Title: You Know I Despise You, Right?

Genre: romance, hurt/comfort

Rating: T for mild language

Pairings: YamiXYugi

Summary: AU. Yami is the most popular guy in school, and Yugi is the outcast. They hate each other and fight all the time! But when Yami starts to notice that Yugi's sporting bruises, he starts to get worried. However, on the walk home, it all becomes clear what is happened. Will Yami still hate Yugi enough not to help him? And did he and Yugi ever truly hate each other to begin with?

Me: This is the next chapter in our series of one-shots!

Lucy: This was a request from Risa-chan (YaoifanRisaMM). She said she wanted a High School fic, and she gave me the idea, so this one is dedicated to her!

Me: I hope you all enjoy it! I hope it comes out good!

Chapter One: You Know I Despise You, Right?

They had always hated each other.

Or rather, they never seemed to get along with one another when they were in school. They always exchanged glares whenever they were with their friends, or whenever they seemed to catch eyes with one another.

He was the most popular guy in school, and he was just the outcast.

They had hardly ever seen eye to eye, but it was probably because of the people that they each chose to hang out with. However, this little fact would be put to the test when our young outcast was being bullied.

--

"And voila! I win!" Yugi Mouto, age 16, sophomore in Domino High School, slapped down his hand of cards, revealing them to be all Aces. His opponent, one of his female friends, a brown-haired girl named Anzu, sighed and placed her hands down, revealing them to be all Jacks. Since the Jacks were less than Aces, Yugi automatically won.

"Wow, Yugi," Anzu marveled. "I'm impressed!"

Yugi flashed her a grin, one that made almost anyone want Yugi as their friend. "Wow, thank you, Anzu! It's always fun playing games like this with my friends!"

Yugi and his friends, which consisted of a group of students named Anzu Mazaki, Ryou Bakura, Katsuya Jonouchi, and Hiroto Honda, were always playing some form of game during the break period in their school. They had always enjoyed playing these games with each other, ever since they all met in Jr. High.

"It's incredible, Yugi!" Ryou marveled with his British accent. "You've managed to beat everyone at this game!"

"Well," Yugi laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his head. "I use to play it all the time with my Grandpa whenever my father went away on his business trips. Mom never much enjoyed these types of games, so she never really played them with me. Grandpa says I'm a natural pro at them!"

"Well, my friend," Honda said. "He does not lie!"

"True that!" Jonouchi chimed in.

After a moment of silence, a mocking laugh seemed to enter the classroom. Yugi saw all of his friends tense up, and he knew that his own shoulders tensed up as well. His fist unconsciously clenched at the sounds of laughter that seemed to sweep through the classroom. He and his friends were the only ones there, except...

"So, kiddies. Playing baby games, are we?"

Yugi spun around and cast a glare towards the front of the classroom. He spotted a group of boys standing in the front of the classroom, and he recognized one of them as the bully, Ushio.

"Ushio! What the Hell do you want?" he asked.

Ushio gasped in mock hurt. "Moi? Why, I just came in to see what type of game you were playing," he said. A grin crept across his lips. "But I can see that it's just some dumb baby game. Right, Sennen?"

"Yeah," a new, almost bored, voice said from the outside of the open door.

A tall young man stepped into the classroom, crimson eyes flashing towards the friends. Yugi glared at the boy, amethyst eyes taking in the form of the man who looked a bit more mature than he was. The man and he shared a similar look, but they were different. There was no way that someone could confuse them as the same person.

Yami, as the young man was called, cast a slight glare towards Yugi. Yugi could feel the coldness behind it, but he didn't flinch. He had long since stopped flinching whenever he and Yami saw each other.

"Mouto," he spat bitterly.

"Sennen," Yugi said with the same rough attitude.

He turned back to his game and picked up his cards, dealing them out to Ryou, who was now sitting at the chair across from him. He passed the cards out and lifted them up, hoping that Yami and his gang of popular jerks would leave if they saw they were being ignored. It usually worked whenever they did this.

Yugi felt a hand on his shoulder, and another hand grabbed the cards from him. He spun around and saw Yami staring down at the hand that Yugi had ended up with, a bored expression on his face.

"How dull," Yami said after a moment. He folded the cards up so that they were in the shape of a deck, and then let them fall to the ground. "Ryou would have won anyway. No point in playing."

"Hey!" Ryou snapped. He dropped beside the table and started to pick up Yugi's cards, which had fluttered all over the floor.

Yugi jumped up, whirled around, and raised his hand to slap Yami across the face. Yami caught Yugi's hand just before it managed to hit him. Yugi snarled at the taller teen.

"I hate you!!" he shouted. He didn't seem to notice the pained expression that flashed across Yami's face for an instant. It vanished almost as quickly as it came. Yugi ripped his wrist from Yami's grasp. "You fucking jerk! Just get the hell out of here, will you?! You and your fucking stoner buddies!"

"Yeah, man!" Jonouchi snapped, punching his fist into his other hand. "Unless you want me to get violent..."

"No thanks," Ushio said coolly. He stepped up behind Yami and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "We don't need a loser like you roughing up our boy now, do we?" Ushio chuckled to his group, not noticing that Yami wasn't laughing along with them. He turned the star-haired teen around and led him towards the doorway.

Yami cast one last glance over his shoulder at Yugi, narrowing his eyes.

Dammit! he thought, closing his eyes. I'm supposed to hate him! Yet, why do I feel like crap every time I hurt his feelings. Maybe I... No! No, Yami! You don't feel anything for him! Nothing!

Yami had no idea that the next day he would see Yugi would change the way he thought about him forever.

--

"Y-Yugi!! Oh God, what happened!?"

"Hm? Oh, nothing happened."

"What do you mean nothing happened, Yugi!?" Jonouchi slammed his fist down on the desk. Rage flashed through his honey colored eyes. "That's a fucking huge bruise!!"

Yugi sighed and glanced away. The whole left side of his face, mostly on his cheek, was sporting a giant black and blue bruise. He closed his purple eyes and refused to look towards any of his friends. He didn't want to tell them what had happened, because he was almost certain that they would do something to stop whoever was doing it, and that would probably get them hurt.

Yugi winced slightly when he felt fingers brushing against his bruise. He glanced over and saw Ryou brushing the tips of his fingers gently over the bruise. It was then that Yugi felt something on the boy's hands.

"Ryou?" he asked.

Ryou smiled sadly. "I might not have the same healing powers as I have when we play Monster World, but I what I do have are some pretty powerful healing ointments that really work for bruises," he admitted.

Yugi smiled. "Thank you, Ryou."

The star-haired youth refused to tell anyone what had happened to him. He merely insisted that it was nothing to be concerned about and that no one should worry about it.

Little did Yugi know that Yami was secretly worried.

He spotted the bruise on Yugi's face and almost had to tape himself to his desk to keep from rushing over and demanding to know what had happened. He just kept noticing that Yugi wasn't telling anyone what had happened, nor was he even remotely interested in explaining the situation.

--

Later that evening, Yami was walking towards his house.

School had ended hours ago, and students usually went home, but Yami knew that he was going to be late, as usual. He always had been ever since he joined Ushio's gang.

Whenever he was with Ushio's gang, they would always smoke pot and marajuana around him.

Yami never smoked it, of course, but he'd come home smelling of pot, and his mother would instantly assume that Yami was doing drugs as well. He wonder if that was why he hadn't quit the gang, because it was an escape from his mother's constant rantings and arguments that she got in with him almost every day.

'God, I hate my life,' Yami spat onto the ground as he passed an alley.

He stopped walking when he heard a familiar voice, a grunt in pain, and a thud against the wall of the alley. Yami turned his eyes in the direction of the noise.

His heart nearly stopped.

Yugi was sitting against the wall, and he had a huge bruise on the side of his face. He was curled up slightly, as if trying to protect himself, and Ushio was towering above him, sadistic pleasure written across his face.

"C'mon," Ushio swung his leg and kicked Yugi hard in the stomach. "Fight back!" Yugi grunted and weakly glared up at the boy.

"B-bite me!" he snapped angrily.

Yami winced at the boy's pained expression. It almost broke his heart, for some strange reason. Something inside him told him to go and help the boy he secretly was crushing on.

"You're asking for it!" Ushio rose his foot to stomp down on Yugi's hand, or to do something worse.

Yami didn't know what got into him, but the first thing he did was run. The next thing he knew, he had crashed into something hard, and had thrown Ushio to the ground. Ushio grunted in surprise first, then pain, as he crumpled into a pile on the ground.

Ushio's gang fell silent, mouths agape in awe.

Yugi glanced up with a weak expression of confusion and shock. Yami panted heavily and brushed his blond bangs out of his face. Ushio weighed a ton, and it was hard to throw him to the ground. The star-haired High school student stood protectively in front of Yugi as Ushio pushed himself shakingly to his feet.

"What are you doing, Sennen?" Ushio roared.

"To be honest, I can't tell you," Yami murmured, standing perfectly straight. "Something inside me is just really sick and tired of letting you call all the shots, Ushio."

Ushio raised a surprised eyebrow. "You wanna beat him?"

"No," Yami slowly shook his head. "However, I would like to take the chance to tell you something, Ushio."

Ushio narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Yami advanced on him and punched him in the face. Ushio grunted and tried to punch Yami back, but the thin star-haired boy was much faster than he was, and he managed to dodge all of Ushio's moves. This fight went on for a while, with Yugi just sitting in the corner, watching it with a dull, pained expression.

About five minutes later, Yami kicked Ushio's beaten body towards the rest of the gang.

Ushio spat out a tooth and glanced over at Yami, his body trembling. Yami glared down at him and placed his foot on the boy's shoulder, rolling him onto his back.

"I'm not a part of your gang anymore," Yami told them. "Remember that."

Ushio coughed up a bit of blood along with his tooth. He glanced up at Yami and whimpered before scrambling away to his group. The group helped him up and ran away.

To be truthful, it hadn't surprised them that Yami won.

When Yami had first arrived at Domino High, he had such a bad background life, what with being bullied himself, that he gained an aggressive personality.

He would always kick people who made him angry or upset. This had earned him the title of a "kicker" when he was young. He had outgrown this aggressive phase, though he joined the wrong crowd because of it.

Yami turned and walked up to Yugi and knelt down before him.

He reached out and brushed away Yugi's pale blond bangs. He winced when he saw the bruises on the boy's flawless white skin. Yami frowned and touched Yugi's shoulder.

"Yugi?" he whispered, using Yugi's name for the first time ever. "Are you oka-"

"Why did you help me?" Yugi cut in.

Yami paused at the question. Why had he helped Yugi? Was it because he pitied him? Was it because he regretted what he had done? Yami looked down into Yugi's lovely amethyst eyes.

No.

It wasn't because he pitied him.

It was because he loved him.

"Because I care about you, Yugi," Yami answered softly. He brushed the bangs out of Yugi's face and smiled at him. "Me acting out at you like that, I guess, was just my way of hiding it."

Yugi said nothing, but Yami could tell by the look in his eyes that he believed him.

Yami smiled and helped Yugi to his feet. He dusted the boy off, since the ground had been filthy, and helped him limp out of the alley that he had been in with Ushio.

Yami glanced down and made sure that Yugi was okay.

Yugi seemed, for the most part, to be pretty stable. His cheek with the horrid bruise, that Yami imagined Ushio had caused, was starting to heal, and for the most part, he wasn't that badly wounded from his ordeal.

"Hey," Yugi murmured.

Yami glanced down with a confused look. "Yeah, Yugi?"

Yugi glanced over at the taller star-haired boy and flashed him his run-o'-the-mill smile. His smile was one that sent chills of happiness and pleasure up and down Yami's spine.

"I despise you, you know that, right?" Yugi asked with a joking smile.

Yami stared at Yugi in silence and then smiled back, knowing that Yugi was just kidding. He knew that he deserved it. Yami reached down and ruffled Yugi's spiked black and purple and blond hair.

"I know you do," he said.

--

From that day on, Yami and Yugi were the closest that any couple could ever be. They would hug in public, laugh, even make-out, and not care what other people thought.

Yami eventually joined Yugi and his friends in playing cards games, and Yami, surprisingly, was just as good as Yugi was. Everyone became fast friends with the elder star-haired boy, and though Ushio cast him occasional glares, he left Yami, Yugi, and their friends alone. Yami and Yugi would laugh whenever Ushio glared and then vanished.

Yami looked down at Yugi one day and smiled at him. "Hey, Yugi?"

"Yes?" Yugi asked, turning to his boyfriend.

Yami smiled and ruffled his hands through the boy's hair. He leaned down and kissed him on the lips, and then drew back and stared into Yugi's bright amethyst eyes.

"I know I despise you, right?"

Yugi giggled and wrapped his thin arms around Yami's waist, and drew him as close as possible. "I know you do," he said with a smirk. "But I despise you more."

----

Me: Aw, Yami, even in an AU, you're still as sweet as always!

Lucy: Yeah! He saved Yugi, and they don't hate each other any more, even though they never really hated each other to begin with. They have always been secretly crushing on each other!

Me: So, please review and we shall add a new one-shot as soon as we are able! We take requests, remember that, guys!