"They are making entirely too much progress." Pegasus scowled. "Who let those little brats go on this long unchecked?"
"That would have been Gansley." Said his dark master. "He is no longer with us, I have heard."
"Taken down with ruthless efficiency by none other than one of the little brats he was supposed to be keeping in check." Pegasus' closest companion, a man with long blue hair, spoke this information boredly, as if he really had something better to be doing at the moment.
Knowing him, he probably did.
"Was he killed?" Their master asked.
"It's hard to say," Pegasus replied. "Ryou Bakura is unpredictable, at best, my lord. I do believe Gansley's life hung on a very thin string."
The man nodded, making a noise in the back of his throat. "No matter. He's as good as dead come the end of this, regardless."
"Of course, my lord." Said the blue-haired one. "Everyone is."
Well, Pegasus wasn't sure that "man" was the correct word to use to describe his boss. Yes, he looked quite human at the moment, but he'd merely shoved his essence down the throat of some mortal vagabond or another and had Pegasus and his companion clean up the husk's body and make him look like a successful businessman. It had been tough work, really, and Pegasus shuddered at the memory. All the viscera that had needed to be disposed of and hair that needed shaving…
"Pegasus, you are now in charge of seeing to it that these… children… Do not succeed." His boss said, "Do not fail me."
"When have I ever failed you before, my lord?"
That earned him a smirk. "See that you don't now, yes? It'd be… Disappointing, to say the least."
"Of course, sir."
His boss got up and left the room, leaving he and his companion alone. Thin arms wrapped around his waist while he stared at the door and he let himself relax into the body behind him.
"He is quite agitated, lately." His companion murmured, resting his head on his shoulder.
"So are you." Pegasus pointed out.
The other hummed in acknowledgement, planting a kiss on his neck. Pegasus couldn't help a slight smile. "You seem mostly unaffected by all this, even if you are a bit irate."
"I have a lot of experience with the likes of these brats." He shrugged, maneuvering himself around so he could face the man. "I used to be one of them."
The other cracked a smile. "We all were, at one time, I believe."
They pressed their foreheads together and stared at each other, Pegasus with his one uncovered eye and the other with his discolored ones. The other gently brushed the hair away from Pegasus' face and caressed his cheek. Pegasus could see the blue-haired man's attention had shifted to the Millennium Eye. Once, his interest in it had made Pegasus uncomfortable.
Now, of course, he was used to it. He still didn't like the way his companion looked at it, but he could deal. He didn't immediately feel completely uneasy about his entire body because of the attention to his eye, but he did still feel the need to cover it up when it was exposed around people he actually cared for at all.
"Dartz, dearest, you know how I feel about you staring at it." He said gently.
"My apologies, love." He let the hair fall back in place. "I simply find it intriguing, that's all."
Their moment, as usual, was cut short by Dartz's lackeys.
"Boss!" Cried Alister as he burst into the room. "We've got a problem!"
"What is it?" Dartz sighed as he turned to look at him.
"Mai has gone missing." Rafael said for him as he entered the room, far more collected. Alister nodded his affirmation when Dartz looked to him.
The blue-haired man sighed again, turning to Pegasus. "I'm afraid I will likely have to deal with this myself. I shall return, love."
They shared a chaste kiss before Dartz left the room with Alister in tow. Rafael remained for a moment, giving Pegasus an unreadable look. "I am sorry that we continue to interfere." He eventually said. "I insisted to Alister that we could look for Mai ourselves, but he just doesn't know what to do without Dartz."
"Neither do I, at times." Pegasus sighed. "It is fine. We are very busy men, it only makes sense that we be interrupted by everything that's given an opportunity to interrupt us."
Rafael, who was typically quite stony in the face, cracked a smile at that. Then he bowed his head and left, closing the door behind him.
Pegasus sighed again. How in the world had he ended up in this situation? Working for a demon and in a dying relationship with a man…
Just seven years ago he'd been a free businessman married to the most gorgeous, loving woman he'd ever met. He had eyes for no one else. He was successful - riches growing past what his parents had left to him after their tragic accident. He was happy. So happy.
He needn't remind himself of what had happened to change that, to lead up to this, but he always did so regardless. He just never could stop himself from thinking back. From remembering the day he'd woken to find his darling Cyndia pale and barely breathing in bed next to him.
The sickness took her quicker than the car accident had taken his parents. She was gone within the hour.
His depression, his soul-searching that followed her death brought him face to face with his boss for the first time in a dark, gloomy tomb in Egypt. At the time, he'd been cloaked in shadows, a pure black silhouette against the dismally inky backdrop of the tomb's walls. He'd dropped his torch in surprise, when the being had appeared. He'd dropped it and the unholy tendrils that curled toward him had snuffed it out post haste.
"This is not the wisest of places to get lost, mortal."
"I am not lost." Said Pegasus, "I am searching for death."
"Then you have come to the right place, after all…"
And the rest was history, really.
It felt like a hundred years, but it hadn't been so long at all. And how melancholy did his life have to be, really, for seven years to feel like one hundred? How incredibly dull? The thought was somewhat new to him - as new as he and Dartz's romantic relationship, really. The last year or so, his year with Dartz, had gone by much faster than the previous six. The days had dragged by, each second like an hour. It had been maddening.
But the first time he and Dartz had kissed, time resumed its normal flow. He felt his heart beat in his chest again for the first time since Cyndia's own heart had ceased to beat. It was odd, he thought, how love worked.
He'd thought himself straight, seven years ago. He'd never considered the thought of knowing another man's body the way he knew Cyndia's, or of another man knowing his in that way. He was no longer sure what label to put himself under, as none seemed to fit him quite the way he felt it needed to. Bisexuality wasn't quite right and pansexuality was far too broad a spectrum. Asexual he clearly was not, heterosexual was something he'd grown out of. He supposed that "demisexual" was the closest, by far.
It was a term he'd heard from a young employee. Intrigued, he'd asked them about it. They claimed that a demisexual was someone who didn't develop sexual desires about a person until they knew them closely and had a strong bond with them. They'd also explained it's companion, demiromantic, as someone who did not develop romantic feelings about a person until the same criteria were met.
It had taken him many years to fall in love with and lust after Cyndia and Dartz.
He sighed, yet again, and took a seat at the table. Nothing he could do, for the time being, except call Kemo and tell him to get someone out to watch the three kings.
For a moment, his mind turned toward the men that those kings were working to find. Those pitiful fools in a room in this very compound. He hadn't gotten an update on them in quite some time - he wondered if Dartz and their boss had extracted their souls yet or if they had finally snapped and killed each other.
Finding out what had happened to them seemed like a rather worthwhile pastime, in his book. Far more exciting than sitting at a table and waiting for his lover or boss to return and give him affection or orders. He stood, placed a quick call to Kemo to relay his orders as he'd originally intended to, and left the room to find a grunt to wean the information he wanted out of.