Chapter 21: September 2, 1998 Part 2
Bakura stared at the wall, lips pressed together displaying neutral non-emotion. He clenched his jaw and flexed the muscles of his arms stealthily under his shirt sleeve, possibly ripping the newest cuts open. After he had finally cut enough to bring his heart rate back to normal, Bakura had changed his shirt, grabbed his keys, and skipped off to the nearest convenience store to follow Dr. Satou's advice: keep the wounds clean.
He smiled sardonically at the thought, earning an equally nasty look from the bulky security guard who stared at him over the table. Bakura steeled himself, trying to summon enough indifference to his situation. He told himself he didn't care, this was just one if the expected outcomes, a result of his actions. He glanced at the assortment of first aid supplies he had tried to plunder; bandages, ointment, and rolls of gauze. His arms burned under the sleeves of the shirt he had changed into, a dark blue collared polo.
He uncrossed his legs, recrossing them.
"Excuse me, sir," a voice jolted from the recesses of Bakura's mind, as the memories swirled in his thoughts.
Dead weight sunk in the pit of his stomach, and a chill washed over his neck as if an ice cube had been pressed against his skin. He turned, facing a middle aged man in everyday clothing. "Yes," he asked.
"I think you should come with me, kid," the man, Bakura realized belatedly was a security guard employed with the convenience store. Bakura swallowed, and followed the man to the back room, where he had been asked to turn out his pockets. One by one, the medical supplies had been unearthed, and the close proximity to the burly man became more real as it finally sunk in. He had been caught.
The door to the nondescript back room opened, to reveal a female employee. She glanced at Bakura, uninterested, and sat down in a spinning office chair. She grabbed the pen tucked behind her ear, and jotted down some information, addressing both Bakura and the security guard.
"nature of the theft?" she spoke in monotone, experience with this type of interaction bleeding through. Bakura stared at the bottle of rubbing alcohol.
"I saw this kind filling his pockets with that," the security guard waved a hand at the pile of various medicines. The female employee raised her eyebrows as she noticed the pile.
She commented, "That's unusual," as she wrote down a vague description of the attempted stolen goods. "Usually kids are after novelty items."
Something akin to concern lightened her expression as she gave Bakura a once over. He gritted his teeth. "Why first aid supplies," she asked pen between teeth as she sucked on the plastic tube.
"Don't worry about that. We need his name and personal information," the security guard snapped. He tossed Bakura a look that clearly indicated Bakura had interrupted his precious spare time. He leered in Bakura's face. Bakura recoiled from the pungent acridity of cigarette breath. "So, you got a name?"
Bakura sneered, fully intending to the wait the man out. His mind flung into gear, processing the situation he was in and coming out of its comatose numbness.
"Look, we can do this the easy way or not," the security guard threatened, standing up to lord over Bakura.
"Please don't!" The female spoke sharply, tone switching from a desperate high pitch, back to her more efficient neutrality. "One of the regulars recognized him from Domino High School. We've already called his guardian."
Bakura's eyes widened. He wasn't aware of that. When had that happened? He sagged against the hard wooden chair he sat in, tuning out the rest of the conversation between the employees. His mind buzzed at him, snapping at his inadequacy as the situation turned ugly, and complicated, out of his control. The despair always within reach, washed over him. He stared at the plain table, eyes downcast.
Solomon Mouto and Ryou arrived within minutes that stretched like eons, a century passing in each second, making Bakura feel helpless as he watched events unfold. Solomon held a small house plant and wore a somber expression. He bowed deeply to the female employee and security guard. Bakura saw the disbelief streaked in Ryou eyes, and kept his head dipped.
He scratched his arms, igniting flares of pain. The security guard rounded on him, eyes narrowed. "What? You hiding anything else?"
He shook his head against the long winded apology Solomon Mouto made. "…deeply sorry about this. Is there anything we can do to repay you?" After a long moment, he rose from his deep bow to look at the employees in the eye.
This seemed to placate the two, because the female said, "Because he is a minor, we can write this off and let you decide how to accommodate his actions."
Solomon spoke in a gruff voice, sounding more like a parent than Bakura or Ryou had ever heard, "Yes of course. He will be disciplined, rest assured."
The meeting closed with a long session of pleasantries, and Solomon held another deep bow, before the three left to meet Yami, who sat in the front seat of Solomon's normal, compact car.
Yami noticed the change of shirt immediately as he scanned for lingering blood stains on Bakura's sleeves. He opened his mouth to call Bakura out on it, but Solomon spoke in a low voice, his hands grasping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. "I don't intend to deal with this until you turn twenty. This is not what I had in mind when I accepted the part of de facto guardian."
Bakura stared dully out the window, watching the familiar scenery whizz by, the same locations he had walked to reach the store in the first place. "We aren't so desolate, you need to resort to stealing," he continued. "Especially rubbing alcohol," Solomon emphasized "rubbing alcohol," the word twisted into a bitter epithet.
Bakura shrugged, all the while cementing Solomon as the guilty individual if he became ill with an infection again. Yami turned to stare at Bakura in the back seat next to Ryou. "Why rubbing alcohol?" he asked thoughtfully.
"It doesn't matter why," Solomon said finally, tone clipped.
As the car pulled into the apartment parking lot, Solomon rubbed his chin thoughtfully with one hand as he steered the car over to the entrance to let Ryou and Bakura out. "I think," he said as a parting, "you need to learn the value of hard work." His eyes glinted.
Bakura stepped out of the car, letting the rest of Solomon's thought sweep around him, where he locked it up beneath his tight self control, where he would release it later… "Perhaps you should come work for me at the game shop, under the table of course." Solomon added the last bit at Ryou's protests that holding a job was prohibited for students.
Bakura walked away, into the apartment entrance, emotions threatening to bubble over his mask of indifference.
…
By the time he shut himself in his room, Bakura was positively seething. His breath came in gasps, and he felt a headache bearing down from the strain of maintaining a glare for a long length of time. He grabbed the Change of Heart card from the floor, smashing the card as he held it tightly in his fist. Solomon's words cut at him, jabbing him in the back, making his blood boil and his hands curl into fists. He wrenched up his sleeves, not bothering to find a comfortable spot to sit.
He slashed into the meat of his forearm, not pausing or second guessing his decision to cut, just hacking away at his arm with the steadily dull blades. He tugged harder, pressing down until the metal bent in half under the weight of his fingers. He cut, roughly, over and over, not feeling anything, just reacting. He glared harder, the pressure in his head building and building to some eventual boil over, but it never came.
Perhaps he spotted the blood dripping down his arm to the carpeted floor, perhaps he finally registered the pain shooting up his arms, recognizing the deep ache that was bigger than the stings from his usual cutting sessions, perhaps the endorphins kicked, sending torrid of pleasure through his nerve systems. He fell onto the bed, unable to process the amount of damage.
A large cut, near the top of his forearm, sagged opened, similar to an eye, the edges peeled apart. He watched with interest as the gaping wound slowly filled with blood, red hiding yellow fat cells from view, never really competing with the smaller, less deep cuts at the bottom of his forearm, which, blood beginning to coagulate, snaked around his arm. Blood splatters stained parts of the carpet, but he didn't notice, too preoccupied in the nasty cut that didn't bleed proper.
…
Ryou stared into the dredges of his tea cup, watching the yellow-green liquid swirl around a clump of dark green tea leaves. He sat in his favorite armchair, glancing at the digital clock, the white numerals on the bottom right of the television screen, which was turned to a show featuring the newest pop band. Something innocuous, that didn't lower Ryou's inhibition and encourage thoughts of despair.
He took another small sip of the tea, slowly swishing the bitter liquid around his teeth, trying vainly to convince himself he would not run off to the toilet to regurgitate the frozen dinner he choked down—he glanced at the clock on the television again—almost an hour ago. Noticing this, his breathing came a bit easier, as he noted he was past the optimal time to purge his food.
He could resort on pure logic now. There was no point in causing himself pain; he didn't need the aching ears, the tightness around his eyes, the pressure in his aw, the weird spasms of pain in his chest, or the sores in his mouth—especially if he wasn't actually throwing up calories. He reached into his jeans pocket, thumbing his mobile phone. He had already called his old therapist from last summer for an emergency session tomorrow after school.
The reaffirmation of this helped the knot in his chest to untwist some. He sucked in a lungful of breath, finally bringing himself to stand up and take care of his mug. He inhaled deeply again: he should also check on Bakura.
He frowned, unable to process why Bakura had felt the need to steal medical supplies. Not only were there an abundance in the cabinet above the kitchen sink, but he could always ask Ryou to pick some up on a shopping excursion. Splicing the pieces together, trying to form the whole jigsaw, Ryou knew Bakura was a tomb robber, a thief king, in the past, but why would he attempt to shoplift items now that he didn't require the profit thieving earned to survive?
Ryou could hazard a guess as why Bakura was caught; he was ignorant of cameras and electronic detectors. But that didn't solve the mystery behind his choice of theft. He dumped the used tea leaves into the garbage and rinsed his cup out. Happy birthday to me, he thought to himself, before venturing down the hallway to Bakura's closed door.
He knocked on the door and leaned in, a hand pressed to the door as he overheard the flurry of activity in Bakura's room. He opened the door, revealing Bakura throwing a hooded sweater over his current shirt. His eyes flicked to take in the general chaos and disorganization in the room. He noticed the Change of Heart card in its card protector lying on the floor near Bakura's feet.
He remembered Joey's gift, making his heart swell, and Joey's assumption Bakura had stolen the card. "You still have that?" He bent down to retrieve the card, but Bakura's hand clasped over it, shoving the card into his jeans pocket.
"Yes," he said, not elaborating
Ryou brought a hand to Bakura's face, ignoring the accompanying flinch. Bakura narrowed his eyes. "Are you alright?" Ryou asked. He loved over Bakura's floor, the jumble of all long sleeve tops and long pants. He bit his lip. "Why don't you have any summer clothing?" He phrased the question to make it as non confrontational as possible.
Bakura ripped his face out of Ryou's hand. He gestured to the floor. "I never thought to buy any," he replied with the least defensive answer he could, knowing this conversation could lead to revelations he did not particularly care to reveal.
Ryou looked out the window, following Bakura's gaze. "We could buy some, you know," he said softly, trying to dig deeper into Bakura's psyche.
Bakura tensed at the half formed realization in Ryou's head. He balled his hands into fists underneath his sweater sleeves. He just suppressed the hiss of pain from the still gaping cut on his arm. "Yeah, sometime."
He caught Ryou's eyes, "Happy Birthday."
Ryou smiled, relaxing, the almost formed epiphany slipping away from him, like the unbinding of ribbon as he remembered the birthday party Bakura had not been informed of. "I'm sorry about that. That wasn't fair of them," he said in reference to the surprise party Bakura had heard about as they waited in the employee only back room.
Bakura cocked his head, not willing to admit how much that admission consoled him. "S'okay," he muttered.
…
When Ryou settled into his room to sleep before school the next day, Bakura rose, taking off the sweater and padded down the hallway to the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and wrenched off his shirt, wrinkling his nose at the dark splotches on the arms that didn't look suspicious, but he knew it was blood.
Staring at the sink, he stared at his arms, at the rows and rows of scratching, at the bloody caked on crusts of blood near his wrists and the cuts nearby that were closed, sealed with dried blood. The cut on his upper forearm stood out in its eerily split open shape. Bright red blood pooled in the cut, never trickling over as he expected. He searched the mess of his arms for the scar from the last time he cut deeper than he meant, from the first time he used the razor blades. The scar was wide, less than a millimeter, but still more prominent and slightly raised.
He mentally shrugged it off, assuring himself scars were not an issue. As long as he kept cutting, he could never reveal his arms anyway. He turned on the faucet, exhaled, and shoved his cut up arm under the lukewarm water, fighting the scream that threatened to tear itself from his throat as the water burned, boring into the cuts.
He opened the cabinet as a distraction from the sharp pain, grabbing a handful of peach colored Band-Aids. After scrubbing what blood he could away from the cuts, he placed a Band-Aid on the worst of the them, using three for the gaping cut, trying to ease the sticky material away from the wounds,
When he returned to his room after a few moments and donned another new shirt for the day, he felt the tiniest bit relieved, as if the bandaging of his body could replace the lack of acceptance Yugi and his group felt towards him.
…
A/N: My header and bottom is gone to time. Ok…
