A/N: Another chapter... finally, I know... I had Ryou-mind-block . but I'm ok now. This chapter probably sounds different from the others, though. Ugh. I have trouble with that.

Also with tenses. Has that been bothering any of you?

I might do a Seto fic soon. Because I realized that I've been on for two months and I don't have any fics on my favorite character (yeah, the Bakurae must, regrettably, take second place...)

Thank you to EVERYONE who has put me on favorites/author alert lists!!!

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Chapter 3: Comfort from a dark shadow has no place in the world

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Yami hands me a blanket with a scowl. Right, so he's going to yell at me. Very... non-hypocritical. Or something like that.

"You're pathetic."

I'm surprised to find that after a night of freezing my ass off in my very, very thing sweater, I'm surprisingly calm. Or maybe that's just me slipping into the first levels of a comatose stage. Either way he isn't going to get a rise out of me today. Um... word... stop that snickering, my hentai mind.

Oh wait, that's Yami. Much, much better...

"Ah, the throes of young love. Haven't seen this for three thousand years..." He smirked. "You are a very, very odd young soul. I wonder if the cheerleaders know you've fallen for your ever-present tormentor." Damn. Does he have to... look so... hell, when I wear that outfit, I don't look like that.

"Yami, I'm going out. I don't need to miss another session of classes this week."

He raises an eyebrow. "What's this, no fight today?"

I snorted as derisively as I could, under the circumstances. "Fuck you. I have a life outside of my mind, you know." I still can't feel my toes, but at this point, I would rather contemplate frostbite in a university lobby than warm them in front of the heater with him.

He frowns, and then dematerializes. Wait... did I just win a fight with him?

I'm four seconds out the door when he reappears behind my head and yanks my neck back into the flat. Fortunately, my body and head follow it. I land on my back with a sickening crack. Three years of working part-time at a hospital have taught me that that sound is usually accompanied by broken bones, if not paralysis...

"Good. Now that your back is broken, you will listen to me."

He makes himself comfortable on my stomach, legs straddling my waist. If I didn't feel like my bones were being dipped in acid, this would have been a very uncomfortable position for me.

After all, I'm the only one out of my friends who's never gotten laid.

"Why Ryou," he murmurs. "Don't feel bad. After all, I'm a three thousand-year-old virgin."

What the hell? I snap my head up to stare at him, but the pain makes me lower it again. Damn. He's a virgin? Well, right, he must be lying... and it doesn't make me feel better, if that was his intention.

"Do I have your attention now?" he asks.

Well, he certainly does. I nod mutely. He sighs with an almost-smile, and then slaps me across the face.

"IDIOT!"

Huh? Last time I checked, he was about as happy as an Egyptian spirit could be. I don't say this, of course, because from the look on his face, there's about an hour of lambasting coming up. I choke down a scream as he hauls me up by the front of the shirt.

"I was not a patient person the last time I was alive," he hisses. "Being sealed in a necklace for three thousand years has not increased that virtue and ten years with you is enough! I thought maybe the sight of your crush with a ring would knock some sense into your head, but apparently not! You... are... pathetic."

He punctuates each word with a slap. "Yami!" I protest. He's usually very careful about not doing too much harm to my body.

"You are too quiet," he growls. "You watch life, but you don't tend to your own. Someday you will wake up and find that you are an old man and still a bachelor, and even I will have left you!"

"Yami! Uh... what...?"

"Get over yourself," he says.

"Everyone that I know has a better life than me!" I retort. "So why should I? Because a gold-obsessed kleptomaniac told me to?"

His eyes bore into mine as he slams me back onto the wall. He is very, very angry but I really don't care. If I die, I die. And he'll be gone from my life.

"Wrong, hikari," he says. "You'll never be free from me."

"You're lying!" I scream at him. Damn, he's taking the easy way out again! "Yami, don't you dare go away now! YAMI!" But it's no use, of course, and I slump down to the floor.

It takes me the better part of an hour to crawl into the bathroom, where I had three years of purloined medical supplies ready just in case Yami ever tried... what he did today. My neck is a mess of bruises, and my hair is more pink than white.

And I don't even want to think about my back.

I need a hospital, but hospitals will ask questions that I'm not in the mood for. And I guess it's my masochistic side that lays me down in bed, on my stomach, that closes my eyes even as I think to myself how I'm just asking for a coma. I won't be able to show my face in public for weeks, so I might as well take a chance on the rest of me.

For ten years, what I've wanted is not so much my yami out of my head, but to just... rest.

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Evening comes and I don't want to sit up, because I know what it'll feel like. So, naturally, while trying to knock off the alarm clock, I fall out of bed.

I tumble to the bamboo floor with a thunk, but it's not so bad... then I notice Yami sitting on the bed looking at me, and I realize why.

"You fixed my back," I accuse.

He shrugs. "Better than letting you go to one of those... hospitals... and have your fellow idiots ask you idiotic questions that you won't be able to answer without putting... yourself... in jail. It's an interesting predicament you've always got, isn't it?"

"You put me into it," I mutter. Nice Yami equals... very strange. No, actually... it probably equals scheming.

"I'm not scheming anything against you," says Yami, like he read my mind. Heh. "But I do think that now, you are ready to talk with me."

He sighs again and moves to the floor, sitting next to me and pulling my head onto his lap. "There's a reason that I'm always trying to get the Millennium items," he says. "They shine with the blood of my kin..."

-

When he is done, I can only stare. Somehow, he's kept this from me for ten years. Well, I guess it wasn't that hard, considering that I've never stepped foot into his soul room. His soul room... damn, what that's got to look like. I shudder and he looks at me in question.

"Nothing, Yami," I say. I think he's expecting more, so... I'll give it a shot. "Sorry."

"For?" Apparently, he's not going to make this easy. Typical.

"Sorry for being a brat, okay?" I seethe. Control... freak. "Sorry for feeling sorry for myself. Better?"

He smirks. "Yes, now that you mention it."

All right. So, apparently, he's going to be exactly like before. Someone I can live without, even if he did fix my back. Because he broke it in the first place! Hell, I hope he wasn't expecting me to just feel sorry for him after that story. I thought maybe he meant something by it.

"There's nothing in the house for dinner," I say as I get up. "I'll be back in half an hour."

He doesn't stop me this time, but I pause of my own accord as I go to close the door. He's still sitting there, an indescribable expression on his face. I feel like there's something I should say... act more grateful, maybe, but I don't. He opens his mouth.

"Hikari. I was being impatient. It took thousands of years of solitude to figure out what was wrong with me."

"It's all... right..." I say. I really do need to get going before the market closes. "I'll see you soon, all right?"

He looks almost spurned. "I didn't want you to be like me," he says as I close the door. I wonder briefly if he hadn't meant for me to hear that, but it's obvious to dismiss the thought. Yami does everything deliberately.

I'm downstairs when I realize that I never asked him why he kissed me.

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A/N: Ohh... review, please! You make me happy when you do XD. I'll look at your stories... actually, I've been meaning to do that but I've never had enough time, bah... .

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