Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! belongs to Kazuki Takahashi. No money is being made by this fanfic.
Aftermath, from the flip side of the coin.
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The teenager still dried off in the shower.
Bakura couldn't tell if it was because of modesty or embarrassment, but he disliked both, so it didn't matter. It had been over a month and a half now since he'd begun his task to own his landlord, and nearly two weeks that he'd had him in his bed, but Ryou continued to dry off in the shower. It irritated him, somewhat.
It wasn't as if that were the only thing the teenager had continued doing--there was still homework, still cooking, still spending time with those fading friends of his, and still the rent Ryou demanded. He found all those things, save the necessary cooking, to be a nuisance, but he left the teenager to them. The rent was actually beneficial to them both--it gave him time to plan without any worry that Ryou would overhear.
After his landlord had made it clear that he had no use for people encased in wooden dolls, they had come to an agreement: once a week he would cut off all mental connection to the teenager and let him run. Literally. As soon as he freed him, Ryou headed to the small park a dozen blocks from his apartment and jogged along the track until he was tired enough to come back home. Bakura didn't see the point of this--he would have used that free time in better ways--but it pleased his landlord.
Though, he had considered ending that agreement when, the week after that debacle known as Battle City took place, Ryou ran until his legs physically collapsed underneath him. The teenager had then locked himself in his soul room with a sort of bitter relish and left him to drag their exhausted body back to the apartment, his legs shaking with each step. He'd been extremely tempted to meet the teenager's lashing out with a move of his own, but he managed not to act rashly. Instead, he came to a decision.
He'd let the matter go and continued with their deal, amused when the next week he felt Ryou's surprise right before he cut off their link. The teenager hadn't expected to go unpunished.
Which he wouldn't, of course--but Bakura had found that subtler methods worked best on his landlord. Forcing the teenager to quit running would result in more fighting and more violence on Ryou's part against him; but if he drained Ryou of the energy and will to go out, ah, that would be a different matter....
It was that very day that he began the slow process of building a separate, solid body for himself, created out of shadow magic and strengthened by the power of the Ring and the Eye.
It had taken time, yes, and time was not exactly a commodity that he had in excess, since he had to execute his plans before the Pharaoh worked up the will to leave Yuugi behind and seek his memories and his final death, but some things had to be handled slowly. And his landlord was one of those things. The last month and a half had been a careful game of watching the teenager's reactions and checking himself when he seemed to have moved too quickly. Ryou was flexible--he could and would adjust to whatever situation he was placed in remarkably well, even something as drastic as what the thief planned--but only if he were built up to it in small pieces and given enough time to accept things. Overwhelming him all at once would have been a very stupid move indeed, one that he would not have been able to reverse, and Bakura the King of Thieves made risky moves but never ones that he could not come back from.
And besides, the waiting caused it to be all the more enjoyable to hear that soft pained sound Ryou had made the first time he moved inside him.
Bakura let the smirk linger on his face for just a moment before sending it away. He absently brought up a leg to rest on the counter, the other still dangling over the edge, and noted that behind the glass the murky figure of Ryou paused briefly as he did.
Skittish tonight, aren't you? he thought to himself.
Not that it was surprising. The towels that Ryou typically dried off with were sitting in a small heap on the counter next to him, where Bakura had tossed them after he'd pulled them off of the stall once Ryou started the water.
The fact that the boy still dried off in the shower irritated him, somewhat, so he'd decided to do something about it.
That was probably the reason Ryou was taking a much longer shower than usual. It was a pointless effort--Bakura could wait, though he would be a little bored if Ryou decided to stay in until the water turned cold again. Patience was not only a virtue; it was one of the most necessary skills of a predator.
Then, abruptly, the white noise in the bathroom ended as Ryou cut off the shower. Bakura blinked and focused his gaze on the glass door.
A few more seconds passed by quietly, with only the faint sound of water dripping to hit the tile of the shower floor, but finally the teenager pushed open the door and started to walk to the counter. Bakura grabbed one of the towels and stood up, and when Ryou halted reflexively at the action, he draped it over his landlord's shoulders and began to dry him off.
In the top of his vision Bakura could see the teenager watching him with confusion in the mirror, but he kept his expression blank and didn't look at him, focusing instead on his work. Once the shoulders and neck were as dry as they would get with Ryou's hair still dripping water onto them, he let the towel slip down and began to rub the teenager's back, before reaching around to dry his chest as well, gentling his touch slightly. At that, Ryou shut his eyes and clenched his hands into fists.
Lightening his touch even more, Bakura brought the towel down to dry off his landlord's stomach, and he felt Ryou tremble before tensing his muscles to keep himself still. A smirk flickered across the thief's face, but he soon returned to his detached façade.
He pulled the towel away, flipped it to the opposite side and took a step back, reading Ryou's surprise in the way his body relaxed slightly. Then he knelt and pushed the teenager's legs further apart. Ryou openly flinched at that, but Bakura ignored it and just began drying off one of his legs.
Ryou clenched his fists tighter, and the thief's eyes narrowed as he noted the whiteness of his knuckles--Ryou was probably a step away from breaking the skin. He briefly debated prying open the teenager's hands, but he chose not to and just began drying off his other leg. Bakura usually let him get away with these little rebellions--it helped keep his landlord blind to just how much power he had over him. He'd half expected Ryou to realize it after hearing what had happened to Malik during Battle City, but he never seemed to have made the connection: Malik had been taken over completely due to his Sennen Item, and by nothing more than his own hatred--it would not be very hard for Bakura to do the same. It would be easy, in fact. He had done it to the few other people who had had the misfortune to possess the Sennen Ring over the past three thousand years without happening to have a soul matching his that would have inspired one or two charitable feelings from him when their bodies wound up in a life or death situation.
But permanently sealing Ryou away in his soul room would cause the teenager to go insane. And Bakura had a...problem with going that far, this time. After all, he would get bored if he had to play at being his landlord incessantly. He had no use for most of the requirements of this modern world--in his original life, if he hadn't been stealing, he'd been building up his strength and his shadow powers. And if he hadn't been doing that, he'd been sleeping, eating, or traveling. And if he hadn't been doing those, he'd been killing someone. A simple existence.
And there was the fact that he had an interest in the teenager beyond Ryou's use as his host.
Bakura straightened up and rubbed the stray trails of water that had fallen from Ryou's hair onto his back, leaning forward slightly to lick away a drop clinging to the teenager's earlobe. Ryou shivered again, so faint that he almost didn't feel it against his palm with the towel in the way, and it took more effort than Bakura wanted to admit to keep his expression blank.
He tossed the damp towel onto the counter and leaned further over to pick up the second one, holding a hand lazily against Ryou's side to keep his balance. The teenager clenched his fists even tighter at that, a hint of anger and frustrated sadness beginning to show on his face, so Bakura dropped the towel over his head and let Ryou dry his own hair in order to keep him from hurting himself. Ryou immediately pulled the towel down enough that his face was hidden and started to turn away; but Bakura still had a hand resting above his hipbone, and he tightened it just a fraction at the teenager's movement. Ryou's hands clenched around the terrycloth, but he stayed in place.
He didn't particularly mind Ryou's little rebellions, so long as they stayed little. When the teenager went to extreme lengths to wreck his plans, that pissed him off; but in the end he still preferred that if Ryou did not work with him, he fought against him. Either option was better than complete subservience, though he would rather have had an ally. But still, Ryou wore nearly the same face as he did--and if a landlord who looked like himself acted passively and submissively to everything that happened to him, Bakura would have loathed him completely and locked him away to certain insanity without a second thought.
But there was no reason to tell Ryou that it was only his periodic outbursts that had made the thief keep him around so long. That would not be beneficial to his plans.
Ryou was doing a shoddy job of drying his hair, due to the fact that he was using most of the towel to hide his face, and Bakura finally let the smirk play across his mouth. After another moment he reached up and pulled the towel out of Ryou's hands, tossing it onto the floor.
Ryou hesitated and stared at the counter, starting to bring his arms back down. He reached up and caught the teenager's wrists, holding them over Ryou's head for a moment before pulling them back behind his own head. Bakura slid his hands up Ryou's wrists and along the backs of his hands, idly tracing a pattern over the skin as he pressed Ryou's fingers over each other. A moment later his landlord did what he wanted and intertwined his fingers, hands now cupping the back of Bakura's neck, leaving him completely open. Bakura let his one of his arms drop back down at that, the other sliding around Ryou's waist to rest on his stomach.
He traced the faint outlines of muscles along his landlord's torso, his fingertips barely brushing the skin. The game was won, yes, but there were still a few more loose ends to take care of--he still had to move with a gentleness he didn't much care for; but there would be time for roughness later. If he decided to have a later.
He felt the muscles of Ryou's stomach clench underneath his fingers, and Bakura's smirk widened.
It had been surprisingly easy to win.
Once he'd decided what he was going to do, he'd begun looking for the best way to go about it without risking the pharaoh catching on or Ryou going so far as to tell anyone. And when Yuugi and his court had announced their trip to America, and Ryou turned it down from a combination of money and schoolwork issues, he could not have asked for a better opening. At first he'd gambled on the idea that, if he moved in while the others were away, Ryou would still be too humiliated about how powerless he had been during Battle City to mention anything when they returned, until things had gone far enough that he would prefer to keep quiet rather than admit what he had let the thief get away with. But then Yuugi and the others continued to be gone, the four days growing to a week and a half, and then the news of Kaiba's newest tournament had come in, and then the week and a half grew to three weeks and then a month, leaving Ryou more alone than he had ever been since he'd moved to Domino. No phone calls, no letters, one postcard with a few paragraphs from Anzu, mostly about what Yuugi was doing, hastily signed by everyone.
It had been surprisingly easy....
Bakura might have pitied the teenager, really--but it had fit his plan. Ryou no longer physically lashed out against him anymore, and the screaming rants were easy to ignore. And if the teenager refused to be ignored, then nowadays it wasn't very hard to shut him up....
Bakura brushed his fingers across Ryou's lower abdomen, his smirk curling up one side as he watched the reaction he'd gotten earlier from drying off his landlord continue to stir. With his free hand, he cupped Ryou's chin and brought it up so that the teenager was forced to stop looking at the counter. He caught Ryou's eyes from their reflection in the mirror, studying their expression: the anger, hatred, lust, shame, all partially hidden beneath that half-lidded, half-unfocused gaze. Bakura managed to wipe his smirk away a moment later, and tilted his head down to press a kiss to the side of Ryou's throat, feeling the teenager's fingers curl in his hair as he did.
He brushed his hand across Ryou's abdomen once again, and then Ryou arched his spine, pressing up against the palm and back against him. Bakura let his hand slip down to where Ryou wanted it to be, and the soft moan the teenager made caused the thief's eyes to close for a long second. A moment later Ryou caught hold of Bakura's shirt and began trying to pull it over his head, arms still behind him.
He left the shirt in the bathroom, but the remainder of his clothes wound up tossed onto the bedroom carpet.
It was a weakness, he knew, and one that he should have gotten rid of the moment he acknowledged it; but he did like the way Ryou's pale blue eyes would darken while staring up at him, and the choked groan that the teenager made when he came. It was those things that made him consider keeping his landlord around even after he'd killed the pharaoh and otherwise fulfilled his goals. Spilling the darkness into the streets of Domino City and the world would make it difficult for someone like Ryou to survive--for anyone to survive, really, The whole point of doing it..., he thought to himself--and looking out for the teenager would be a hassle he didn't want....But it might be worth it.
Long after he was certain that Ryou had fallen asleep, Bakura braced himself up on an elbow and studied his landlord. Ryou had twisted over slightly onto his side, pulling his pillow down and wrapping his arms around it.
Bakura brushed his landlord's sweaty bangs from his eyes, letting his fingers linger over his temple. Even if he didn't keep the teenager, he would still tell him what he had enjoyed, just to see what the expression in Ryou's eyes would be right before he pushed the knife into his heart and twisted. Bakura ran his thumb lightly over Ryou's lower lip, imagining what sounds the teenager would make as his knees collapsed and he sank to the ground, the knife grating against his rib as it slid out.
Ryou stirred slightly and tried to bury his head in his arms, so Bakura pulled his hand away. He pressed his lips against the corner of Ryou's mouth for a brief second, then pulled away and returned to the Ring, not willing to overexert his crafted body.
~~
He knew he'd won completely the day he told Ryou to start building his game.
He'd been more distracted than he liked lately--the news of the God cards had started to make its way through the gaming community, so he'd been using the small amount of the Sennen Eye's power that he could access without a homemade surgery to keep track of the thoughts of people around Yuugi, since he didn't want his game to be over before it even started--but he owned enough of his landlord by now that Ryou hadn't used his absence to seek for help.
Once he'd finished outlining his needs, Ryou had just stared at him from across the kitchen table with a faintly overwhelmed look, as he tried to digest the images and blueprints that Bakura had pushed into his mind. Finally, his eyes focused and he'd given Bakura a cold look.
"Do you really think I'm going to do this?" he asked flatly. "You're planning to kill him, aren't you?"
Bakura only watched him. "Getting his memories back is what will kill the pharaoh. I'm only going to help him."
The look on Ryou's face was entertaining. "You would never 'help' anyone," he said bitterly. "Not unless there was something in it for you."
"Maybe there is." Before Ryou could say anything, he continued. "Three thousand years is a long time to live, landlord. Have you ever thought that I might be tired of this existence?"
The kitchen was quiet as Ryou studied him, carefully. Bakura kept his face blank.
"...no," Ryou said finally. "You would never get tired of living. You'd kill everything else before you accepted death yourself."
A grin had twisted across Bakura's face at that, and he burst out laughing. "Very perceptive," he said by way of a compliment, once he'd calmed down a moment later. "But that doesn't change the fact that I want this game made immediately."
"No!" Ryou yelled, somewhere between exasperated and badly shaken. "No! They're my friends! I'm not going to help you hurt them!"
"Yes you will," he replied calmly. "Because if you won't do it, I'll take control and build it myself. Either way, your hands are going to make it, landlord. I'm just giving you a chance to be in control."
Ryou stared at him for another long minute. Bakura stared back, eyes emotionless.
"...bastard," Ryou hissed, sinking into one of the chairs before burying his head in his hands. Bakura made a note of the insult for the future, but did nothing about it for the present and simply took the other seat.
He'd been debating what illness excuse would get him the longest break from school while being communicable enough to keep the others from visiting--flu, pneumonia, or measles...perhaps something else, he'd have to look--when Ryou said quietly, "How am I supposed to ask to use the museum for this? I haven't talked to Father in three months."
Bakura blinked. It took him a second to realize what that statement meant, but when he did, only a tiny smirk played across his lips.
"And how am I supposed to get the Monster World table in there without the guards stopping me? I'd have to--I can't rebuild it, this is too big," Ryou murmured, twisting strands of his hair through his fingers absently. His words were muffled, since his face was still covered. "I'd need more sections to increase the width, and I'd have to tear all the old terrain down to make this....It'll need new materials, paints...so much stuff....I don't have this kind of money. This is insane. It can't be done."
Bakura only folded his arms and leaned back in the chair. "Figure out what you'll need and go to that hobby shop to see what it will cost. I'll get the money."
Ryou flinched at that. A moment later he pushed his bangs out of his face, and when he saw Bakura's smirk, his defeated expression turned to anger. "I hate you."
Bakura's smile disappeared. He unfolded his arms and leaned across the table, catching Ryou's chin in one hand and giving him contemplating look. "You say that so often, landlord, how could I not know?"
Ryou watched him for a few moments, and the thief studied the expression in his eyes, comparing it to all the others with a sort of bemused interest. Finally Ryou tried to pull back, but Bakura's fingers only tightened at the movement. Ryou scowled and wrenched his chin out of the thief's grasp, shoving his chair away and starting to leave the kitchen.
Bakura pushed his chair away as well, grabbing Ryou's arm even as the teenager tried to move out of his reach and yanking him back. He wrapped his free arm across Ryou's chest, holding the teenager against him, and Ryou slammed and ground his heel into Bakura's foot, and that began the fight.
Bakura had enjoyed it. Ryou had a decent left hook, all things considered. With training....
He still won. Ryou needed to knock him unconscious at the least or kill him at the most, but he only needed to pin the teenager to the floor. After that, changing the direction of things was easy.
"I hate you," Ryou had whispered, so quiet as to almost be to himself, right before his breath caught and changed to a strangled, pleased moan.
His landlord was prone to sounds or noises that didn't constitute actual words, so when Ryou mumbled something between his harsh pants, Bakura only realized it was a fragmented sentence a bit later. He rubbed his thumb across the soft skin of the underside of Ryou's knee, having to push the teenager's leg slightly off his shoulder to do so, and asked, "What is it, landlord?"
"...more," Ryou managed to say. "Not...enough. Fast...please...."
Bakura stilled at that, ignoring Ryou's involuntary whine at the sudden pause, and stared down at him. He didn't....
Ryou closed his eyes and tilted his face away, pressing his cheek against the linoleum. "Please," he repeated, almost inaudible.
A shiver of pleasure ran down his spine at that. He let go of his grip on one of Ryou's legs and cupped a hand beneath the teenager's back and around his shoulder, twisting the already-bunched-up fabric of Ryou's shirt in his fingers and bracing himself, before complying.
Ryou's loud, wordless cry and the feel of the teenager as he arched up against him were almost as pleasing as the words had been.
Ryou had never once asked for anything from him, not with words--it was his landlord's last permanent rebellion, that last shred of denial or dignity that he'd kept to himself. And he'd never once begged.
That was the last loose end to be cut away. The game was done; and Bakura was the complete victor.
As if it could have been any other way.
By the time they were both sated, the thief had marks on his arm and back and thighs from where Ryou had gouged his fingers in, and the teenager had a bite mark that was already beginning to bruise at the juncture of his neck and collar bone, low enough that an ordinary shirt would cover most of it.
Bakura had been content to keep lying where he was, but after a few minutes Ryou murmured, "...hurts." When the thief didn't bother to move, he started trying to shift his leg out of the position it was pushed into by Bakura's weight; and finally with an annoyed noise Bakura shrugged and shoved Ryou's legs off his shoulders. Ryou let them fall down to the ground almost disinterestedly, ignoring the awkward way they were still splayed around Bakura's form and the fact that his jeans had in spite of everything continued to (barely) hang off his left foot. His cheek was still pressed against the floor, and he was staring vacantly at something across the room.
Bakura, face hidden by the hair that had fallen across it and the curve of Ryou's shoulder, studied his landlord's expression guardedly. After a long wait where Ryou did nothing more than blink, Bakura pushed himself up enough to press his lips to the mark at Ryou's neck, gently licking away the traces of blood in the torn skin and keeping his gaze on the teenager. Ryou closed his eyes at the action, but said nothing.
Several seconds later, Bakura's eyes narrowed when he heard Ryou's breath hitch. He didn't betray his awareness by stopping his actions, though, and continued to listen.
When the faint strain in Ryou's breathing was unmistakable, Bakura pushed himself onto his knees, unceremoniously yanking his jeans back up and not bothering to button or zip them. He tugged Ryou's jeans off his foot and pulled the teenager into a sitting position, and then stood before reaching down and picking Ryou up. Ryou started to say something, but then he just closed his mouth and wrapped his arms loosely around Bakura's shoulders, wincing at the spark of pain from his collar bone.
Bakura carried the teenager to the bathroom and set him down inside, before pulling Ryou's shirt over his head and giving him a push towards the shower. Ryou stepped in with a confused look, hesitating for a few moments before pushing the door closed.
When he heard the water start, Bakura abandoned his makeshift body and moved to his soul room, where the power of the Eye worked with slightly more strength, to return to watching Yuugi.
Having won, he had the decency to allow his landlord to cry in private.