Rating: Still PG-13

Disclaimer: Yu-gi-oh does not belong to me. I am making no money from this.

Thank you to everyone that reviewed. I especially liked the Ryou plushy.

When it rains it pours. It sweeps down over the building leaving them wet and weeping, tired and sore. It's not often that Ryou opens his windows but he does when the sky drops tears, and the water creeps in under his windowsill. The air is so cold it bites his lungs and makes his fingertips stick to the glass, pulling him outside. The air after it rains is cleaner, clearer. It crushes the grime down into the sewers, scours the streets of the black dust, washes everything clean.

This Babylon, he thinks, and God is going to drown us out.

The watch sits on the bedside table, whispering to him, ghosting him along with secret words he cannot quite hear. They are the slight deaf tones between an object and it's owner. It's colder than the air outside when he touches it, lets his fingers fall gracelessly against the crystal surface. The gold winks up at him like so many eyes knowing this is just barrowed time.

I don't know you.

He says it clear concise makes to move away from the unwelcome hand on his shoulder. He's never known anyone of course. How can you delve into a person and pick them apart? How can you know someone?

But this is someone indeed. He's got words in his mouth, swift strong words. The kind that coax and coalesce to form threats in elegant boundaries. Ryou could see them burgeoning on his tongue when he opened his mouth waiting to be sprung forth.

And I don't know you.

But Ryou knows this man. The sharper jut of the jaw, the nose cut longer, the tensile strength of the hands, the hold and dive of the eyebrows -- and oh, dear God he knows those eyes.

He can always memorize a face. In his mind he's got rows and rows of faces and noses, cheeks and eyes. He's got to remember, he's got to know when to turn away from the woman with the red handbag, and the pristine rubies in her ears, or duck down an alleyway when the man with the eagle nose swoops down the sidewalk. He's known Honda for years and years, and can tell by now the easy lines of his face after he's been with a woman, the tense curve of his neck after he's been drinking, and the clench in his teeth when he's steeling himself for uptown roads.

It's the names that catch him. Names stick in his throat, or glance off him once he's been introduced. He can meet someone years later after meeting them once and know their face, point out a scar. But when they recognize and call out his name, he can't say theirs back.

But this man is different. Whatever name has been given to him he'll remember.

I think you have something of mine.

No.

What's your name?

James.

Do you expect me to beleive that?

Michael.

Raphael.

Hikari.

What's in a name? A lie, a truth. Your parent's aspiration for you. A jumble of words to separate him from him and her from her.

Hikari?

Real names were a whispered word, something only the bearer knew.

Then I'll be Yami.

Because a true name could be used for control, by demons, and powers, and human nature.

Yami knows and Ryou knows.

He can call the police and they'll come and charge down the alley, find the watch on the bedside table counting down his time. It will do back to the man who calls himself darkness and be returned to its place caved under the cuff of his jacket. Ryou will sit in jail and the clock on the wall will hum to itself and there will be no more barely tangible whispers.

This is how it goes: The Yami doesn't reach for a phone, but tips Ryou's chin with his cold cold hands to look him in the eye. And Ryou can paint out the lines of this man's face and the tight bruised shadows under his eyes, the pale stretched look that only the uptown gentry contract when they are dying in their plastic life.

When Ryou break away there's thunder clamoring above up in the clouds, and then the rain begins to wash down in sheets that wrap him up and soak him to the bone. It's a long walk back to his apartment and the water is seeping into the flimsy soles of his shoes. So when a car pulls up next to him he gets inside. It's a quiet drive. He watches the water bleed off his clothes and into the leather of the seats, the man driving doesn't look at him.

Why are you doing this?

I was like you once.

He's had his share of mistakes: Loving all the wrong parents, making all the wrong choices, doing all the wrong things. Afterwards he knows. It's an ache in his stomach growing inside him and gnawing away, climbing up to sit on the bottom of his ribcage. His regret swung slow and steady as he let his father drink and said nothing. It burned and clawed as his mother left. It ate him inside out after he started stealing. It presses tiny shivering fingers behind his solar plexus when he opens his window and watches the black car speed away.

A/N: I'm sorry I know this is kind of weird (again). This chapter was also written rather badly…Um yes we will get to call him Bakura sometime soon. I know I don't use quotation marks, but this wasn't really the kind of story for quotations. Some are the fragments are intentional, some are due to my bad grammar. I know Ryou and Bakura are a little OOC, but I'm trying to make them a bit more human. However Bakura will have plenty of a chance to be angry and mean. So…Please please review and I hope you liked it.