Disclaimer:I don't own Yu-gi-oh.
A/N: Well, here we are in chapter three. I have to warn you of angst ahead, though it's balanced out with generous doses of humor. And since I've been asked about it, yes this story does have a happy ending, for everyone. I can't let them stay in misery forever, can I?
Thanks for all the wonderful responses and I hope you guys enjoy this chapter.
Chapter 3
"This is boring."
Malik ignored the other's comment, focusing his concentration on Yami and Seto and working to keep control of the Pharaoh's mind. It was growing progressively harder the longer this date with Kaiba continued.
Bakura sighed. "This is really boring."
Malik closed his eyes and forced Yami to lean up and give Kaiba a kiss on the cheek.
"That's all you're going to do? They're not doing anything; this is really, really—"
"Shut up Bakura! I'm trying to concentrate and you're not helping!"
"Stop concentrating and start doing something. I have better ways to spend my time than watching a couple of pansy-ass losers cuddle on a park bench."
"They're not… Oh for god's sake, shut up. I'll try again. Kaiba's not making this easy, you know." The blond sighed and closed his eyes again, waiting for inspiration to strike.
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"Are you hungry?"
"Yes!" Yami cried, leaping up in excitement. He grabbed Seto's hand and pulled the other up after him. "Come on; let's go get something to eat!"
Seto raised an eyebrow but followed.
When they climbed back in the car, however, Yami didn't give his date the opportunity to start the car – much less put on his seatbelt – before he was straddling Seto's lap again, kissing him and fiddling with the lever to lay the seat back. "Mmph!" The brunet let out a muffled grunt of surprise; though after a moment he threaded his fingers through the soft hair at the back of Yami's head. The shorter male thought Seto was reciprocating and smiled into their kiss…
…Only for Seto to yank harshly on his hair and jerk his head back.
"Ow!" Yami yelped and grabbed his injured head, batting the brunet's hands away. "What was that for?" He caught sight of the other's annoyed glare and his eyes began to tear up at the expression. "Seto…"
"It was the only way to get you off of me."
Yami stared blankly at the other for a moment before asking in a flat voice, "What is that supposed to mean?"
Seto sighed and guided the smaller male back to his seat – well, more like pushed him into it, since Yami didn't want to move. Then he adjusted the hair that Yami had mussed and replied, "Look Yami, I like you, but I'm not stupid. You shouldn't be so obsessed with…"
The brunet paused, looking a little embarrassed, so Yami stretched out a hand to comfort him, gently rubbing up and down the other's arm. Seto jerked his arm away. "It's too easy. I should have had to work a little. But instead you're just…" He glanced over at the shorter male, who just looked up at him and smiled sweetly.
Seto scowled. "What is going on with you?"
The now-familiar emptiness in Yami's mind seemed to clear a little and he opened his mouth to say something, but forgot what it was before the thought made it to his lips. Instead, a moment later he replied to Seto, "I don't know what you mean. I just want you."
Blue eyes flashed warningly in his direction. "I don't feel like putting up with any of your stupid games. Stop lying to me!"
The emptiness faded even more and a sharp pain prodded at the back of Yami's head. He winced. "I'm… not…"
"I'm not blind. I can tell there's a reason you're pretending to like me. Are you trying to make someone jealous? That Yugi kid seemed upset this morning… is it him?"
"I'm not pretending! I… Seto…" The pain throbbed harder at the back of Yami's mind and he gripped his head in agony. "Ah! No… Aibou…"
Suddenly the pain disappeared; and with it the emptiness that had clouded his mind since the previous morning vanished as well, as if he had been submerged in deep water and finally hit the surface, taking his first gasps of air.
And Yami woke up.
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"What the… Dammit Blondie, what the hell was that! Can't you even seduce someone right?" Bakura scowled and crossed his arms, the Sennen Rod lying forgotten on the bed, since it wasn't showing them Yami and Kaiba anymore, anyway.
"Apparently I can't," was the muffled reply. Malik sat curled up a few feet away, his knees pulled up to his chest and his face buried in his hands.
Bakura's expression softened a bit at the sight and he poked Malik in the side. "Aww, come on Blondie, no need to be like that. What happened, anyway?"
"He threw me out of his mind." Malik scooted out of reach of Bakura's fingers, his face still buried firmly in his hands. "He was too strong. I couldn't…"
"Hey, come on, it's okay." Bakura crawled over to the blond and attempted to tug the other's hands away from his face. "Come on, don't be like that. Look at me."
"But you said… you wanted…" Malik hunched over further and pulled his knees up to his chest once more.
"I was being an ass," Bakura replied cheerfully. "What else did you expect? You should know better than to pay too much attention to me by now."
Malik let out a weak chuckle from behind his hands.
"It was fun while it lasted anyway. We can find something else to entertain us – in fact; I've got a few ideas, if you'll just take your hands off your face." Bakura shot the blond a lecherous grin; which, of course, he couldn't see.
"Bakura," Malik let out a low sigh – which turned into a yelp when the white-haired teen leapt on him and pinned him down on his back. He gripped his face as hard as he could, praying that Bakura wouldn't pull his hands away and he'd get a chance to sneak out… before anyone noticed… "Get off me!" Malik shrieked.
"Mmm, what a pretty prize I've caught," Bakura purred. "A pretty little blond, all mine to play with." He began to lay a series of kisses along Malik's forearms, progressing toward his face. "What a lucky prize. He tastes so nice..." By this time Bakura's kisses had made it to his hands and Malik froze, hardly daring to breathe.
"What do his lips taste like, I wonder?" Bakura smirked wickedly. He grabbed Malik's hands and finally yanked them away – only to freeze in horror.
Malik's face was covered in blood.
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Yami blinked slowly, lifting one hand to rub his aching head. What had happened? Had he blacked out? The last thing he remembered was walking to the grocery store…
He looked around and saw, to his surprise, that he was sitting in a car with none other than Seto Kaiba, who currently looked highly annoyed and was putting the car in gear with far more force than necessary. "Kaiba? What's going on?" Yami questioned. He must have blacked out on the way to the store, then. Had Kaiba found him?
"This date is over, that's what's going on," Kaiba snapped.
"Date?" Yami echoed weakly.
The brunet gave him a sharp glance before snorting and turning his attention back to the road. "I should have known it would be a mistake," he muttered.
"What… what was a mistake?" Yami asked softly. He was getting more confused by the second – what was he doing with Kaiba? And why was the CEO saying they had been on a date? Yami had a feeling he knew; that the answer was somewhere just under the tip of his subconscious… but he couldn't quite reach it…
"Loving you. Wanting you. Having anything to do with you." Kaiba snorted again. "I don't know why I thought you were different. All those speeches about caring about what happened to me; I knew they were just bullshit. But for some reason…" The CEO shook his head. "I should never have listened to you."
Yami stared. "Loving me…?"
"Whatever. Your loss." Kaiba fell silent, staring straight ahead at the windshield, his thick chestnut bangs falling over his eyes and hiding any hint of emotion lurking on his face.
Yami's head gave a violent throb and the ex-Pharaoh winced, rubbing his temples. He closed his eyes in an attempt to block out the pain – and flashes of the past twenty-four hours raced through his mind unbidden, chasing away the confusion with the unmistakable clarity of reality, the dismay at what he'd been forced to do hitting Yami like a thunderbolt. Visiting Kaiba in his office, Yugi's confusion, the date… passionate kisses shared with the brunet beside him…
Yami's face flamed. "Seto, it was Shadow Magic," he said softly. "The Sennen Rod… it had to have been. I must have broken free somehow, just now…"
"I don't believe in that garbage," the other replied, his voice flat. He didn't look at Yami.
The spiky-haired teen lowered his head, his crimson eyes staring blankly somewhere in the vicinity of his lap. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."
Seto didn't answer and the two drove in silence for a few minutes, Yami still staring at his lap, not looking up until the car slowed and came to a stop in front of the game shop. He looked over at the brunet, but Seto still wouldn't even glance in his direction. "Kaiba…"
"Get out."
Yami opened the door and climbed out, but hesitated before shutting it behind him. "Seto," he tried once more, "I really am sorry."
At that the CEO finally met his eyes, in an emotionless blue-eyed gaze that would haunt Yami's dreams. "We could have been great, you know," he said simply. Then he looked away. "But never mind that now." He reached over and jerked the door shut before speeding away.
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Bakura's eyes were very wide above him, so Malik cringed, turning his head as far as he could with the tomb robber sitting atop him and holding both his hands. No one had ever done it before, what the Pharaoh had done – throwing Malik from his mind with enough force to physically wound him. It had given him a monster headache and his nose started bleeding the moment he lost control.
Malik sighed. Now Bakura would make fun of him. And he certainly wouldn't want to fool around with him anymore; probably for quite a while now that he had seen the blond's face as pale and bloody as it must have been. Not a pretty mental image for the bedroom. "Bakura, please let me up," he muttered.
The other blinked and his eyes narrowed, but he didn't move. "Blondie, what's wrong with you?"
"When I lost control of his mind… mental stress… I guess…" Malik mumbled.
"Pharaoh," Bakura hissed. "I'll kill him!"
Malik whipped his head back in Bakura's direction. "Huh?"
The white-haired teen's eyes narrowed even further, into tiny slits, and he sat back and released Malik's hands – a bit of the Egyptian's blood transferring to his own pale fingers in the process. "I'll disembowel him. Cut off his arms and legs. Rip out his heart and show it to him. Ryou, get in here!"
The last sentence was said with a wall-trembling shout and Malik winced, far closer to the sound than he would have preferred. "Kura, what are you talking about?" he asked, wiping one hand on his cotton pajama pants while the other gingerly prodded at his tender nose, which still bled a little.
Bakura glanced back in his direction – he had been watching the door for Ryou – and his lips curved downward in a nasty frown. He lifted one pale hand and touched Malik's face again, seeming not to care when blood once again smeared red on his fingers. "He hurt you," Bakura said simply.
Their eyes met, Malik's wide with disbelief and Bakura's dark with some indeterminate emotion, and for a moment it seemed to Malik as if something passed between them, like they were on the cusp of something deep and profound; maybe, possibly, Bakura was on the verge of those deep feelings that Malik had been struggling with since shortly after they met, and if the moment could only last just that little bit longer it could change their relationship forever.
Of course, Ryou walked in.
"Oh gosh Malik, what happened?" he gasped, clapping his palms to his face in horror.
"Never mind that Ryou, I need you to—" Bakura began, but the other white-haired teen interrupted him, his eyes narrowing in an eerie resemblance of his yami as he pointed at Bakura.
"What did you do?" The accusation fell like a heavy weight, and Malik and Bakura sat in silence for a moment, unsure what to say. "You have blood on your hands, Bakura," Ryou continued, sounding dangerously calm.
All eyes turned to the tomb robber's hands. "What? You think I hit him? Ryou—"
"You know what, it doesn't matter. I know this is your fault somehow." Ryou advanced on the pair seated on the bed and grabbed Bakura's arm, dragging him off the mattress and whapping him on the back of the head as the yami stumbled across the floor.
"Ryou!"
"Don't lie to me Bakura, I know this is your doing and you're going to fix it. We're getting the first aid kit and you're going to bandage him up, and then you're going to apologize."
The pair of look-alikes disappeared into the hallway as Malik watched them, unable to hold back a smile.
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Yami stood on the sidewalk a long time after Seto left, trying to sort through his muddled thoughts. His memories from the day under the Rod's control were muddled and vague, like a half-remembered dream, and he was fairly sure he really shouldn't be able to remember it at all.
He had definitely made a fool of himself, that was certain. Fawning all over Kaiba like some lovesick schoolgirl – though Kaiba had proven to be rather lovesick himself. It must have been humiliating for him, realizing that Yami didn't really love him, especially after all that he had admitted feeling for the ex-Pharaoh. What a blow to think that the person you loved, who had confessed to loving you before you even reciprocated, hadn't ever really been in love with you at all.
It was certainly ironic. No wonder Kaiba wouldn't admit to believing in Shadow Magic.
But Kaiba's theory was even worse; thinking that Yami was playing cruel games with him and trying to make someone else jealous. That was just… well, cruel. Yami would never do something like that to Seto; he cared about him more than that, even if the CEO didn't want to believe it.
How much did he care about Seto?
Well, that was the million-dollar question, if anything was. Unfortunately Yami didn't have an answer.
He sighed and trudged into the house, deciding to go lie down in his room and think things over. However, this was not to be, as the moment he opened the door he was immediately accosted by all of Yugi-tachi, saying their hellos and shouting random phrases that made no sense to Yami's overworked, muddled brain.
"Yami!"
"Yami's home!"
"Yami, we're here for you bud!"
"Yeah, you can count on us!"
"Don't let that rich jerk hypnotize you!"
"Huh?" At the last comment, Yami spun, confused, to look at the speaker – who turned out to be Jou, wearing a determined expression and holding a handmade banner which read JUST SAY NO! in red permanent marker. "Er… what's going on?" Yami asked cautiously.
"We're your moral support!" Jou cried, throwing up a fist. "Don't fall for Kaiba's tricks, man. You're stronger than that!"
"Yeah, we believe in you!" Anzu chimed in.
"Um… what?"
Just then Yugi walked up and stood before him, his legs spread and his hands on his hips in a determined stance. "Yami, this is an intervention. We think there's something wrong with your relationship with Kaiba. It came out of nowhere; and he seems to have some kind of hold on you. It's unnatural."
"But Aibou, I…"
"It's no use denying it!" Yugi's enormous violet eyes welled up with tears and he poked Yami accusingly in the chest. "I can tell when something's wrong with you. I think Kaiba's using," his voice dropped to a stage whisper, "Shadow Magic."
Yami fought back the highly inappropriate urge to laugh. "Yes it was Shadow Magic but…"
"So you admit it!" Yugi cried. Shocked murmurs spread throughout the room.
"Aibou, please," Yami began, but the other interrupted him once again.
"That settles it! We're not leaving this room until you've broken his spell!"
"Aibou…"
"You can do it, Yami! We're all here, supporting you. We'll give you all the strength you need!"
"Aibou."
"We're in it for the long haul, Yami! I made a cracker tray, and Anzu brought drinks. We'll stay here as long as you need!"
"Aibou!"
"What is it, Yami?" the shorter teen finally asked, crossing his arms impatiently across his chest.
"It was Shadow Magic, but not Kaiba's. And I've already broken free of the spell."
Yugi blinked; then stared at Yami questioningly until the taller male nodded, reiterating his statement. "Oh. Um…" The room was silent for a long moment. "Want a cracker?"