Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: Not mine

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Ryou would look back at that dream summer many times over the course of his life.

This is how summer goes:

Sidewalks crack and they retar the streets of downtown sticky and black like crushed bones and oil. The window sill splinters, dust motes collect and dance on Ryou's empty bed. The apartment reeks of absence –like the insides of tombs, the emptiness inside waiting mouths- of a season lived somewhere else.

Things are grabbed off the table, taken out of drawers, stuffed into bags, haste in all his movements and joy lifting up out of his body.

The sun is reawakening pulling itself out of its rain-cloud sheets and winter rest.

Doors are locked; the room is left alone, with the dust, with the last untidy streaks of joy.

They take a boat out across the dock. He sits behind him; hair as pale as the sea foam. They head for the sea. The wild waters come up to kiss the edges of the boat, the tips of Ryou's fingers. An island far far away from the dark city with its little white cottage shutters, and windows, and the tuberoses in the back that are blooming just as they arrive at dusk. He can smell them so heavy on the summer air, the breath of angels.

Bakura turns. Bakura turns and looks, and Ryou knows. They shut the door and kiss in the long piece of shadowed hallway with Bakura's fingers fitting all along his ribcage, mouth ghosting over collarbones. Tongue and cheek.

The white house, the white walls, and the one picture of sailing. The waves in the picture blue as the sky and crashing out unbound over the prow, the little figure of a person looking out to the horizon where the sea meets the sky.

All Ryou does is look and love. Bakura kisses like rain, like that intangible "good" you feel when you are a child. Ryou presses his lips to his with ice in his mouth, and Nectarine on his tongue. They've been: in the sea, in the sand, against the white wash walls of the little house, in the bed with wind brushing up their bodies like gossamer, or a lover's touch.

When the talk they're quiet. The breeze steals their words and brings them to the other's mouth. They are afraid they'll shatter this white-sand heaven surrounded by the sea, or the fragile threads between them. They build bonfires dance and laugh under Taurus, Gemini, Lyra.

Ryou shows Bakura constellations with their backs in the sand, tracing lines from one star to the other, kissing the inside of this wrist when they're done, and not wanting anything else.

How do you know?

I used to lie out on my roof and find them, wish for change.

The alarm clock rings at 6:00 a.m. every morning, and he gets up to watch the sun rise out of the East; warm and golden inside him.

Ryou's holding all his hopes inside him, afraid to breathe out and let them go, afraid they'll break like spun glass and dreams. But Bakura is infinitely confident, if he touches Ryou's cheek he can feel it trickle inside.

I think I'm in love with you.

You think a lot of things.

He lights a cigarette. Two quick movements, turn of the head. Fire sitting at the end of his fingers.

I mean it.

Bakura breathes out. The smoke casts a shadow over the stars, and their blanket of dark. He sees Ganymede far far off flickering out of the corner of his eye.

I know, I know.

Ryou takes the cigarette from him, flicks it out into the ocean. They watch it on the surface of blue glass, flicker within the waves.

The roses bloom heavy behind the white house –so heavy they've got candy cane stems- Ryou leans in and pulls kisses from the man before him, this god of summer.

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A/N: Lilmatchgirl007- I know this isn't quite the type of action you were looking for, but something much more major will happen next chapter, but err... their relationship kind of goes in stages. I kind of wanted them to go to Venice, but that seemed too far outside the borders of the yu-gi-oh world.