AN: Yeah, Yugi and Yami are related in this fic xD

A little bit of Darkshipping (YamixBakura) in this chapter.

These next few chapters are flashbacks from Bakura's POV.

Kind of Bakura's POV.

You'll see.

Borderline

"It is better to be hated for what you are then to be loved for what you're not."

-Andre Gide

05 ; A Charming Sociopath

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

Bakura hears yelling downstairs.

He's sick of it, really.

For the past week, every fucking' night, all there seems to be is yelling. Yelling and glass breaking and crying.

And Bakura can't figure out why his dad blames it all on him.

He hears his father shouting at his mother about how much of a worthless, difficult burden he is.

How much he'd be better off without Bakura. How much he wishes he'd never agreed to keep him and just dropped his two-year-old son into an adoption agency and saved a lot of worries and money. How much he wishes he could just sometimes "kill the kid" to get him to stop his "ridiculous behavior because nothing else seems to be working" ("Nothing else" in his father's eyes is apparently beatings and countless Catholic church services, Bakura notes).

Bakura knows his father doesn't really mean it. Bakura knows his dad is just drunk out of his mind and won't remember a word in the morning. Bakura knows that this is the main reason for most of his mother's yelling, too.

His mom replies to his father's earsplitting statements with shouts of her own: "You don't know what you're talking about; you're so trashed!" she yells. "Maybe his behavior is a way to break free of the way you're treating him!" she screams. "Maybe, just maybe, he actually loves you and cares about you, and pours out all your godforsaken alcohol `cause he doesn't want you to keel over one day from liver, brain, and kidney failure!" she suggests.

Bakura chuckles when she screams that last one.

But, in truth, he thinks that is partly the reason why he dumps out the bottles and bottles of his dad's vodka and wine into the cool, metal sink, watching the cursed liquid flow in a beautiful, sick circle down the drain.

The other part of the reason why he does it is that he just loves blowing his dad's top. He loves when his dad's eyes narrow and his dad runs forward with that look and he loves it when his dad slams him against the wall and his pale face is covered in deep violet, sky blue, and sea green colored bruises the next morning so badly that he has to put three layers of foundation on just so his overly annoying Catholic school teachers don't ask him that ever-frustrating,

"Are you all right, Bakura?"

To which Bakura smiles cheekily and jovially responds,

"Why of course, Father Insert-Overly-Used-Fancy-Last-Name-Here. But thank you for your concern."

Bakura once asked Yugi when they were fifteen getting water at the water fountain at the park if Yugi thought that was weird. If he thought the fact Bakura liked his dad's abuse and laughed with amusement when he poked his bruises or cleaned his cuts with alcohol was weird. If he thought it was weird Bakura got a thrill-ride out of it and liked to provoke his dad to see how far he would go "next time".

Yugi just stared at him, and Bakura changed the subject and never asked again.

Bakura plops painfully down on the hard, carpeted floor of his would-be-pitch black bedroom three years after he asked Yugi that question and flops out his limbs. He stares at the ceiling with that thoughtful (or, "creepy" according to Yugi and a handful of his arrogant classmates) blank stare of his he apparently uses too much. He starts listening to what's going on downstairs, again.

Now, surprisingly, it's not just his mom and dad arguing about money or why his mom left in the first place (the fact she was having an affair with some other guy apparently wasn't a good enough reason for his father, Bakura bitterly thinks) or when his mom's going to find time to visit in her oh-so-busy schedule to visit more or why Bakura's always covered in cuts or bruises or how they're going to deal with Bakura's reckless behavior and if they're going to put him in therapy.

There's another voice.

It's a boy's voice.

A teenage boy's voice.

It's his younger half-brother (younger by a year, which makes Bakura feel a little lousy that his mom oh-so easily got over ditching her past family and went on to have another son so quickly), Kyle.

Kyle looks like Bakura.

Kind of.

He has Bakura's white hair (it's just not as soft as Bakura's), Bakura's brown eyes (but they're an unexciting brown; not big and red and green and orange and other amazing hues thrown into one like Bakura's), and his similar facial features ("angelic", as people call them, which Bakura thinks is really funny). But the one thing Kyle doesn't have in common with his half-brother is Bakura's skinny, somehow attractive body type. His dad was a muscle builder or something, and Kyle is almost six foot and works out.

Bakura thinks Kyle's better looking.

But being better looking than Bakura, in Bakura's opinion, isn't hard to do.

Anyway, regardless of similar looks, the two don't really get along. They didn't really get along from the start, actually.

Bakura remembers.

"Bakura, this is your brother, Kyle."

Bakura stares at Kyle.

He doesn't like the shirt he's wearing. It's a really bright yellow polo. It hurts his eyes.

Bakura glances at his father out of the corner of his eye. He's got his hands clenched on the counter edge so hard that they're white, and he's avoiding looking at his son, Kyle, and his ex-wife. Then, slowly his features turn and he, for a split second, catches Bakura's gaze. His one short look is filled with a multitude of emotions: fury, disgust, and pity.

Pity for him.

For Bakura.

Bakura now looks at his mother, immediately noting the look of expectancy and anxiousness on her face. She thinks he's crazy. She thinks he'll snap and go whacko and utterly destroy this "supposed-to-be picture-perfect first meeting" with Kyle, his half-brother.

Bakura thinks the woman is rather rude; she just shows up one day after only associating with him and his dad for barely a week after God knows how many years of silence with this boy who's his relative and one fucking year younger than him and expects the two to somehow click and get along just peachy.

Bakura snorts inwardly.

Well, that's one thing he's sure won't happen.

He smiles, his lips parting to reveal nice, white teeth.

"Hey, Kyle," Bakura greets, lifting up a hand from his lap in a wave.

Kyle twists his lips in uneasiness or disgust (Bakura thinks that Kyle must think his mom is pretty low too, for making them meet like this), but he waves back nonetheless.

"Hey, Bakura."

There's awkward silence.

Kyle and Bakura's mom aren't sure where to go from here, and Bakura's father was never in this conversation in the first place, so Bakura takes the liberty of speaking for all of them.

"I'm surprised she hasn't abandoned you yet, too."

Bakura just can't stop staring at him.

Yami is Kyle's boyfriend.

Not to mention Yugi's brother.

He shouldn't be feeling this way about him.

But he is, so Bakura figures there's no point in trying to deny it any longer.

Bakura has a crush on Yami.

"Hey, I'll be right back, okay?" Kyle says, motioning towards his cell phone. "I gotta go see my friend real quick about this thing, but I'll be back in like fifteen."

Yami, seated in Bakura's living room, nods, his blonde bangs falling in front of his face. "'Kay."

Kyle waves and then scampers out of the front door.

Bakura takes this moment to slither into the living room, silent. He thinks it's funny how he has to be so stealthy in his own house, but then again, he's spying on his brother and his brother's boyfriend so he thinks he kind of has to be. Biting his lower lip suddenly, he's simply standing there, admiring Yami's pretty face that's being illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the side window.

Kyle had come with Yami earlier that evening for his weekly visit that his mother made him take to "get to know Bakura better". Bakura wasn't sure how Kyle thought it was going, but Bakura thinks that he doesn't like Kyle anymore than he did when he first met him. But regardless, Bakura got bored of watching Yami and Kyle flirt and kiss for two hours and decided he'd go up to his room before coming back down fifteen minutes later because he realized he liked watching Yami even if he was making out with his half-brother two-thirds of the time he was observing him and he was peeking at him from behind a wall.

"I know you're there."

Yami says something, and Bakura lets out a breath he didn't even know he was holding. He starts chewing on his bottom lip.

Yami turns around. He smiles at him. Bakura's not sure if the feeling fluttering in his stomach is nausea or excitement.

Bakura nods his head.

"I'm sure you did," he says, sarcastic as ever. (He loves sarcasm, even though it's considered the "lowest form of humor", which Bakura thinks is a load of crap.)

Yami stands up. He walks to the piano in the corner near the window. Bakura follows him, feeling like a zombie as he robotically saunters across the carpet in the darker room.

They stop at the piano, Bakura in front of the instrument and Yami at the keyboard.

The moonlit window right behind the bench is spilling silver onto the ivory and ebony keys, and Yami turns from looking out the window, letting his hands dance across the keys gracefully.

"Do you play?" he asks.

Bakura stares at him.

"Yeah."

"Can you play something for me?"

Bakura narrows his eyes at him. But he sits down on the cool bench.

Immediately, his hands take their rightful place on the keys, and soon the haunting melody of "Moonlight Sonata" is flowing through the house.

A quarter of the way through the song, Yami kisses him.

Bakura keeps playing, believe it or not. He's played the piece so many times before, that even though his face is currently occupied and he's not looking down at his hands, he still presses all the right spots and the song doesn't miss a beat.

It's beautiful, in a way; background music as Bakura enjoys the moment.

But the excitement doesn't last long.

Yami's tugging at his shirt, and Bakura feels excitement run through him as he kisses him deeper and then—

"Oh my God, Yami—what are you doing with him?"

It was the disgust and true shock as Kyle spat out the word "him" that really got Bakura mad. It was as if Kyle thought he was better than Bakura.

Like Bakura was just a small little scum that wasn't worthy of anything like Kyle's time or love and especially not worthy of his boyfriend.

The rest of the night was kind of blurry in Bakura's memory.

Something about Yami throwing Bakura off of him, causing Bakura to fly off of the bench and crack his skull against the window pane and get a minor concussion that no one really cared about, Kyle screaming and almost attacking Bakura if it weren't for Bakura's mom who came in at that very moment shouting at Bakura how "inconsiderate" and "ridiculous" and "horrible" he was once she found out what he had just been caught doing and stopping her son from attacking him. Then it was Kyle and Bakura's mom screeching at Bakura's dad as Bakura's dad came home from "work" (More like a bar, Bakura thought) as they explained what "that son of yours just did", and it was Yami (who didn't look at Bakura the rest of the time he was in the house; not once) who blamed it all on Bakura and then it was Yami and Kyle and Bakura's mom who stormed out of the home and sped away into the night, not coming back for two and a half months.

Bakura lies in the corner by the piano, still with his head resting on the window pane that he previously banged it on, eyes staring off into the darkness of the living room.

He's watching his father's still form.

Since the visitors had stormed off, his father hadn't moved or said a word at all. Even when he had been getting yelled at with accusations of his son and the way he was raising him, he remained quiet.

Finally, he walks towards his son, and hovers behind the piano bench, the only thing keeping Bakura and his father separated. The moonlight can't even make Bakura's father's red eyes and tired face look better, and Bakura expects to be yanked up by the hair and chucked across the room before getting attacked numerous times, so he closes his eyes, preparing for the pain.

"We don't need them, Bakura. We're okay as we are. You're okay as you are."

Bakura's father truly surprises him sometimes.

One minute he's throwing Bakura against the wall, screaming at him how he's such a burden and the next he's…well…saying things like that.

Bakura's brown eyes fly open. His father's form is gone. Bakura wonders vaguely if the whole thing was a dream.

But once again his father's words echo.

We're okay as we are. You're okay as you are.

Even thought they weren't "okay" (far from it, actually), Bakura still appreciates what his dad did. It was things like that, those few golden moments where Bakura's father showed that he loved, or at least cared about, his son that made Bakura not call the police on him. Not let Mrs. Motou, Yugi's mom, dial 911 or march down to the police station whenever Bakura came over with huge bruises and deep cuts several times a week. What made him not want to attack his dad or kill him. What made him care about, give a crap about, (not quite love, though, keep in mind) his dad.

Bakura gets up back on the piano bench and picks up where he left off in "Moonlight Sonata".

R&R =)