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Chapter Three: These Days

Ryou was worried.

There'd been nothing but silence from upstairs for almost a half hour now. He couldn't decide whether that was a good sign or not. His usually unwavering sixth sense seemed to be failing him.

'Ryou?' Anzu prodded his left bicep gently. 'Ryou? Are you okay?'

He whipped his head around to face her, hair fanning gracefully. 'Sorry?'

'You've been staring at the stairs again,' she told him. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' said Ryou quickly. 'I'm probably overreacting.'

Anzu gave him a long, disbelieving look. 'Alright,' she said finally. She took a sip of tea before continuing. 'So, how have you been, Ryou? We haven't really sat down and talked much lately.'

'Nothing new, really,' Ryou admitted. He could hear the sound of shuffling footsteps from upstairs, and he turned around again. Anzu sighed softly behind him.

A moment later, Yami appeared at the foot of the stairs, his face expressionless.

'How did you go?' Ryou asked him.

Yami wandered farther into the room and threw himself down on the sofa opposite Ryou and Anzu before replying. 'He drank it.'

'And?' Ryou prompted.

'Nothing. He stared at me for a minute then fell asleep again.'

'So what were you doing the other twenty five minutes?'

Yami showed a sudden, inexplicable interest in the lacquered top of Ryou's coffee table.

'Anzu! You haven't met Yami yet, have you?' Ryou said, a little too brightly, in a bid to dispel the awkwardness in the room.

'No,' Anzu said. She smiled and nodded amiably at Yami. 'Nice to meet you.'

He offered a slightly wooden smile in return, though Ryou could see the tense lines in his posture relaxing.

'Yami's one of the friends of mine you've been giving me the blood for,' Ryou explained. 'He's a vampire.'

'Ah,' was all Anzu said, impressively unsurprised.

'I was wondering,' Yami said slowly, 'how have you been getting the blood to Ryou? Surely people notice it's missing.'

'I fudged some records at work,' explained Anzu. 'One of my roommates owed me a favour, so he had an… acquaintance, I suppose you'd call him, hack into the computers and alter some things. It says that Ryou here's a certain type of anaemic and needs regular transfusions. It also says he has some kind of skin disorder that means I have to take the blood to him.'

'And people believe this?'

'Why not? It's in the hospital records. You'd be surprised what people will swallow if they see it written down. Besides, what possible use could Ryou have for blood if it's not a transfusion?'

'I see,' Yami lapsed into silence and regarded Anzu thoughtfully for a moment, listening with half an ear for sounds from upstairs. Ryou noticed.

'I'll leave you two in peace,' he said, rising gracefully. He graced Yami with his wickedest grin. 'Your favourite person will probably arrive this afternoon.'

Yami tensed. 'You only have two guest rooms,' he said.

'Right!' Ryou said brightly. 'I can either put him in your room with you-'

'You wouldn't!'

'-Or you could move into the other spare room, with Yugi. I thought you'd like the latter more.'

Wicked grin still firmly in place, Ryou drifted toward the stairs.

It was strange that he wasn't frightened; he was certain that he should have been.

Last Yugi had known, he'd been standing in the store, mentally calculating how much it'd cost to have a shattered window fixed. Then something had moved in the shadows and –

It'd hurt, that much he was sure of. There were other details, too, he mused, a montage of swirling colour and sound, the occasional dab of a fragmented thought, all overlaid with the scent of blood.

Now, he'd woken up from the nightmare, and the sheets he lay between weren't his own. He propped himself up on one elbow.

Beside the bed (a king single, he noted absently), there was a table made of cherry wood, an armchair and an unmade camp bed. There was a window. He could see the sky -

A soft click drew his attention away from the window above his bed.

'You're awake,' said the newcomer, an ethereal young man bearing an armful of neatly folded sheets and blankets. He smiled. 'I'm Ryou. How are you feeling?'

He set the blankets on the camp bed and came to stand a little closer.

'Is it all right if I sit?' he asked, gesturing at the bedspread.

Yugi nodded. 'Where…?'

'My house,' Ryou said gently. 'My friend brought you here. You've been…' he cast around for a delicate turn of phrase, 'indisposed for the past couple of days.' He offered Yugi a friendly smile, received a hesitant curl of the lips in return. 'You probably have a lot of questions.' Yugi nodded again. 'There are few things that I think it would be best for my friend to explain to you, but if there's anything you don't think can wait -'

'Where are we?' Yugi asked curiously. 'Which town?'

Ryou's eyes softened sympathetically. 'We're not in a town. It's mostly countryside around here.'

'My family and friends…? I remember them. What about them?' he cocked his head, like a child listening to a story.

'I'm sorry,' Ryou said, shaking his head. 'I haven't heard about them. Yami said you were alone.'

'Yami?'

'My friend. Maybe now would be a good time to send him up,' he rose, smiling kindly. 'I'll be in again later. It was nice speaking to you at last, Yugi.'

As Ryou silently left the room, Yugi decided that he liked him.

He didn't stop to wonder how Ryou knew his name.

Drysdale-red† sunlight shone into the hallway through a skylight. Yami hesitated outside the guestroom door, staring at the shaft of bloody light, a glass of water clutched in his left hand.

Contrary to Ryou's earlier accusations, he wasn't a coward by any stretch of the imagination, and yet he could think of a hundred things he'd rather be doing than facing his young victim.

Walking barefoot over hot coals was high on the list.

'You have to explain things to him now,' Ryou had urged him whilst steering him firmly toward the stairs. 'He's not quite sane yet; he'll accept almost anything. The last thing any of us needs just now is to distress him. There'll be plenty of time for that later.'

So, with Ryou's words still hissing in his ears, Yami eased the door open.

Yugi was sitting up in bed, arms folded and resting lightly on bended knees. He glanced inquisitively at Yami when he heard the door close.

'Hello?'

Yami dragged the armchair closer to the bed and sat down, his back poker straight. Wordlessly, he handed Yugi the glass of water.

'Thank you,' he took a sip. 'Are you Yami? Ryou said you were the one who brought me here. Why'd you do that?'

'I…' Yami floundered uncharacteristically. Like Ryou, he tried to think of a less jarring way of telling Yugi the truth. After almost a minute of avoiding Yugi's wide, curious gaze, he came to the conclusion that there really wasn't one. He sighed resignedly.

'I'm a vampire,' he said flatly, watching the boy's face carefully for any kind of reaction. There was none, just a slow blinking of his eyes. Yami wondered, briefly, if he'd understood. 'A few days ago, I attacked you. I drank your blood. Somehow, you were still alive, so I brought you here.' It sounds as though I've abducted him, he thought wretchedly.

'Oh,' Yugi leaned toward Yami slightly. 'You sound …surprised,' he commented. 'Why? Should I be dead?'

Perceptive, Yami thought abstractedly. He wondered if it was a part of Yugi's current state of mind or an actual part of his personality.

'You should be,' he replied, folding his arms across his chest. 'I drank more than half your blood. You should be dead now.' He ran a hand through his hair uncomfortably. 'This doesn't happen often,' he confessed. 'Out of a hundred of the people I've …well, killed over the years, only three have survived. They became vampires, like me.'

'I thought getting bitten was enough to make you a vampire,' Yugi said. 'That's what happens in books and movies.'

'It's ridiculous,' Yami said flatly. 'Vampirism isn't like rabies. As far as I can tell, it's genetic, more like some forms of cancer or mental conditions. Some people seem to be predisposed to it.' He focussed his eyes on a point slightly to the left of Yugi's head. 'Apparently, the bite of another vampire acts as catalyst; it seems to activate the gene.'

Yugi nodded, still staring almost unblinkingly at Yami. 'How do you know?' he asked, shifting restlessly. The bed was too soft.

'It's a pet theory of a …friend of mine. I don't think there's anything else that could explain it, so I'm inclined to agree with him.' Even if he is a bastard, he added silently.

'Oh,' said Yugi again. He carefully unfolded his legs and resettled himself, with his back propped against a small mound of pillows. 'Am I allowed to walk around?'

'Not for a few days,' came Ryou's voice from the doorway. Yami turned.

Ryou had just entered, balancing a tray of food on one arm. 'I thought we'd eat in here,' he explained. 'I thought it would be unkind to leave Yugi alone.' He let his gaze linger on Yami's face for a little longer than he would ordinarily.

Yami watched as Ryou set the tray on the small table. Balanced precariously on it were four steaming plates.

'Four?' he frowned. 'He's not –!'

'He is,' said Ryou simply, settling, cross-legged and peaceful, on the end of Yugi's bed.

At that moment, the door banged open to admit Yami's least favourite person.

'Bakura,' he acknowledged curtly.

'Yami,' came the smooth reply, accompanied by the ghost of a smirk. 'Ryou told me you've been loosing control of yourself again.' Bakura allowed his wicked grin to widen, showing off his fangs to their full extent. He let his eyes trail from Yami's scowl to where Yugi sat, watching the scene unfold impassively. 'Good choice! He's cute. You always did have impeccable taste.'

Yami leapt angrily to his feet, hands balled into fists. Ryou buried his face in his hands.

'We've talked about this,' he muttered to no one in particular. Yugi turned to look at him. 'I made him promise he wouldn't bait him…' He sighed and lifted his face to glare fiercely at Yami and Bakura. 'Every time! This happens every single time! Both of you stop that right now or I'll mix turpentine in with your shampoo!'

They quieted and stared at him.

'You know, I don't think I've heard him raise his voice in over two hundred years,' Bakura told the room at large airily.

'Just. Sit,' Ryou said dangerously.

'What will mixing turpentine with their shampoo do?' asked Yugi.

Ryou sighed. 'Nothing permanent,' he said, a little bitterness creeping into his voice. He took a deep breath and smiled sheepishly while Yami and Bakura took seats as far away from each other as they could. 'It wasn't a very good threat. If I'm unlucky, it'd make their hair fall out, and then I'd have to put up with them hanging around my house until it grew back enough for them to face the world again.'

His voice grew steadily softer as he muttered something about 'bloody vain vampires'. Yami and Bakura glanced at each other and, in a rare moment of camaraderie, decided to avoid grating on Ryou's nerves, at least for a couple of days.

Deep in the forest, she rested between the roots of an ancient tree. She'd taken Papa his lunch, just like Mama had asked, and he'd told her she was a good girl and to hurry home to help Mama.

The steady rhythm of the of Papa's axe echoed from a nearby clearing

It was such a hot day, though, she'd found herself growing tired and heavy, so she'd settled in the shade, hoping Mama wouldn't be too upset if she took just a little longer getting home... Something above her head rustled gently. A bird, she supposed. She liked birds.

In the branches of the tree, a dark shape moved, too big to be a bird. Perhaps a cat? Nothing to fear, she reassured herself: Papa was near.

The sound of the axe stopped.

In the sudden silence, she heard someone breathing...

This has been an edited version of Chapter Three, brought to you by Callow's perfectionism.

Chapter title belongs to Powderfinger