I honestly had no idea how much fun it was to skydive. In my days as pharaoh we had many forms of entertainment, yes, but nothing quite like the thrill of freefalling through wisps of cloud and immeasurable sky. What made it all the more interesting was that we were aiming for a large cherry pie thousands of feet below us in order to cushion our falls. And by "we," of course, I meant the dragon and myself.

Yes, she was a lovely dragon, though I thought it slightly unfair that she had wings while I merely had a parakeet.

Wait…parakeet? Wasn't it supposed to be?…

Uh-oh.

"Dammit, Pharaoh, if you don't wake up right now I am going to throw you out of the car, hikari be damned!"

"Evil bird!"

I woke with a start and an undignified shout mere seconds before hitting the ground, the menacing laughter of both dragon and parakeet still ringing in my ears. "A dream," I sighed, considerably relieved and slightly embarrassed, "It was only a dream." I rubbed at my temples with a forefinger and thumb, headache returning in a dull throb as my mind cleared of its otherworldly fog in favor of clear and conscious thought.

Bakura snorted, blasting the horn at a little old lady as he shifted lanes to pass her. Somewhat amusingly, she offered him what is commonly referred to as 'the finger' in response to his antics before returning her attention to the dusky road in front of her. He paid her no heed, strangely enough, as his eyes scanned our roadmap briefly and he mumbled a few odd phrases to himself. I gave him a mildly concerned glance out of the corner of my eye without actually moving my head, a futile attempt to quell the ache in my skull. "We're not lost again, are we?"

"We weren't lost before, idiot pharaoh. I told you, a good thief always has an innate sense of direction."

"Of course, a good thief."

He narrowed his eyes in my direction, voice quieting to the deadly whisper of a predator calmly regarding its prey. "I'm sorry, Pharaoh," he answered conversationally, malice lurking just below the surface, "But were you implying something?"

Implying something? Gods, I think I was flirting! What the hell is wrong with me? It's the head injury, that's it; it's the head injury talking. Calm down, Yami, just don't think about it. He won't suspect a thing.

"No, tomb robber, I wasn't implying anything." I noticed the skeptic lift of his eyebrow, the unspoken yet obvious disbelief of my words, coupled with the willingness to let it go for the time being. Presumably he didn't want to argue while driving, though I wouldn't have taken him for a cautious driver after witnessing his earlier vehicular mayhem. Still, I wasn't going to complain. After all, it was best to not make waves considering the number of days we still had to spend in the car together. Just as we were each settling back into our respective thoughts, however, a voice came out of nowhere: "I was stating it outright. And all these years I thought you were reasonably intelligent."

Shit! That was my voice. My words. From my mouth. What the hell was I thinking?

Almost instantly Bakura snapped to attention, nailing me with those eyes, a glare lesser men have been known to tremble before. His concentration no longer strayed toward the road in front of him, nor the fact that we were gradually drifting into the foliage that lined the interstate. "I see. So that's the way you want to be, hm?"

"I didn't…exactly…Bakura, the tree!" I leaned over and yanked the wheel toward myself, pulling the car back on the road with a thump. My albino companion didn't particularly seem to care one way or the other whether we stayed on the road or not, as he did nothing to suggest taking control of the vehicle once again.

"So now I'm a bad driver, too?" His tone suggested nothing good and his actions reinforced this implication; as I struggled to keep us on the road without crashing into something and exploding into a great flaming fireball of death, he casually lifted both hands from the steering wheel and placed them behind his head, leaning back. A quick glance at the speedometer confirmed my suspicion that he was accelerating as well, and we were already far beyond the speed limit.

"Bakura," I said in what I hoped was an authoritative voice, "Stop it."

"Is there just no pleasing you, pharaoh? I can't steal, can't drive… You are deeply hurting my feelings."

"This is no time for sarcasm, tomb robber. You are going to get us killed." I swerved as best as I could manage from the passenger seat, narrowly avoiding a bus as the speedometer climbed yet higher, several of our fellow drivers sending rude hand gestures in our direction. "Again."

"Oh, so I suppose all of your problems are entirely my fault. That's great. No, don't say a word, I see how it is."

I sighed in frustration. "Damn it all, Bakura, this is not the time for this! The police are going to come after us if you do not slow down and start driving safely! Bakura, would you listen to me? Bakura!"

"Holy shit, Pharaoh!" he shouted with maniacal, barely-suppressed glee, "You're going to run over that poor, innocent raccoon!"

"Bakura!"

We're going to die. That's all there is to it. We are going to die and our lights will be wandering around on a beach somewhere when a police officer comes up to them and shows them a picture of our broken, mangled bodies and says, 'Do you know these two men?' And then Yugi will cry and Ryou will…well, comfort Yugi, and maybe cry, though for this idiot? And then there will be a funeral and I'll be stuck in the ground for eternity with this lunatic who is accelerating toward that raccoon even as I am thinking this and oh gods we are going to die!

"Tomb robber, stop the car, for the love of all things holy!"

"If you insist, O Mighty Pharaoh!"

He pounced upon the steering wheel, bringing his foot down with a sudden motion on the brake pedal as we went from ninety to nothing in a matter of seconds. I only had enough time to notice that he had somehow loosened my seat belt considerably before head met dashboard once again and I drifted back into oblivion.

…

I really despise these people. They all think they're so much better than everyone else. Ordering me around like I'm as much of a pushover as Ryou. They have no idea. If I felt like it I would send them to the shadow realm right now. But I don't feel like it.

I tossed his royal pain-in-my-ass onto the bed unceremoniously, slightly harder than I had intended. I was irritated, though; the manager of the crappy motel we were currently situated in had been an absolute ass about the entire process of getting a room for the night.

Just to clear something up: the pharaoh and I were not together. Were not currently, would never be, and never were in the past. Perhaps I have, on occasion, seen him as somewhat attractive, but he is far too irritating for any sane person to put up with him long enough to screw him. Bastard know-it-all.

"Pharaoh."

He moaned slightly, turning on his side toward where I stood. His hair was somewhat mussed, framing his face in messy strands of blond streaked here and there with blood, a side effect of bashing his head in on the dashboard. Concussion or not, however, he needed to wake his ass up so we could settle something.

"Pharaoh!" I shook him by the shoulder and his eyes cracked open a bit, dull amethyst with only a shadow of their usual intensity. I watched as he tried to focus, blinking blearily as he pulled himself into a half-sitting position, weight rested on one arm. He squinted at me with confusion, as if trying to remember where he was. In his state, he almost resembled a kicked puppy.

"Where… I'm not letting you drive anymore," he declared, eyes still attempting to track clearly.

I thrust two fingers into the air a few feet from his face and asked casually, "How many fingers do you see, pharaoh?" I could see the hesitation on his face even as he struggled for the correct answer.

"Four?"

I snorted. "Then how do you expect to drive? Wake up, would you, we need to discuss something."

…

I pushed my bangs from my eyes in a sweeping motion, still blinking at the white-haired figure in front of me in an attempt to convince myself that he was singular rather than plural. Unfortunately, the room was spinning in such a manner as to make the concentration required to achieve this goal virtually impossible. I gave up on the vision aspect of my senses and closed my eyes, sitting up slowly while hoping the room wouldn't pitch forward and throw me from the bed as it was threatening to do. "What do we need to discuss, tomb robber?" I asked quietly, trying not to move my head very much in the process. Though I could not see his smirk, I could almost hear it in his response.

"I'm sure you didn't notice with your chosen state of blindness, but were you to actually focus upon the room we are in, you would notice that there is only one bed."

"That's nice," I returned, not actually taking in any of his words. "Is there any aspirin or something around here?"

The thief sighed with an undertone of irritation, and I wondered if I had actually missed something important. A muffled thumping noise met my ears; the sound of his breathing suddenly very near to my head told me that he had abandoned the wooden chair he had been perched upon when I first awoke. Most likely it had tipped in his sudden movement, accounting for the clatter.

"Pharaoh. Eyes. Open."

"Mhm."

"Now, Pharaoh."

"Okay, Kura."

"Ryou's on the phone. He's having hot sex with Yugi."

"What?"

My eyes flew open in time to catch the smirk on his face, the smugness in his eyes as he half-knelt before me, the first and most likely the last time he would ever do so. "I thought that might get your attention. It's not true, however. The issue we need to discuss is a slightly more dire situation."

I gently cradled my head in my hands, glad to know that Yugi was still his innocent self and wondering exactly what could be direr than my light and the thief's light…well…going at it. "I'm listening, tomb robber," I assured him with a blink or two; the room still remained slightly bleary and out of focus before my gaze.

He made a slight growling noise in the back of his throat as he rose from the ground, returning to the chair opposite where I sat upon the bed after righting it with a clatter. "Listen, Pharaoh," he muttered with a general air of annoyance, dark eyes narrowing, "I want you to take a look around this room. Look carefully, and tell me what's wrong with this picture. Like a game."

I snorted quietly. "Kura, you're not going to lure me into doing what you want just by calling it a game." I slowly turned my head as I spoke, taking in my surroundings. Hm… door, small television set, bathroom around the corner…

"Why do you keep calling me that?"

I started, pausing in accounting for a chair, a bedside table, and a clock radio. "I…er…I have a concussion."

He gave me a quizzical, calculating look before shaking himself and returning to his usual expression of general insanity mixed with boredom. "Right, Pharaoh. Whatever you say." The thief ran a hand through his snow-colored locks with a sigh I recognized, indicating that he was almost automatically analyzing what in the room was worth stealing. "Have you figured out exactly what is wrong with our situation yet?" he asked, reminding me of what I was supposed to be doing.

"Well…" I trailed off. It seemed like a perfectly normal room in a perfectly normal cheap motel. Cheap furniture, cheap electronics, cheap bed, peeling paint on the walls… Wait. Go back to the bed.

Oh, no…

I felt the realization come over my features; the thief apparently noticed as well, for he let out a grim chuckle. "I'll take that as a yes."

…

The Pharaoh's face paled considerably to the point of giving Ryou's skin tone a run for its money. I could see fear in his eyes, something not usually displayed in those proud violet orbs. That look alone sent a thrill of excitement through my veins, which I fought to get under control. After all, there were more pressing matters to deal with.

"Okay, Pharaoh. This is very simple. There are two of us and only one bed. So one of us is not going to be sleeping on that bed."

He offered me a wry smile, framed by the tiny trickling of dried blood that still lingered from his meeting of head and dashboard. "Brilliant logic, tomb robber. How about we—"

I held up a hand to cut him off, mid-sentence. "No games," I ordered, "Absolutely not. You cheat."

"I do not cheat, I merely—"

"No. No games. We will flip a coin and that's final."

"Tomb robber—"

"Heads or tails?"

He sighed. "Tails, I suppose."

"Excellent." I tossed the coin high into the air, where it shimmered and tossed a few times under the dim light bulb. Both of our eyes burned a hole into that coin, a quarter, I believe it was, though that was beside the point. The important part was the landing.

It twisted in the air, beginning its downward descent toward the thin greenish carpeting beneath our feet. The thing bounced once, twice, and then rolled to a stop near the bedside table. The Pharaoh and I both peered at it, then glanced up at each other, eyes wide.

"Impossible," I choked, gaping.

"Agreed," he nodded, sounding vaguely strangled.

Our eyes found their way toward the coin once again, drawn by an almost magnetic force. We stared at the little silver circle, which perched ridiculously, unbelievably on the ground, neither heads nor tails, but rather, balanced on the ridged millimeter or so that made up its edge.

…

Author Note: I know, I know! I'm horrible. I hereby give all of you permission to beat me in the head with sticks and whatnot. I'm so, so sorry I took so long to update. It won't happen again, I swear. I'll make sure of it. My most humble of apologies to anyone still with me.