There was no easy distinction between when Ryou was awake and when he wasn't. Consciousness crept in so slowly that, when he became aware that his muffled senses were sending information to his weary brain, he realised that they had been doing to for some time now.
He couldn't hope to make sense of them, though; at least not yet. It was like they were coming to him through a blocked filter; the tiny pieces of information he received were small and seemingly meaningless.
Ryou had never felt so tired in his life. He could have been sleeping in the middle of a mob and he wouldn't have been able to lift his head. He let out a quiet moan, suddenly noticing the horrible pounding in his head.
"My been twisted as feels head it's though off..." he groaned, trying to open his eyes.
Out of the stream of incomprehensible words, he recognised his own name. "Ryou!" followed be something his tired brain couldn't be bothered to make sense of.
Ryou twitched his fingers, desperate to move but his body refusing to obey him.
He tried to recall what had happened. His ears had hurt...he had gone home...there had been a dart...and Yami. Yami! Yami had come back! Was he here now?
Ryou groaned, at last forcing his eyes open. They were met with impossibly bright light, and he squished them shut again.
"Get the lights, Yugi."
Yugi...Yugi was here too. Suddenly, Ryou wished he hadn't woken. How could he ever look this 'Yugi' in the eye? He had done nothing wrong. It wasn't his fault that Ryou had fallen for his lover.
The redness on the front of Ryou's eyelids suddenly dissappeared and Ryou was finally able to open his eyes and keep them that way.
Ryou looked around the dark room, fear creeping in. What had happened while he was asleep?
The pounding refused to go away. Ryou groaned. He had never known headaches until this one. And he hadn't even been drinking!
He tried to repeat his first sentence. "My head feels as though it's been twisted off," he croaked.
He felt a familiar arm move itself across his back and help him sit up. Ryou looked around, trying to see Yami's face in the darkness. "Don't worry, Ryou; you're safe now."
In that moment, Yami was right. Ryou was safe, and he was with Yami. He almost sighed, letting the moment last as long as it could.
Ryou's eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and his senses were beginning to sharpen. He could feel that he was in a bed somewhere, but the bed was not his own. He grasped around in the dark, trying to find something to hold himself up with...so he wouldn't have to rely on Yami. "I...think you can turn the lights on now. I'm sorry."
There was a flick, followed by more invasive brightness. Ryou had to squint and gradually open his eyes again.
Yami was crouched beside Ryou's bed. Ryou couldn't bring himself to look at him. "Uh..."
Suddenly, Yami let go of him, and Ryou flopped lifelessly back onto the bed. "Ryou, what the hell were you thinking?" Yami demanded. "Your door wasn't even locked when you walked in, was it?"
Ryou stared at him blankly, taking several seconds for his words to sink in. What was Yami talking about? Before Ryou had fainted...come to think about it...his door hadn't been locked. He had just walked right in. "Um...no?"
"You could have been killed! You walked right into an obvious trap!"
Ryou braved a glance at him, and looked away quickly. "I'm sorry! I wasn't paying attention!"
"To hell you weren't!" Yami was practically fuming. Ryou flinched. He had only just woken up and Yami was already mad at him. He wanted to cry.
"I..." He gulped. "I was..." I was what? I was upset? I couldn't hear? I was tired? What could he possibly say to make Yami stop being angry when he didn't even understand what was going on to begin with?
Eventually, he just burst into tears. "I'm sorry, Yami."
Yami hesitated. He let out a frustrated sigh. "I'm sorry, too, Ryou; I shouldn't have yelled at you. Just...be more careful." He stood up.
Ryou sat up in the bed on his own, curling himself into a tiny ball. "Where am I?"
He looked around the room, trying to get his bearings. It appeared to be some kind of motel room.
Suddenly he noticed a figure lingering by the door, where the light switch must have been. Ryou stared at his feet timorously, but soon his curiosity got the better of him and he looked up again.
Yugi wasn't quite as Ryou had imagined him; he was incredibly tiny, at least a head shorted than Ryou. His hair was styled almost identically to Yami's; he had the same black and purple spikes, the same blonde bangs, with the absence of Yami's blonde streaks.
Yugi was already running back to Yami's side. Ryou almost looked away when his hand slid into Yami's in such a natural motion.
"Um..." Ryou cleared his throat. "I'm...I'm really sorry; I don't know what's going on..."
Yami sighed. "You're right...I'll explain everything." He took a deep breath. "Yugi, would you mind packing the rest of the stuff?"
Yugi nodded hastily and made to go. Yami briefly kissed him on the forehead, and Ryou felt his heart flutter almost painfully. Yugi ran towards the door and dissappeared.
For a moment, Yami didn't speak. He turned around, unsure where to begin.
Ryou looked at his back. He didn't appear any different to how he had been when Ryou had last seen him, but his shoulders were tensed and he was noticeably messier; the usually straight spikes of his hair were now frayed and tattered. Ryou bit his lip, wondering if he had slept at all since he left to look for Yugi.
Ryou could only wait in apprehension. He had spent so much time wondering about the truth behind Yami. And now, he was about to hear it from Yami's own mouth. Hesitantly, he peered through his fringe of white hair at Yami.
Suddenly, Yami turned again to face Ryou, and Ryou's eyes instantly fell to his feet again. "You came back," he whispered. "Why?"
Yami looked away for a second. "I found out how Yugi got the apartment's number. Just give me a moment and I'll get to it." He looked around as though he was trying to find somewhere to sit. Eventually, he just started speaking.
"Listen, Ryou...I'm sorry I got you involved in this." He stopped talking for a second and then just sighed. "To put it simply, I used to be part of this street gang."
Ryou blinked. Of everything he might have expected, this was not it.
"Causing trouble; graffiti, shoplifting, stuff like that." He sighed again. "It's not something I'm proud of...at least, not anymore." He looked away from Ryou. "For a while, everything seemed fine – at least, from a gang's perspective. But then...I met Yugi."
Ryou's heart clenched.
"Yugi was working part-time in a general store to pay for his Uni tuition. I met him on my own; for once I didn't have the gang to flank me."
He smiled at the memory. "I remember seeing a twenty dollar note in his pocket. I was going to steal it. But then, he accidentally dropped the box he was carrying and, out of pure instinct, I managed to catch it before it fell on his toe."
Ryou shifted uncomfortably. Wasn't this what he wanted – for Yami to tell him about his past? He squeezed his eyes shut. He had absolutely no right to be upset at hearing how Yami had met Yugi.
Yami kept talking. "Yugi was gushingly grateful to me; he wouldn't leave me alone after that." He laughed. "I thought it was a little frustrating at first; he was following me around the store like a puppy, as if he was worried I didn't think he appreciated what I had done for him. He...had no idea who I was."
Just like me.
"I was about to just push him away and tell him to, and I quote my thoughts at the time, butt out." Yami smiled again. "But then, he said something that I'll never forget...he told me that he was glad I had been there."
Yami looked at Ryou again. "Nobody, in my entire life, had ever said that to me...ever. In fact, I don't think anybody had ever said anything nice to me until Yugi."
He leaned against the wall. "I've never been one to believe in love at first sight, but Yugi and I...we just clicked. At that moment, I never wanted to set foot on the outdoor pavement ever again. I just wanted to stay there in that dinky little general store with Yugi for the rest of my life."
Ryou caught himself before he burst into tears. He couldn't cry; not in front of Yami, not while he was saying these words...
"I didn't know where I was going from there, but it definitely wasn't back to any gang." He set his jaw. "I never, ever, went back."
He laughed dryly. "Leaving gangs isn't as easy as it sounds, though; the gang leader takes it as a personal insult to his pride if you just up and quit...especially for love." He gave a very sad sigh. "Yugi let me stay with him...we had five months together."
Yami turned away again. "In those five months, the gang was at me and at me. Come back or die...and I turned them down every time." A fire of undisguised heat burned inside Yami's crimson eyes. "I had found Yugi and I was staying with him forever."
Ryou hugged his legs tighter to himself. He needed his knees close by to bury his face in if he couldn't hold back his tears any longer.
"I was always coming back with bruises and scars; they don't take no for an answer lightly...they had a habit of leaving me with something to think about. Make me consider their offer." He clenched his fist. "Yugi was horrified, of course; I never told him, not once...I didn't want him to worry about me or think we needed to leave the area. No matter how he begged..." Yami closed his eyes. "I never cracked, even to him. It was my burden to bear. But then..."
Yami's eyes shot open again and he flexed his fists. Ryou would have sworn his teeth were grinding with hatred.
"Yugi got involved. He was out alone when they attacked him. That's how he..."
"...Broke his rib," Ryou finished quietly.
Yami nodded. "That's right. He stumbled through that door and he- oh, god...my blood still boils thinking about it." His fists were literally shaking. Biting his lip, Ryou tentatively reached out a hand and touched Yami's gently. Yami closed his eyes and, after a second, pulled it away. His eyes shot open, still ablaze with hatred.
"Yugi didn't realise that they attacked him to get to me; he didn't make any mention as to what any of the people who attacked him looked like...but he didn't need to. I knew. So I patched him up and left him with his family to take care of him. I told him that I was going out to get some more bandages. Half an hour after I left him, I was down at the backstreets of town...looking for them."
He smiled wildly. "There was a face off. I won't get into details, but...they...kicked the ever loving crap out of me, to say the least. God knows why they didn't just kill me. Maybe they liked toying with me; I don't know and quite frankly, I don't care. They left me another warning and said that if I didn't come back, Yugi would get hurt again."
He sighed. "I can't imagine what Yugi must have thought when I came home the way I did...I was in a worse shape than he was. There was nothing else I could do...I told him everything. And he was just as understanding as he always was; he didn't hate me for my past at all. He just..."
Ryou could have sworn that Yami looked like he wanted to cry.
He shook his head. "The gang left us alone after that...for a while. We managed to heal ourselves. And then, a month later, Yugi dissappeared."
"They kidnapped him?" Ryou whispered.
"I knew it was them, but I didn't know what it was at the time. I thought they had..." He trailed off. "I was just getting ready to go down with a gun and murder them all when...I got a phone call."
"It was Yugi?" Ryou already knew the answer. He already knew what happened from here.
"It was; Yugi had his mobile phone and as soon as their backs were turned, he called me. I knew from there that he was alive and that they had taken him somewhere...their ultimate revenge."
Yami gave another sigh. "It was all pretty straightforward after that; Yugi called me whenever he could to tell me where he was, but by the time I got there, they had already moved. Over time, they started being more careful; Yugi's calls became less frequent. Eventually they found his phone and threw it away. Then he had to rely on being able to secretly borrow somebody else's when they left it somewhere within reach, and that very rarely occurred."
"You got a call from him telling you he was in my area, and you moved there on the same day," Ryou said matter-of-factly.
Yami hung his head low. "I had no idea where they were keeping him and all Yugi knew was the neighbourhood; they were more careful about how much he knew than they had once been. I needed somewhere more permanent."
"So you found me."
Yami didn't look at Ryou. "I was always going to leave as soon as I found Yugi."
"Right." Ryou had no idea how the words he choked out seemed so level.
"Yugi found out that they had figured out how to track my location using his calls to my mobile. He held back from finding a way to call me. That's why he called our apartment."
It wasn't right; how could Ryou still find it in himself to blush at a time like this?
"I knew he didn't have much time; I didn't bother asking him how he knew the number. I just found out where he was. That was two days ago."
Ryou nodded. He already knew.
"To put it simply, I caught up to them and got Yugi out of there." He closed his eyes, suddenly looking content. "And then, everything was okay. We could just move far, far away and get on with our lives."
He suddenly looked sharply at Ryou. "Then I remembered, and asked Yugi how he knew your number."
Ryou stiffened.
"They had been watching me ever since I arrived." He laughed. "I was an idiot to think for a second that they didn't know where I was. They'd been keeping tabs on the apartment; of course they knew its phone number. It was easy for Yugi to find it out too.
"I had thought...that if I just left, they wouldn't find you. But what Yugi said made me realise that they already had. And they knew that...I cared about you." He looked away for a second. "I was hightailing it back before Yugi had finished speaking. I got there just in time, too."
"The dart..."
Yami nodded. "You walked into your apartment and they were waiting for you. A big street gang out for revenge against me, the deserter. I ran in about five seconds behind you."
"You saved me," Ryou breathed.
"They shot you with a tranquiliser, but..." He gave a half smile. "Let's just say I got you out of there unscathed."
"Thank you." Ryou had no idea what else he could say.
"And now you, me and Yugi are in a roadside motel five hours away from where they shot you. We need to lie low for a little while. It's about six o'clock in the morning."
"Wow."
"I think that's everything."
"Everything?"
"No. There's more," he said suddenly.
Ryou blinked. "What?"
Suddenly, Yami turned away again. "It doesn't matter."
Phew! Thanks for waiting~! Please review :D :D :D I love you so much *glomphuggles* I'm sorry this chapter was such a let-down after the last one :( Please don't hate me! I promise the next one will be better!