le AN: round two, yeah? i've already got many a idea for this series thing and another fic is in the workings right now. considering the one review i got i should be much more discouraged, but... i don't care. i'm enjoying myself. the end. so, read on. in the event anyone else wants to review, remember i'm taking request for this. ariba!

disclaimer: i don't own ygo or prestone antifreeze or anything really. this idea is mine though. suck it! XD

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Bakura Finds AntiFreeze

Bakura glared out at the thick snow that blanketed the ground around Ryou's home. Snow was icky. It was like sand only cold, which meant it could find any and every orifice on your body and stick there, just to make you miserable. And what made it worse was the skinny white haired teen that was tugging, quite viciously, on his arm, pleading with him to come outside and 'play'.

"C'mon Bakura! It's only a little snow and snow is fun!"

The dark ignored him, continuing to glare out of the window. There was no way in hell he was going outside today.

"We can throw snowballs at each other! You can beat me and I won't complain!"

He snorted at this. It didn't matter if his light complained or not. If he wanted to beat him, he would. And he liked it when his light struggled.

Ryou gave one last hard tug at his dark's arm before stumbling backwards and landing on his butt. He wore a look between a grimace and a pout. Why did he have to do everything Bakura did, but the one time he asked for something there was no way it could happen. Not only did this suck, but now his butt was sore. He blinked to himself wondering why an eerie feeling came over him at that thought. It was almost as though in another dimension this would be normal for him. He shook off the feeling and his thoughts returned to the task at hand: How to get the big stubborn oaf to play with him.

'Hmm... What if I offer him steak? He likes steak!' Ryou took a moment to take in his dark's physique. 'Maybe not. More protein equals more muscle mass and more muscle mass means more beatings.'

Ryou's pale right hand came up to cup his equally pale jaw as he pondered what to do. His face scrunched up slightly, mostly around his upturned nose. Bakura didn't fail to notice just how cute his light looked like that. For the first time in about half an hour he actually looked at his light in all of his innocence. Could this be why he hadn't beaten the boy's face in for a few months? Could it be that he actually had a heart?

Bakura snorted and threw one of Ryou's unicorn figurines to the floor. The nicer of the two pouted harder than before, now slightly upset that Barry the Great White Unicorn had met an untimely death. Barry the White was his favorite and had been a gift from Yugi last Christmas.

'That's it! A gift!' The light's face changed from sadness to excitement in one mere moment. He clambered up off the floor and sidled up to his dark, sitting behind him on the bed.

"'Kura," he said coyly, "You're going to come outside and play with me!" He finished out the sentence with a song in his voice.

Bakura grunted in reply. Like hell he was going to.

"You are, cause if you don't you won't get a present..." he trailed off to better bait the trap. His dark's head whipped around at the mention of a gift and his sharp eyes were now firmly trained on Ryou.

His eyes narrowed. "What type of present?"

Ryou felt himself freeze up. What the hell was he supposed to give him? He continued to smile even as he panicked on the inside. 'He's not the easiest person to buy for! Heck, he's not easy in any way!' He searched his memory as fast as he could, looking for the slightest clue that would reveal to him the perfect gift. This wasn't too particularly hard until he filtered out all of the illegal and/or dangerous possibilities. That didn't leave much.

"Well?", Bakura growled.

"Y-you know... um... it's a surprise!", Ryou lamely saved.

"Then don't be fking surprised when I kick you down the stairs." He folded his arms across his chest and turned back to the window.

Ryou tried not to lose his rapidly fading grip on his dark. "Um, it's downstairs right now, in the... the garage! I'll get it for you after we play awhile, ok?"

Bakura glared at him. "You telling the truth?"

Ryou gulped. His dark's eyes were really frightening aimed at him like that. "Of course! And if I'm not I'll, um... be your slave for a day!" He immediately cringed after his blurted appeasement. Now he really would have to give his dark something, otherwise he'd be in deep shit come tomorrow morning.

The dark smirked. "Alright then, let's go play in your damned snow." He slid off the bed and headed for outside.

"Wait! What are you doing!" Bakura blinked back at him annoyedly.

"You wanted to go play in the fking snow, so I'm going to play in the f--king snow!"

"Not dressed like that you're not," the teen scolded. "It's too cold outside for short sleeves." He began to list things off on his fingers. "You need a sweatshirt, a jacket, warmer pants, socks, boots, a scarf, some gloves, and a hat of some sort before you even set a foot outside!"

The older of the two shot the younger a viscous look. To say that he was irritated was an understatement. Why in the hell was it so difficult to go out and play in that stuff? It was just frozen precipitation!

Ryou could feel the irritation coming in waves from his other half, so he tried the one thing he knew would work: More bribery, with a puppy dog eye after taste. "I'll bake you a cake," he said sweetly, batting his eyelashes for effect.

Bakura twitched a little very much disturbed that someone who looked nearly exactly like him could look so adorable. It bothered him more that he considered him adorable. But he couldn't pass up cake... He sighed though it went unnoticed by Ryou. 'Manipulative little bastard... I'm oddly proud.'

"Fine. I'll wear a jacket and that stuff." He suddenly had a squealing hikari in his arms. 'Cute manipulative little bast--d...' "Get the f--k of me!" He dropped the boy to the floor and headed for the closet.

-----

Half an hour later the nearly identical boys were romping around in the snow, looks of glee plastered to their faces. Yes, even Bakura appeared gleeful because Ryou made the most adorable cry of pain when snowballs decided to collide with his face. To say that it was happening more often the longer they stayed outside would have been a fair assumption.

Bakura chuckled as a sound closely resembling 'aiya' emerged from his light as another snowball hit him in the face. He fell backwards into a pile of snow. This served to make Bakura laugh harder. Maybe this snow stuff wasn't too bad after all.

Ryou wasn't enjoying himself quite as much as he'd first anticipated, considering how often he'd been thrown on his butt since earlier in the day, but he was still having fun. Just not right at the moment, for he seemed to be stuck where he was. He tried flailing his arms, searching for something to grip onto. Finding no firm surfaces he twisted his hips in an attempt to dislodge himself from the mound of snow. Still no luck. He kicked his legs thinking the momentum of their movement might propel him forward and out. He remained firmly stuck. Finally he settled on all out thrashing in hopes of escaping but to no avail. He frowned deeply to himself, upset that he couldn't do this on his own and that the longer he stayed stuck the colder his backside became.

So the boy did the only thing he could do; whine. "Bakuraaaa! Help!"

Said dark could barely hear his cries for help since he'd been laughing at him through his entire struggle. What could he do? The display was so cute and so very pathetic. Bakura continued to laugh as his light continued to wail. He was quite literally busting a gut from laughing so hard and tears were leaking from his eyes. If anyone were to say that he'd been crying this was the only instance in which he'd proudly admit it. "Kura! Help please! It's cold"
Fortune seemed to be smiling on Bakura that day for he could hear the phone ringing through the thin barrier of the screen door. This new stress sent his light into another flailing frenzy as he redoubled his efforts to dislodge himself from the snow.
"Bakura! Please!" The dark only laughed harder if that were possible. Ryou 'hmphed' to himself and would have been crossing his arms could he maneuver them to do so. "Fine! If you're not going to help me then the least you can do is answer the damned phone"
Bakura's laughter ceased rather abruptly. "F--k no I won't!" He bent over the snow pile in which his light was trapped and pulled him out in one swift movement. "Go answer the Ra-damned thing"
Ryou smirked in spite of his terribly cold backside. The older of the two was more than a little afraid of the 'compact portal to the deepest reaches of the shadow realm'. Plainly put, big and mighty Bakura was afraid of answering the telephone so it was up to Ryou to answer all calls. He had to do so quickly in the event that his dark finally decided to face his fears and attack it with a blunt object.

Bakura watched as his light ran inside. He stared at the snow for a while. He looked at the many indentions dotting the layer of precipitation where he'd knocked the pansier of the two to the ground. 'I could stand out here waiting for Ryou like some girl for her soldier boyfriend,' he snorted at the imagery, 'Or I could search the garage for my present and enjoy it now instead of later.' He nodded to himself. He knew which option to choose not that it was a hard decision.

A few moments later he was busily searching every shelf in the enclosure looking for anything 'present-y'. Nothing was really catching his eye to be honest. Sure there were various tools and such that, under normal circumstances, would have been tons of fun for the dark, but he expected a present from Ryou to be a lot less dangerous. Unfortunate, but true. Besides, there was already dried blood on most of the tools signifying prior use by a certain angry spirit.

Despite the bad turnout so far, he continued to search, determined to find what was already his before it was officially given to him. Bakura knelt down beside the lone car in the garage to see if there was anything next to or underneath the vehicle that could be his prize. He was a little surprised to see an oddly shaped bottle with what looked to be a bow fastened to the top. He reached under the car and pulled it in to full view. It was a yellow bottle with a wide label on it.

"Preh.. pree.. preestune.. preestone? prehstune? What the hell's that mean?" He looked the bottle up and down for any clues to the contents of the bottle, but it mattered not considering his reading skills were poor and he wasn't exactly moving to make any improvement. He shook the bottle a couple of times to get a feel for what was inside. "Sounds like... juice.. Alcohol maybe?" He grinned eagerly at this assumption. Maybe his light had finally realized that it didn't matter what pains he went through to prevent mischief, Bakura would always find a way to do what he wanted.

He eagerly untwisted the top and took a whiff. "Smells like alcohol... sounds like alcohol... it's alcohol!", he crowed and took a swig immediately after. Bakura almost choked in surprise at the undeniably sweet taste of the liquor. "Whatever sh-t this is, it taste fking sweet!" His satisfaction grew with every gulp he took. Very soon he only had about half of a bottle left and was planning on saving the rest for later. That was a good thing too, for Ryou had reemerged from inside of the house minutes earlier and took to looking for his dark. He'd just now found him in the garage.

"There you are, Kura. We've got to go!"

Bakura made sure the hand that held the bottle went unseen as he slipped it back to its original hiding place. "Where the f--k we going?", he asked innocently as possible.

"To the hospital!", Ryou exclaimed.

"What for?"

"For Kaiba!"

"So?"

"Somebody went through the trouble of breaking into his house last night and-"

"He's missing a limb?", Bakura interjected excitedly.

Ryou sighed annoyedly. "No, he didn't lose a limb you blood thirsty jerk!"

"Then what's the big deal?"

"If you'd let me finish, you'd know!" Bakura remained silent. "Anyways, someone broke in and replaced all of the water in his house with strawberry flavored water, for what reason I don't know."

"And?", the dark asked, becoming disinterested once all possibility of blood was extinguished.

"He's allergic to strawberries."

"And?"

Ryou put a hand to his forehead in agitation. "He's currently at the hospital puffed up like the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters and he's been seizing on and off for the last half hour."

Bakura's eyes lit up at this. "He's seizing?"

"Yes."

"Well what are we waiting for?" He jumped up from his position on the floor and opened up the passenger door to the car. Ryou still appeared to be exasperated but slid into the car next to him.

A gleeful smile tinged with evil was plastered across Bakura's face as he buckled himself in. "Hey Ryou?"

"What?"

"Do we have any hardcore techno music?"

His only answer was the thud of a head meeting the steering wheel.

-----

By the time they'd arrived at the hospital Yugi, Yami and Jo were already present. Why Jo was there neither of them was sure, but they figured it would be to taunt the boy in his weakest moment. Yeah, pretty much.

"Hey guys," Ryou greeted the small group. They all replied back in various forms. Bakura said nothing, which was a bit odd for him considering he never passed up a time to insult them, most especially the pharaoh. Ryou shot a glance at his dark who was still smiling gleefully, but his eyes seemed a little unfocused. Or at least more unfocused than usual.

"Kura, are you ok?"

Bakura turned blank eyes and a wide smile to him and nodded very slowly before grinning wider, if that were even possible. His light twitched. Yugi backed a few steps away. Yami showed no visible signs of fear but he was a little wigged out as well. Jo seemed to be uncharacteristically preoccupied with something or perhaps even a little bit worried.

This moment of discomfort was broken by a doctor stopping in front of them to address them all.

"Well," he began, "It seems Mr. Kaiba has stopped seizing-"

"Damn."

The doctor glanced at the white haired dark before continuing. "And it seems that his swelling is going down-"

"F--k!"

The doctor looked straight at the boy this time shocked that anyone would be so callous in light of such an incident. Actually he wasn't that surprised considering who it was that was in need of medical assistance. Sure Kaiba had a younger brother and he seemed to have grown up all right, but he'd heard stories. Evil wicked stories of mafia's and corporate prostitution and of blinding car accidents.(1) It was all very shady. Not to mention the CEO seemed to be a real bastard to everyone in general, but they were just stories after all, right?

"He should be ready to leave before it gets to be too late in the evening."

"F--k!" This time all eyes turned to Bakura. Sure it wasn't out of the ordinary for him to cuss at impromptu times, but to sing it like some Julie Andrews reject was just wrong.

Ryou reached out a tentative hand to his dark. "Kura..?"

"Yes darling?"

The teen snatched his hand back. 'Oh God!', he thought, a little panicked. All others present were more than a little apprehensive themselves.

"Um.. Kura?"

"Call me Pharaoh." Yami twitched.

"Right...uh, Pharaoh, are you feeling ok?"

Bakura smiled eerily at him, the creepy look never really having faded, just intensified. "Right as rain my darling!" Yugi had been steadily backing up to where his dark stood and was now gripping onto his shirt like there was no tomorrow.

"Did you, uh, do anything to make you feel that way, Pharaoh?" He added the 'pharaoh' at the end a bit hastily, not quite understanding the reasoning behind it.

"Oh darling, you should know! You hid that delightful present for me in the garage and I just couldn't resist sampling it!" Not only did Bakura still have the 'creepy look' but his breath was sounding a little out of whack. Whether it be from the near singing or something else couldn't be determined.

'Oh crap! What could he have gotten into? I didn't actually have a present in there for him!' Ryou was beginning to fidget in his anxiety. "Just what was it that you sampled Pharaoh?"

"It was such a good drink..", he swayed a bit, "I think I have a buzz off of it. Good alcohol. I love alcohol. Alcohollll!" Now the doctor too was cowering away from the obviously crazed boy.

"And what was this drink called?"

Bakura wasn't breathing right at all now. "Pree... prehs... preestune... prestone! Yesh! Prestone... it... was..."

Suddenly Ryou felt all the color drain out of his face. It was a good time too because Bakura chose that moment to collapse to the floor. It took mere seconds before half of the medical staff had jumped on him like white on rice and had him in a stretcher taking his vitals like medical maniacs. Ryou rushed behind them as they took him to and empty ER room leaving Jo, Yami, and Yugi where they were.

Yami stared at Yugi. Yugi stared back. Jo started laughing.

"Jonouchi! That's not very nice!", Yugi scolded him, the standard cute from on his face.

In between giggles Jo managed to defend himself. "I know it's not Yugi, but if only you knew what was going on." He began snickering again before he could finish.

Yami and Yugi looked at each other again. "Jonouchi, what do you mean?" Yami asked.

"Dude, Prestone isn't alcohol- well not really. It's Antifreeze." As Jo explained Yugi's eyes brightened with recognition. He too began giggling.

Yami blinked at the two hysterical boys. Why was pain suddenly so funny?

"What is this 'Antifreeze' you speak of?"

Yugi and Jo spared him a look before bursting out laughing again.

-----

An hour later all was well with Bakura, at least physically. There would always be something mentally wrong with him. Ryou was stationed outside of his hospital room talking with the doctor.

"So, he'll be fine now, right?"

The doctor smiled reassuringly down at him. "He should be good as new as soon as he wakes up."

"That's a relief." Ryou sighed truly feeling better about the situation.

The doctor patted his shoulder as if cementing the fact that Bakura would be fine. "I do have one question for you."

"Hm?"

"Just how and why did 16 year old drink antifreeze?"

Ryou tensed up. "Um..." 'What do I say? What will he actually believe?'

"Uh... one of our friends dared him to I guess, so he, uh, did it." He gave the doctor a weak grin through his nervousness.

"Oh, well be sure he doesn't do anything like this again."

Ryou beamed up at him. "Of course not doctor!" The doctor smiled sternly at him before turning to go check on his other patients. "Oh, doctor!" He turned back. "Will he, um, remember anything from the past- I don't know- day or so?"

The doctor was silent for a moment in thought. "Hmm.. Well it's possible he may have suffered minimal amounts of brain damage even though we treated him so quickly." Ryou crossed his fingers behind his back. "I'd say there's a very good chance he'll forget everything from the past few hours. Why do you ask?"

Ryou smiled innocently at him. "I just wanted to know if I'd have to remind him not to drink antifreeze again."

"What a good friend you are."

Ryou continued to smile. 'Just as long as he doesn't remember today I'll be his best friend.'

Bakura was never told all the details as to how and why he drank antifreeze, but it's safe to say that he never lived the moment down.

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(1) i've heard those stories too pimps Seto's whiterose

this started out so promising. wat happened i ask myself. ah well. i must persevere.