Chapter 13: What Happens After
Bakura collapsed onto his bed after shutting and locking his door. He held the Change of Heart card with protector between his thumb and palm letting it rest flat. Stroking at the flimsy plastic, he refused to let thoughts of Ryou's awful disposition enter his mind, attempting in vain to erase the sunken in brown eyes, murky and reflecting nothing, the— Tipping the card over, releasing one of the razor blades, he banished the thought before it could form, adding more crushing weight to his chest or the battery acid pooling in his stomach. He exhaled as he raised the blade within his fingers to make the first cut.
He whipped against air as he made a slicing motion with the blade. He furrowed his brows, and proceeded to cut his arm proper. Once more, he sliced at the air a few millimeters above his arm. Raising his eyes to the ceiling, Bakura placed the sharp edge of the blade on his arm. The blade indented his arm. He sucked in a breath, and exhaled as he cut, digging the blade into his arm. A pointed, focused pain spliced on his arm. He opened his eyes and looked at the newest cut, a small knick, equivalent to a nasty paper cut, and sighed as bright beads of blood bubbled up around the red line.
He cut again, this time on the first attempt, another small incision, another red line. He grit his teeth (flashes of Ryou choking down whatever leftover his hands hurriedly grasped, spoonfuls, one after another, hair falling limply into the container soaking up the saucy remnants, and still he…), and pressed harder with the blade, dragging it quickly, rougher, deeper through his skin. He felt pain: his eyes widened at the heat pooled along his arm, a muddled deep purple puddle, he tensed his arm, sending a trickle of bright red down the side of his arm, his lips curved upwards as every thought wiped clean from his head as he could only think of the immediate problem.
Bakura flicked his arm back, all the while watching a droplet of blood cling against the bottom of his arm, as another rivulet of blood trickled down the other side of his arm, never quite intersecting the other. He flopped back against the headboard, staring up at his arm and the thin tracks snaking red tributaries. His eyes slowly closed, and when he awoke the next morning to a knocking on his door, he never recalled falling asleep.
…
A soft knocking reverberated in his ears long before he awoke, sounding akin to his alarm clock in that it jarred him from sleep in the most obnoxious manner possible. Bakura cracked an eye, gazing around the room sleepily. Out of habit, he shrugged his sleeve down over his injured arm. A pause in the knocking caught his attention, as he cottoned on to what the intrusive noise meant. Stumbling out of bed, he kicked the card with the blades under his half on, half off comforter, and crossed the room to unlock the door.
He greeted Ryou with a glare, no amount of throbbing under his sleeve could make him forget or forgive the scene he witnessed in the kitchen. He swallowed the thought, opening his door wider to allow Ryou entrance, and then sat down on his bed, arms crossed, foot securely placed in front of the buried card.
Bakura merely lifted an eyebrow, waiting for Ryou to speak. Ryou sat on the bed gingerly; he raised his eyes—which resembled room temperature syrup, warm and inviting—and stared into Bakura's eyes as if searching for the meaning of life in Bakura's irises. Bakura narrowed his eyes, and Ryou flushed, but refused to look away.
After a long moment, Ryou muttered, "You're right."
Bakura, jolted out of his thoughts, the ever pressing fear someone would notice a razor blade or cut or stain on his sleeve, the swollen, irritated awareness of his eyelids as they blinked against dry, tired eyes, the odd sensation of blood still dribbling down his arm, even under the sleeve, amidst caked on remnants of the night prior, barked, "Excuse me?" Even his throat, scratchy from disuse, conveyed his exhausted state.
Luckily Ryou did not notice, rather he held his gaze at Bakura's eyes, and Bakura took note of the glazed over appearance as Ryou glanced at nothing. Ryou blinked, eyes focusing, becoming sharper with clarity. "You're right Bakura. I-I'm sorry."
"Fuck are you talking about?" Bakura snarled, ever argumentative as he tried to ignore the rising surge of emotion lightening the knot in his chest, reassuring him in a way cutting could not. "I never said a thing."
Ryou shook his head. "You didn't have to. I have a problem." He glanced out the window, eyes glazing over again. "I know that." His lips trembled, one hand coming to rest on his chest, squeezing lightly at the shirt, fingers pressing into the flesh underneath.
Bakura startled when the extra weight left the bed, knocking him off balance. Ryou stood above him. He placed a hand on Bakura's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said softly, before exiting the room. Bakura reached up, touching the still warm spot with his finger tips. He caressed the fabric as the lingering warmth was replaced with his own body heat.
…
It was late afternoon before Bakura ceased staring at the closed door Ryou had exited earlier and realized his shirt sleeve continued to stick to his arm, the blood crusted fabric to flesh. He cringed against the sensation as he wrenched the material from his arm. He tugged on another long sleeve shirt from a pile of designated clean clothes from the floor, and pulled open his bedroom door to make his first appearance of the day.
He stepped into the living room to the unusual site of Ryou nibbling on a carrot. He ate with precise miniscule bites, and Bakura tried to yank his gaze away, instinctively realizing that his lingering stare wouldn't help, and headed into the kitchen to make himself something more substantial than a carrot.
…
Useless. The thoughts echoed in his head as he stomped against the rhythm of the voice whispering his constant failings. Bakura walked the length of a block, circling Ryou's apartment. He mashed his teeth together, clamping his jaw shut against the bile coating the back of his throat. He made a face and swallowed more traces of the bitter coating in his mouth. He raged with each foot, stamping in the oppressing August heat. He was seething, raving pissed, and for the life of him, he could not figure out why.
A couple days, the first few days of summer break, passed in the same monotonous awkwardness. Bakura rarely saw Ryou, even in the enclosed apartment, and when they did mingle, their interactions were stifled and disjointed, revealing nothing. Every so often, Bakura witnessed Ryou eating something small, a piece of fruit or toast, and breathed out a sigh of relief when he didn't run for a toilet immediately after. Though those peaceful, almost plebian in their normality, moments were interspersed with Bakura scratching at his most recent cuts, while over hearing Ryou making himself sick or Ryou declining to eat with Bakura.
Nothing in the past week, even the small instances of Ryou's caving to his eating disorder was enough to explain the mounting, seemingly uncontrollable rage bellowing up with in him. So, he had thrown on his tennis shoes, and called out some clipped remark, a minor warning for Ryou not to follow him. And, he walked. Round and round the apartment, steps growing angrier as he crushed his shoes into the pavement.
The familiar burning on his arm told him what he craved, what would make everything go away—if only temporarily with the entrancement of blood running down his arms, or the comfortable stinging on the inside of his arms.
He curled his hands into fists. That wasn't exactly a fucking option. Not really certain why cutting was not an option, but something, some incessant nagging voice in his head ruled out that alternative, so Bakura paced around the same city block, going nowhere, luckily recognizing no one, and tried to walk off the awful feeling.
He had no reason, none whatsoever, to be so angry. Ryou had eaten! Albeit half a pomegranate and a piece of toast, before binning the other half with claims it was out of season, but he had eaten. Still, as his insides melted into molten liquid, Bakura removed himself from the noxious situation before his own stupidity made things worse. Eyebrows furrowed, gaze hovering no further than a few paces in front of his feet, Bakura almost didn't notice the sudden presence of leather flats in his path.
His eyes narrowed further and he prepared a retort to whomever was idiotic enough to cross him when he already felt like pounding the living shit out of anyone—himself included. Bakura jerked his head up, narrowly colliding with the worse possible person.
"Pharaoh." A short statement, cold and ground out through layers of hatred.
Yami stood in the middle of the sidewalk, bare arms dangled lazily as he shot Bakura an inquisitive look. "What are you doing?"
The retort slid out of his lips on pure instinct. "Nothing that concerns you." He crossed his arms and glowered.
Yami's own eyes narrowed, and Bakura smirked gleefully at the prospect of making the poor bastard feel a little bit like he did. "Actually, it does concern me, thief. Unless you've forgotten the incident of you punching Marik?"
The condensation, the absolute dripping superiority awakened the bottomless rage in Bakura. "Fuck you, you bastard. Did he set you up with this? Too fucking pathetic to show up on his own?" Each word uttered raised in pitch and shrillness, until, by the end, Bakura was screaming in the middle of the street, drawing attention from the neighbors—not that he ever bothered or concerned himself with them.
He stormed off. That quiet voice niggling at him to not release his anger upon the sharp edge of the blade had long since dissipated in a desperate screaming to make it all go away. Searing pain as Yami yanked at his arm, pulling him back, flared up as a low scream. Bakura watched a strange expression crinkle Yami's holier-than-though upraised nose, but the expression cleared before Bakura could process what it meant. Instead he focused on the pain as Yami's fingers curled on the newest cut. Over a week old, and still tender as the day he had sliced into his arm after catching Ryou bent over the yellow plastic bowl…
He wrenched his arm free and crossed them to his chest out of instinct. The sudden jolt of pain brought his temper crashing to the floor, and he sucked in a ragged breath. He stared at Yami, no longer boiling pissed, rather, leveled at his usual decibel of annoyance, and regarded the former Pharaoh with a small smirk. "Tell Marik to deal with his own problems, rather than depending on his precious Pharaoh."
Bakura turned and walked away, back to the apartment. He sucked in lungfuls of air as his heart rate slowed to its normal pace and the anger dissolved into a minor ache in the back of his skull. The only memory of the incurable rage from earlier.
Yami watched Bakura stalk away. His face twisted into something odd as a foreign emotion racked at him. He had intended to visit Ryou, perhaps try to talk to him once more, but then Bakura had nearly barreled into him. He set aside his straying thoughts. After all, Bakura wasn't who he promised to see today, especially for Joey's and Tristan's sake. He followed Bakura's footsteps back to the apartment shared by the two, lingering slightly behind the thief.
Bakura jammed his index finger in the elevator button to close himself in, when a tanned hand slid between the closing doors and the elevator opened to reveal Yami. Bakura scowled. "You're following me?"
"No," Yami enunciated the syllable a bit too harshly. So that was a confirmation. "I'm visiting Ryou."
Bakura curled up in the corner of the elevator and watched the lights slowly brighten upward to the eighth floor. "Good for you."
When the elevator opened on his floor, Bakura walked out, into the hallway, and let himself in the apartment. Yami quickly grabbed the door before it could slam in his face and entered behind Bakura, who marched through the living room soundlessly and closed himself into one of the rooms further past. He blinked then greeted Ryou, who glanced up from a book he was reading as he lay sprawled in an armchair.
…
Near the weekend, Bakura flicked through channels on the television, never really catching on to modern interest in the brightly lit box, listening to Ryou on the phone with one of his friends. Bakura sneered at the thought (the stupid Pharaoh's impromptu visit and intervention monologue earlier in the week had been hellish enough; why Ryou bothered with the idiots, he wondered), and propped his feet on the coffee table. From the dining room wall, where the home phone was boxed, Ryou shot Bakura a warning look, a small frown and squinted eyes. Bakura shrugged, neglecting to remove his feet. He smirked at Ryou's head shake and exhaled breath.
"No, sorry Joey. That wasn't about—" Ryou ran a finger through his long hair, before fisting the tips and pulling roughly as the conversation seemed to shift. Bakura glanced over, more interested in their conversation than the idiots on television hosting another cheesy cooking competition. "I'm fine," Ryou said, enunciating both words as Bakura noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a close up of a contestant shoveling ramen in his mouth. His stomach clenched at the ironic imagery.
"Really, I. No." Ryou cast his gaze at the floor. A small sigh, then he spoke again, in the same quiet apologetic tone he had spoken to Bakura a few mornings ago, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to get so bad again."
There was a longer pause, where Bakura could hear the righteous anger in Joey's tone through the phone line. So it was attempt three to make Ryou better. Yeah, that was doomed from the start. Ryou barely mentioned his eating habits to Bakura, though Bakura was very aware of them thanks to the close proximity they shared. He had been trying to eat more, Bakura had noticed, but he didn't think much of the phone call and Joey's and Tristan's pathetic attempt, until Ryou blushed and placed a hand to his cheeks, murmuring a reply. "I will. I need to call Father."
Even from his spot on the couch, Bakura heard the inclusion of Tristan's voice as both he and Joey must've screamed into the phone, "Well go do that!" Ryou hung up after a few rounds of traditional pleasantries. Bakura flicked his gaze back at the television as Ryou sat on the other end of the couch, joining him. The two sat on the couch, watching a half hour of mindless game show television in an oddly comforting silence. Finally, chewing on his thumbnail, Ryou hoisted himself off the couch, and grabbed his mobile phone from the wall, disconnecting it from its charger.
He flipped the phone open, dialing a number from memory, slowly making his way towards his room as he spoke. "Hi, Dad." He tapped his fingers on the wall as he walked into the short hallway, which provided rooms for Ryou, his father on the spare times he visited, and Bakura, plus the bathroom.
He halted walking suddenly. "Yes, sorry for calling so early. I wanted to call before I lost the nerve…"
Bakura could just make out the sound of Ryou's father. Even through the tinny speakers, he could hear the concern and compassion. Ryou spoke in small voice, effectively cutting of his father's worried diatribe as he turned the knob on his bedroom door. "…I think I need help…"
Whatever Ryou said after that was muffled by the closing of his bedroom door. Bakura settled himself deeper into the couch cushions and laughed harshly at one of the ridiculous gags on the television show.
A/N: Hmm the chapters are getting easier to write. Along the way, I set a goal of 100,000 words minimum for this story, so each chapter has to get close to 3000 words (which is double most of what I wrote this summer). Basically I'm creating new plots. Bakura's summer break plot is solid, so the next few chapters, aside from real life obligations, should be out quicker less than, say, three months' time. I don't know how university is going to affect my writing schedule, but we'll see?
Ryou's phone call to his Dad happens about noon in Japan, and, in this story, Ryou's father is in Egypt, which their local time is about five AM, so Ryou's waking him up. Or so the little note I wrote to remind myself says so.
