AN: Enter the rest of the Yu-Gi-Oh! crew (almost)...also, there is no way in HELL I can pull off writing Joey's Brooklyn accent, so I didn't xD

Borderline

"What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions."

-Walter Pater

03 ; Hello & Hoping For Goodbye

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!, and this storyline is absolutely, positively fictional. I mean no offense to anyone.

"Okay, stay close to me; it's easy to get lost in here," Duke instructs as the two hike up what seems to Ryou like the fiftieth flight of steps.

Finally, they reach a beat-up, paint chipped blue door that reads "Ward 227.

"This, Mr. Bakura, is where you'll be living, and where I work," Duke announces, and then throws open the door. "There aren't many guys here. It's a special ward for, our, um, more `needy' cases. You're the sixth patient to arrive."

Ryou, ignoring the "needy cases" comment from Duke, focuses on the new sights before him. He is at first greeted with a few young men in white outfits like Duke's talking outside of a room that appears to be filled with medicine and similar things.

Duke says,

"That's the nurse's station. Self-explanatory."

The two step in farther, and Ryou looks around. To his left is a long white corridor with what he thinks are doorways lining the walls, and to his right is an even longer hallway with several room openings and at the very end, what appears to be a TV room.

All of a sudden, Ryou hears anxious footsteps and next thing he knows, a man is face-to-face to him and Duke.

The new arrival is tall, lanky, and has shaggy blonde hair and a Brooklyn accent.

"Duke! Where did you go? Why'd you leave me? Are you mad at me or something? If you are, man, I mean, what did I do? I don't mean to—"

Now, if Ryou were the one being bombarded with questions like Duke was, he would have yelled "Shut up!" by now, but Duke simply smiles shakily and takes a deep breath in.

"No, Joey. I didn't leave you."

Joey looks relieved. "Oh, good. Now, Duke, do you like this t-shirt?" He points to his red shirt. "I'm not sure if I like it and I mean, I wanna know what you think `cause—"

Once again, Joey is interrupted, but not by Duke this time.

"Devlin! Thank GOD you're back! That friggin' Yugi psycho is driving me outta my mind! He's going off about his godforsaken CDs again! I touched one of them and he practically tackled me!"

Ryou looks to the right to see an approaching figure.

The man is taller than himself and Joey, and is really rather dark and handsome. His deep brown hair is almost falling over his startling blue eyes. He's pale, and is wearing a dark purple shirt that Ryou likes right away.

Duke sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

"Seto, why did you touch Yugi's CDs? You know he doesn't like that!" he says, and Seto crosses his arms and rolls his eyes.

"I figured he wouldn't mind if I just borrowed one!"

Ryou kind of chuckles and all eyes fall to him. The man now revealed to be Seto narrows his gaze.

"Who's this jerk?" he sneers, and Ryou feels a bit of anger bubble inside of him.

Duke takes a deep breath in.

"This, guys, is Ryou Bakura. He's that newcomer we told you about a few days ago. Ryou, this is Joey Wheeler and Seto Kaiba."

Joey smiles shyly. Seto just stares at Ryou with that same death-cold look.

"So do you like my shirt?" Joey suddenly asks, and Seto throws his arms up in the air, groaning.

"And now he's going off about that godforsaken shirt of his! My God, you've asked every friggin' person in the ward if they like it! They all said that it looks great on you; even I said that, so it does, okay? Get over it and shut up," Seto cries, and Joey's mouth drops open in shock.

Duke's face twists in anger, and Ryou is surprised. Duke didn't strike him as one to get angry that easily.

"Hey, Kaiba, you shut up! I don't see Joey running around yelling when you wake up every night screaming and crying!"

Seto's face twists in shame and shock as soon as the words come out of Duke's lips, but Duke's face doesn't show any regret for saying what he did. Seto's lip quivers with fury. Then, with one last cold glare at Ryou, he storms off without another word.

There's an awkward silence, and Ryou finally says,

"Freak."

Joey gulps and then scampers off with a low, "Nice to meet you too, Ryou."

Duke turns to the left and says,

"This is the dorm-hallway. You'll be sleeping, using the bathroom, and other stuff down here."

Ryou looks for any sign of people, but no doors open and Duke doesn't offer to open any so Ryou resists the urge to say something and stays quiet.

"You'll be staying in room 6. You'll have a roommate—"

"You've got to be kidding me," Ryou interrupts, his mouth falling open a little. Once again, he doesn't want to share. The thought of sharing his bedroom with some loony is more than a little distressing to him.

Duke looks at him strangely, as if it's a surprise to him that Ryou's so dismayed about something like that.

"Yeah, but don't worry, he's a nice guy. One of the most normal patients here," Duke says, and Ryou feels a little relieved at that.

But only a little.

Finally, they arrive at a pale blue door that reads in black "6", and Duke opens the door.

Ryou peers in over Duke's shoulder and is surprised at what he sees.

A young boy about his age or maybe even younger sits on the bed to the left shifting through what looks like music CDs. He has black hair edged with red-purple, and blonde bangs. His shortness (he hardly reaches Ryou's shoulders) adds to his seemingly innocent demeanor. He looks like an angel. One of those cherub things, Ryou thinks.

"Ryou, this is your new roommate, Yugi Motou."

Yugi looks up from his CD sorting, and Ryou can't help but smile as the other boy's face breaks into a grin. Yugi reaches out a hand in greeting, and Ryou steps forward more, taking his palm and shaking it.

"Oh hey! Great to meet you!" Yugi greets jovially, and Ryou nods in acknowledgment. "I've been waiting for you to arrive," Yugi says, and Ryou smiles awkwardly.

The thought that these guys knew about him before he knew about them is truthfully a little creepy.

Duke has walked over to the neatly made bed on the right and placed Ryou's belongings down. He now turns to face the two boys, and smiles.

"Well, I'll give you two a little time to chat later. Right now, I have to finish Ryou's tour," he announces, and then questioningly points to Yugi's CDs sprawled out on the bedspread. "Yugi, didn't you arrange those all yesterday?"

Yugi looks insulted suddenly, and shoots a strange side-glance at Ryou. Then, he replies,

"Yeah, but one of them got crooked thanks to Seto," he spits the name with disgust and then continues, "So I had to re-do them, this time in alphabetical order instead of by the date they were released."

Ryou stares at the boy in utter disbelief. That was something Ryou never expected to hear in his life.

"That's just messed up," he says finally, and shakes his head. "Who does that?"

Duke shoots Ryou a glare with his comment, and Yugi looks shocked instead of insulted, but then it fades away to what looks like confusion. Yugi glances at Duke quickly and Duke shrugs, understanding some unspoken question that Ryou didn't quite catch.

"Anyway, c'mon Ryou. We should get going," Duke says, and motions for Ryou to follow him out of the room. With a quick wave to Yugi, he does.

"So…are you gay?"

Ryou chokes on his spit for a split second and stares at Seto, who's all of a sudden popped up next to him on the couch as they watch the news on the small TV.

The TV room was the room everyone hung out in. The living room, with its stiff chairs and Persian rugs, was completely "un-cool" and "everybody hates it", according to Duke earlier that day. So the place to hang out in was the TV room, right next to the nurses' station, with the table for cards and pool and the huge stack of non-violent, un-disturbing DVDs. Ryou decided to stay there before he got his "nightly medication" as Duke told him earlier.

The layout of the ward was simple. The left hallway was the huge bathroom, with stalls without locks and 6 bathtubs and one or two showers, the 6 dorm rooms, and then the farthest, loneliest room in the ward: the seclusion room. Duke said you only went there if you were extremely disobedient (or "acted out" as the nurses and guards put it), had a meltdown (that word scared Ryou; he wasn't sure if he could get used to the "meltdowns" that Duke mentioned happening) or if you just wanted to scream as loud as you possibly could without people being annoyed (Ryou liked that idea).

Then, to the right was the art room (It was filled with easels and paints and sketchbooks and pencils and most of all it had guitars and an out-of-tune piano that Ryou would probably play sooner or later) where patients could "release their emotions with creativity." There was the living room, as mentioned before, three phone booths to make calls (only if a number was on your "allowed-to-call list" and a nurse let you through), the nurses' station, and then finally the TV room.

Ryou was relieved that the layout was simple; he wasn't looking forward to having to memorize a confusing bunch of rooms and numbers.

"Excuse me?" Ryou asks, scrunching up his nose in shock.

Seto snorts.

"I said, are you gay? Like, you know, batting for the other team or whatever they call it?"

Ryou stares wide-eyed at the dark-haired man in front of him.

Seto waits a moment more, then rolls his eyes exaggeratedly and groans. "Oh come on. Do you like girls or boys?" he asks again, and Ryou smirks.

"Why? Are you gay or something?"

Seto's face breaks into a crooked little smile, and his eyes twinkle mischievously.

"Maybe," he responds. "Maybe." Then he turns back to the nightly news that he's really not watching.

"Ryou Bakura?"

Ryou pushes to the front of the line, squeezing through Joey and Seto. The man standing at the nurses' station is holding out a plastic cup filled with two pink pills. Ryou gets there and stares at them.

"What are they?"

"Sleeping pills."

Ryou looks at his watch. "It's only like 9:30, I don't think I'm gonna—"

"God, just take the things!" Someone groans behind him, and Ryou looks and sees Tristan Taylor, another patient at the ward for substance abuse, leaning against the wall, arms crossed and dark circles under his eyes. Ryou glares, but bites his tongue and just turns around and tosses the nasty pills to the back of his throat.

The man offers him water, but Ryou gathers up as much saliva as he can and gulps down the pills without it. Then, smirking, he turns around and walks off towards his room.

"Checks."

The unfamiliar voice stirs Ryou from his sleep, and he wakes up. It's dark and blue in the room, and the window is shining with moonlight. Shadows dance menacingly across the wall, and he gulps, feeling scared only for a moment. His first night sleeping was only going as smoothly as it was because he was drugged up on the pills.

But Ryou knows now that he won't get to sleep for another hour or two because the pills have probably worn off and his mind will be too busy churning over the events of his day to rest for a while, so he turns and faces where the voice came from.

A man is standing in the doorway with a clipboard and flashlight, and quickly he shines the light on both Ryou and Yugi's sleeping form. Then he exits without a word.

Ryou sits there dumbfounded for a second, and then whispers into the quiet of the bedroom,

"Yugi?"

No response.

"Yugi," he urges again, and this time the other boy stirs and turns around to face Ryou with a sluggish,

"Huh?"

Ryou swallows. "What was that?" he asks.

Yugi smiles imperceptibly. "Those were checks. They do that to make sure none of us have run away or hung ourselves or whatever. You get used to it after a while," he explains, and rubs his amethyst eyes.

Ryou nods, trying to forget the comment about the guards making sure they haven't "hung themselves".

There's quiet, and Ryou and Yugi just stare at each other.

"Why is Seto so mean?" Ryou asks suddenly.

Yugi frowns.

"Seto has something called `nightmare disorder'. It's where something's haunting the mind or whatever and they have nightmares usually every night. Really freaky ones, and they feel like it's real," he explains, and Ryou chuckles.

"Like Freddy Kruger kind of thing?"

Yugi doesn't smile back.

"Yeah. Seto wakes up almost every night screeching and crying about how he was `gonna die' and `it's all over'. Sometimes he wakes up yelling about being `covered in blood'. It's really sick stuff."

Ryou doesn't think it's funny anymore.

"He barely gets more than four hours of sleep every night. It's rough. They usually douse him with sleeping pills, like tonight, but they're trying to take him off so he's ticked about that, I guess. Add that with the tiredness and the fact he's just a tough guy and you get Seto's nasty attitude," Yugi finishes.

Ryou nods.

"What about that blonde guy? Joey? The guy's obsessed with his clothes and doesn't talk to anyone."

"He has something called `avoidant personality disorder'. It's where the people are really socially withdrawn and sensitive to criticism but really want acceptance. That's why he's always asking everyone what they think about him."

Ryou prods on.

"Tristan?"

"Just plain ol' alcoholic and pot-head.'

"…You?"

Yugi swallows.

"I've got OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder really, really bad."

Ryou remembers the incident with the CDs and chews his bottom lip.

"So…anybody else in this place I should be forewarned about?" Ryou asks, smirking.

Yugi's quiet.

"Yugi?"

"Goodnight, Ryou."

I've got about five more chapters to update tonight. AWWWW YEAHHH.

Reviews...purrlease? =)