Yami Bakura was infinitely frustrated that he had lost the duel with Ryou's girlfriend. As Ryou and May went about their business after the duel, Marik lay on his bed in his dark bedroom, upset almost to the point of tears. Yami Bakura's spirit sat on the edge of the bed, looking as defeated as he felt.

"What are we going to do now?" Marik whimpered. "She won! I still can't believe that she was able to win! How did she have the cards and the strategy to do that?!"

Bakura snarled savagely, "Shut up, Marik! I know she won, I was there! Get over it and move on!"

"B-But, now what are we going to do? Viable bodies without souls are hard to come by, and female duelists don't usually wander around at night alone, otherwise it'd be easier to get what we need. So now…"

"Shut up, fool!" Bakura growled through gritted teeth. "I know what the plan was; I came up with it! Obviously, we need to come up with something else in order to accomplish it. The girl's too good a duelist on her own for us to defeat, which means that we either need to sabotage her deck and challenge her again, or find someone else. Are you certain you don't want to possess Tea?"

"Yes, Yugi cares about her too much, so we'd have to defeat him before we'd be able to pull that off successfully," Marik answered with a sigh.

Bakura hung his head, agonizingly irritated with their situation. "Couldn't I just trap their souls inside cream-puffs or something, and then we could just go about our business?"

"Well, you could, but then Yugi would come after us for it—" Marik protested.

"Damn you Yugi!" Bakura yelled furiously. Nobody but Marik and maybe Ryou would hear him, so it really didn't matter. He glanced over at his partner, and saw the tears standing in the young Egyptian's eyes.

Letting out a sigh, Bakura joined Marik on the bed, cuddling up to him even though he was only a spirit. "We'll figure this out. No matter what it takes, I'll find a way to make it work. I promise."

Bakura rarely ever made promises. He hated the idea of them. But the words seemed to comfort Marik. "Don't cry, okay? As soon as I can get rid of her, I'll come to you." He pressed an intangible kiss to Marik's forehead before fading into the shadows to watch the interactions between Ryou and May.

At the moment, she was making soup and Ryou had his arms around her, his chest pressed to her back. The way he nuzzled against her was nauseatingly cute. It made him want to stab them all the more. Bakura waited, though, for Ryou to finally sense his presence. The Brit finally lifted his head and glanced in Bakura's direction.

"You have five minutes to get rid of her. Then it's lights out for you."

Ryou paled for a moment, but he didn't seem about to protest, which is all that mattered to Bakura.

"Ryou, is something wrong?" May asked softly, confused by his behavior.

"No, I'm fine, just tired," he answered, and Bakura grinned. Ryou was willing to hide all the dark and dirty details of the relationship with his Yami from May. Good. That worked in Bakura's favor.

"I just remembered that you have that family dinner tonight. If you don't leave now, you'll be late."

"But, I can't leave you behind like this!" she protested. "I could just call them and say that you're too sick for me to leave you alone." She began to reach for her phone, but Ryou stopped her.

"Family isn't something to be taken for granted, May," he said quietly, a small, sad smile on his face. Her eyes watered, and she nodded. She couldn't argue with him when he invoked family like that. Not now that he was orphaned and alone in the world, alone but for her and his friends.

"You're right," she conceded with a sigh, hugging him tightly. "I'm just worried about you, Ryou. I hate seeing you get hurt like this. I wish there was more I could do to help you." She was starting to cry, and Ryou could feel every passing second weighing heavily on his soul. She needed to leave, or she might be in danger.

"You've done all that you can. I just need some food and sleep and I'll be right as rain in a few days, you just wait and see." He kissed her forehead and handed her a tissue, trying to reassure her. "You'll go have dinner with your family, and then you can come and tell me all about it tomorrow."

Less than a minute left. Ryou'd better hurry if he didn't want her to see him fighting his dark side yet again.

She did leave, just in time. Ryou let out a sigh of relief, then a cry of pain as his Yami forced his way into Ryou's mind and body, sealing his soul into the Millennium ring so that he would be floating in the darkness, his senses deadened, even his sense of time.

Bakura had no sense of pain, so he couldn't feel Ryou's pangs of hunger or the ache in his chest or the stings in his arms. Without delay he stalked into Marik's room, where the tan teen still lay on the bed, moping. He perked up as soon as he saw Bakura enter, and started to sit up, but Bakura leapt onto the bed in one smooth gesture, landing close beside Marik and pushing him back down on the bed. Without a word, they embraced, tongues twining, clothes shedding, and blood pulsing. Bakura might have told May that he didn't have a heart, but if she could see him now, she'd probably call him a liar.

They were wild and unrestrained, expending their energy and passion on each other until nothing whatsoever remained. When they were finally gratified, they let themselves drift into sleep.

At four a.m., Ryou found himself waking among the tangled sheets and limbs of Marik. His first sensation was pain, and his first emotion was disgust. Trembling with weakness, he crawled out of bed, searching for his clothes on the floor and pulling them on before making his way to the kitchen to finally eat what Amaya had made for him. He had to eat slowly, his stomach protesting with every bite he ate. Even so, he knew from experience that the only way to feel better was to eat. When he was full, he stumbled his way to his own room, managing to undress once more and get into the shower. The hot water shocked his system, forcibly relaxing his tense muscles. At this point, he felt like he was going to fall asleep standing up. He was lucky to make it to his own bed before doing so. Despite his exhaustion, he still spent several minutes sobbing into his pillow before passing into the shadows once more.

Bakura had been right: he knew what had happened because he did ache from their activities last night, and that made his soul ache too.

He only got a few hours of sleep before Marik was shaking him awake, demanding that he do the laundry this instant. A very groggy Ryou set about doing the laundry, rubbing his sore eyes as he sorted the whites from the darks and the colors. While the laundry machines ran, Ryou napped beside them, comforted by the warmth they radiated as he curled up in a thick blanket on the floor.

Doing laundry really wasn't so bad.

Yami Marik stewed in his soul's prison, jealousy and hatred consuming his every thought. How dare Marik lock him away like this and forget about him. Did he forget that Melvin was his first friend, when he was alone and confused and in pain? When nothing made sense and he was imprisoned and abused by his own father? How could he forget that Melvin was the one to bring Marik's suffering to an end, the one to make Marik a powerful and successful villain?

Now he spent all of his time with Bakura, who wasn't even as powerful as Melvin. After all, he managed to defeat both Marik and Bakura in their duel during the Battle City finals. Not only was Bakura constantly insulting Marik, he was utterly insensitive towards the Egyptian's emotional needs.

"I'll give you all the hugs you need," he muttered to himself. "Once I'm free, you'll realize just how much you missed me."

But first, he needed to get rid of Bakura, both of them. Otherwise, Marik would go running back to him in order to get rid of Malik yet again. While he'd defeated Bakura in the past, he needed to do a better job of it this time. He couldn't just send the spirit of the millennium ring to the shadow realm; he need to kill him and his host so that he could never return. That would teach Marik that he could never destroy Melvin.

"You may be the darkness, Bakura, but I'm a part of Marik's own soul. You cannot destroy me without destroying him too!" His maniacal laughter echoed in the hollow void. Soon, he'd be back. He just needed to wait for the opportune moment.