of pain seizing his entire body as he curled into a fetal position.
"My God... I'm so sorry..." came a broken, whispered voice with a soft British accent.
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1 - slut (of course Ryou is not a slut.. but I needed an insult and that was the first thing I saw in my dictionary)
2 - So Malik drives a Mercedes in Japan. _ Sue him.
Shori: Uh. No comment people. *Hides from D, Tia, and angry reviewers* Oh, and the 'In your eyes I see a darkness that torments you and in your head where it dwells. I'll give you my hand if you'd reach out and grab it, let's walk away from this hell.' thing that Malik said is lyrics to Into The Dark by the one and only completely awesome Juliana Theory.
Malik: WTF DID YOU DO TO ME?!
Shori: o_o Uhm... Okay, I'm outta here. *Runs*
Bakura: WAIT! YOU FORGOT SOMETHING SHORI!
Shori: x__x What'd I forget? OH! YES! I'm removing the review counter for this chapter just for the helluvit... x_x I just hope you guys don't stop reviewing. Ja minna!
x Shori
Disclaimer: Magic 8 Ball, do I own YGO? *Shakes M8B* It says 'My Sources Say No.'
Pairings: Malik/Ryou, Bakura/Marik. Other pairings will arrive later.
Warnings/Other: Yaoi, Yuri, angst, school-fic, completely ignores story line... Some OOC.
Summary: Ryou is a depressed yet caring loner who just wants some love. Malik is a popular, 'egotistical' honours student. Malik has a secret crush on Ryou, whose trust is literally impossible to gain. The rest is up to fate when they bump into eachother in the halls. YAOI, YURI.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Black ink rolled across the paper in precise lines, keeping the pattern of the other lines he had drawn. The ink trail joined with others to form a perfectly sketched face. He was just about to finish drawing the eyes when he stopped, and blinked. Ryou scanned over the paper he had been drawing, staring in mild horror back at the impression of Malik's face. Quickly glancing around to see if any of his groupmates had seen the picture, he was relieved to find they hadn't even noticed his sudden change of atmosphere. He quietly tore the paper out of his binder and shoved it into the mess of his backpack.
"Ryou, why don't you ever do something besides draw?" The harsh and nagging voice of Hitsui, one of the people Ryou had been assigned to work with, broke through the silence Ryou had encased around himself.
"Give me something to do and I'll do it." Replied the silver-haired boy coolly.
As it was, Hitsui, Keiru, and Tsujika had been doing all the work for their project, and hadn't even bothered telling Ryou the topic decided upon. Ryou never liked working in groups anyways; he always got shoved off to the side as if his views and ideas were of no more importance than a peice of paper fallen on the floor.
"Well, maybe if you wouldn't just sit there and do nothing, you'd be more welcomed into this group." Tsuijika muttered, running a hand through his short, spiky black hair.
Annoyance flashed through Ryou's brown orbs, "Unless I'm mistaken, you're the one who failed to notice I was told to work with you... 'people.'"
"Shut up, Ryou. You're so annoying." Keiru scoffed.
Ryou's usually passive nature sparked a flame of heated emotion. "Why don't you?"
Hitsui rolled his blackish eyes. "You're so negative, Ryou. Who would ever want to be your friend?"
"Just leave me alone and shut up, alright? If you hate me so much, I'll gladly work by myself. I'd do better when not in your filthy presence anyways." Ryou snapped, doubling the strength in his protective barriers. Hitsui was right. He had no friends, not even aquaintences. Unless he counted Malik, who he was reluctantly growing more fond of every day, Ryou had no one.
"Okay, fine, you know what, Ryou?" Hitsui said, grabbing his pencil and speaking each individual syllable as he wrote, "By Hi-tsu-i, Ke-i-ru, and Tsu-ji-ka. Not by Ryou."
Ryou's face showed complete indifference when Hitsui looked up, proud. "Is this the part where I begin to care?" asked the British youth rhetorically. His eyes caught those of Mrs. Mashimori and he glared at her for pairing him up with his three worst enemies.
"Baita."¹
Mrs. Mashimori saw the fiery anger crossing Ryou's eyes, and quickly intervened. "Ryou, you may not respond."
This only caused Ryou to become more infuriated, "I'll respond if I want to! Why can't you ever let me work alone; you know I cannot function in groups!"
Pulling back her long, dark hair, Mrs. Mashimori pointed Hitsui and the others out of the classroom. "You may not respond."
"That's not answering my question!" Ryou hissed. There hadn't been a day to pass by where he and Hitsui hadn't tried to kill eachother in one way or another. Usually, Ryou would have let the matter roll off his shoulders, but Hitsui was always starting arguments with him, never letting him have any peace.
"You owe Hitsui an apology,"
A glare. "I'm not going to apologize to him or anyone."
"But you were very rude to him."
"As if he wasn't rude to me?" Ryou gathered his books as Mrs. Mashimori began lecturing again. He turned back around and sent Mrs. Mashimori a look of pure venom. "I'm leaving." With that, he kicked the door open and slammed it hard in his teacher's face. He made a dash to his locker to shove his books in it, and barely made sure it was closed before running outside.
.
When it had started to rain, Ryou didn't know, but he did know that he did not like it. Clad in a short-sleeved, thin black shirt, and loose-fitting black jeans, he was not at all prepared for a rainfall. He continued walking until he reached the chain-link fence seperating him from the freedom of officially being off-campus. With a determined frown, he slipped his backpack off his shoulders, stepped back, aimed, and threw it over the nine-foot-tall fence. When it landed with a soft 'plop' on the grass, he smirked and slid his foot into one of the rungs.
It took a little longer than he had wanted, but after jumping down at about seven feet off the ground, Ryou was free from the concerns about the school police officers and administrators as he replaced his backpack and began walking through the teacher's parking lot. He came across the slick black Mitsubishi of Mrs. Mashimori, and for a moment he considered taking out his keys and keying an offending message into the paint. He decided against it, though; he didn't feel like getting in too much trouble.
.
He walked the lonely streets of Domino City for a long while, not even caring that ice-cold rain was pouring down on him and that he would probably catch a cold soon. Head bowed, he travelled without even knowing where he was going until he looked up and realized he was infront of his house. The empty darkness of the windows peered back at him from the depths of shadowed nothingness. Even though his father still had legal custody of him, Ryou's dad was never home anymore, and so he was left to fend for himself.
Ryou sighed and took small, hesitant steps towards the picket-fence, resting his hand atop the spikes. He stood like that for a long time, shoulders shaking from the immense cold. As he stared with dull, sullen eyes into the moist grass he had taken such great care to cultivate properly, memories from his childhood flooded back into his mind. The only thing he could remember clearly about his mother and sister was that they always did their best to keep him from getting too sad. He could almost imagine motherly arms wrapping around his shoulders and telling him it would be alright when he closed his eyes. But, upon opening those deeply pained orbs, he found the memory vanishing along with the feeling.
He felt the familiar prickle of tears in the backs of his eyes, but he made no motion to wipe them away. Who cares if anyone saw him crying? Ryou certianly didn't as he clutched the strap of his backpack. He raised his eyes to gaze into the misty windows. Frown. The silver-haired youth didn't feel like returning to his house right about now. It wasn't a 'home' to him, because he never had experienced the warmth a home was supposed to bring.
Reaching into his pocket, Ryou unclipped his keys and stared at them for a long while. As he remained statue-like infront of his yard, he failed to notice the silver Mercedes² pulling up behind him.
.
"Ryou! Hey, Ryou!"
He turned around, curious. Arching a thin silvery eyebrow, he noticed that it was Malik who had called his name. Ryou remained silent as he watched the car pull to a stop at the curb.
Malik fumbled for a moment with the hood of his black sweatshirt before opening the driver's door. He quickly closed the door behind him, not wanting to get the seat wet. The rain drip-dropped on to his hood as he stood beside his car, hands in his pockets. "Why're you standing there getting soaked? Want a lift home?" Asked the blonde, a genuine smile on his face.
"This is my home."
"Oh, cool." Malik said, "Did you forget your keys inside?"
"No."
"Why don't you go inside? I mean, you'll catch a cold..."
Ryou sighed. Wasn't it obvious? "Because I don't want to, alright?"
A frown spread across Malik's face. "...wanna come to my place instead?"
"Why not." Ryou said passively, shrugging. He reached over the fence and dumped his backpack in the yard, not caring if it was drowned by the time he got home that night.
Malik smiled and moved to open the passenger side door for his beloved. His cheeks flushed as Ryou's arm brushed against his upon sitting down in the velvet seat. Closing the door once Ryou was seat-belted in, he strode around to the driver's side, got in, and started the car up. The vehicle roared to life, and they were off.
.
Ryou stared out the fogged up window as Malik drove in silence, a distant look in his longing eyes. He watched as each individual rain drop trickled down the sheet of glass, eventually ending its' journey in the rubber shielding the inside of the car from the elements. As he gazed into the very core of nothingness itself, he couldn't help but wonder. "Malik?"
"Hm?"
"Why are you so eager to befriend me anyways? Why do you care?"
Malik was quiet for a long time, fighting down the blush he felt rising in his cheeks while trying to focus on driving. He turned to Ryou once he came to a red light and sighed. "In your eyes, I see a darkness that torments you, and in your head where it dwells." He took his hand off the steering wheel and held it out to Ryou, eyes sparkling with hope and sincerity. "I'll give you my hand if you'd reach out and grab it." Malik gently placed his hand atop Ryou's, "Let's walk away from this hell."
"What?" Ryou asked, suprised when his body didn't automatically flinch away from the touch. He glanced up into Malik's eyes, all his walls and barriers taken down for just a moment. "Am I really... that easy to read?"
Malik shook his head as the light turned green. "Not really. But Ryou, you can't see the desperation in your eyes. It... It hurts me to see you so miserable." The Egyptian risked a glance as he changed lanes. 'If this continues I'll probably end up telling him how I feel...'
"Why's that? You hardly even know me."
"Well... I want to get to know you."
Ryou's eyebrow arched a second time as he ran over the happenings of the last half-hour. Finally, a conclusion popped into his head, and before he could stop himself, he spoke. "You like me, is that it? You have a crush on me or something?"
For a moment, the whole world around Malik went silent as his foot slammed the break, and in the time following that moment, everything went black.
* * *
He didn't know what on earth had happened. All he knew was that his body ached all over, he felt extremely dizzy, and something was beeping in a very annoying fasion. Easing his eyes open, he closed them instantly and made a subtle sound of discomfort as bright lights blinded his vision temporarily. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard the rustling of someone's clothing as they moved. Malik groaned as his senses fully returned to him, a sudden wave of pain seizing his entire body as he curled into a fetal position.
"My God... I'm so sorry..." came a broken, whispered voice with a soft British accent.
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
1 - slut (of course Ryou is not a slut.. but I needed an insult and that was the first thing I saw in my dictionary)
2 - So Malik drives a Mercedes in Japan. _ Sue him.
Shori: Uh. No comment people. *Hides from D, Tia, and angry reviewers* Oh, and the 'In your eyes I see a darkness that torments you and in your head where it dwells. I'll give you my hand if you'd reach out and grab it, let's walk away from this hell.' thing that Malik said is lyrics to Into The Dark by the one and only completely awesome Juliana Theory.
Malik: WTF DID YOU DO TO ME?!
Shori: o_o Uhm... Okay, I'm outta here. *Runs*
Bakura: WAIT! YOU FORGOT SOMETHING SHORI!
Shori: x__x What'd I forget? OH! YES! I'm removing the review counter for this chapter just for the helluvit... x_x I just hope you guys don't stop reviewing. Ja minna!
x Shori