Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan Fiction ❯ Rain ❯ Rain 3/4 ( Chapter 3 )

Title: Rain (3/4)

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It was raining when Ryou got home from school. Thin, persistent drops wound their way into his shoes and his eyes, although his hair kept most of them from diving down the back of his top. It was so cold he could see his breath before him as he jogged down the sidewalk, a small cloud of mist quickly lashed to pieces by the rain. He shifted his backpack on his shoulders and ran up the footpath.

The door was unlocked.

Ryou set his jaw and pushed it open, peering inside. There wasn't any immediately apparent damage to the house, and as he ventured further in there was the unmistakable stillness that declared his home was empty save for him.

Which meant that Bakura had let himself out and neglected to lock the door after him.

Ryou sighed. He was reasonably sure that giving Bakura a key to the house had been an invitation for disaster, but it was better than forcing him to pace the same rooms day after day like a caged beast. And after he'd rejected Ryou, those rooms just seemed far too small for the two of them. To say the atmosphere was frosty would be putting it mildly. Giving Bakura a key had been an act of self-preservation only - Ryou knew he could never intentionally harm his darker half even if he did feel like killing him sometimes. Although the language was perhaps too strong, given the tomb robber's previous history.

Ryou had a tendency to go off on tangents where Bakura was concerned - an indication of how much he occupied his thoughts. It was getting to where the strained relationship between them was affecting his concentration at school, both in class and with his friends.

Whenever he was away from home, he wanted to be with Bakura; whenever they were in the same room he had a desperate urge to leave. The tomb robber was messing with Ryou's head.

"How do you do it, Bakura?" he murmured to himself.

//Do what?//

Oh crap! //Nothing! Nothing// Ryou transmitted hastily, wincing. The mind-link had slipped open without his meaning to again.

He could sense the other's irritability. //I thought we'd been over this. You say `nothing' in that tone, you're begging me to notice. And if it's bothering you enough so that I can hear it, it's worth noticing. Now what the hell's the problem?//

Miserably Ryou leant against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor and hugging his knees. //It's nothing you need to think about. I'll be more careful in future// he sent, and hoped against hope that would be enough to placate his darker half. They could ignore each other physically, but mentally was another matter.

There was a dissatisfied grumble from the other end of the link before it closed, and Ryou breathed a sigh of relief. He knew that his life was entwined with Bakura's, their souls linked irrevocably, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

And yet sometimes he was so sure that Bakura was and held everything he could ever want or hope for … It made no sense! How could he adore the spirit one moment and despise him the next? Ever since they'd made those overtures towards intimacy everything had been so confusing. Their mind-link alternated between slipping open without their intention and being as firmly closed as a fortress gate. The only thing that remained constant was Ryou's fear of his darker half, of the harm the tomb robber could do to him … had done to him…

How he could want to be intimate with someone who'd possessed and used his body, enslaving his mind and will, Ryou didn't understand. Every time he looked at Bakura and saw the cold callousness of the killer he knew his dark half to be, he wanted to run away and hide. But then he'd remember sitting beside him as they watched the rain, and Bakura's impotent fury at a cold, and the way they just understood each other sometimes, and he'd think that perhaps it wasn't so impossible.

It wasn't just because of Yugi and Yami. Ryou knew he and Bakura could never achieve the closeness of the other two - their history denied the possibility of such a deep friendship. What he'd felt when he saw Yami press a kiss to Yugi's temple hadn't been just jealousy. He'd been reminded that he and Bakura were light and dark before anything else, that their bond would outlast anything else in their lives, and that what Bakura wanted from him was exactly what he wanted from the spirit.

Of course it wasn't that simple. He hadn't factored in Bakura's ability to hold a grudge - either that, or he hadn't realised just how deeply he'd hurt him when he'd rejected him. He understood now.

Ryou was silent, his thoughts focused inward, as he made his way to his room to get started on his homework. But he paused inadvertently as he passed Bakura's closed door, and once he'd managed to sit down at his desk and spread his books out in front of him he realised, quite calmly, that there was no way in hell he'd be able to do anything.

With a resigned sigh - he was falling behind already, without this distracting him - he went downstairs again, made a pot of hot chocolate, and went out to the back porch to watch the rain.

The wind was blowing in intermittent gusts, throwing the water against the windows in a patchwork of mourning. Ryou considered it a fitting expression of his own turbulent feelings toward the tomb robber who still held his soul, even if he no longer controlled his mind. He shivered as the chilled air wrapped itself around him and took a quick gulp from his mug, burning his tongue. It hadn't gotten any warmer since his walk home, and the glass walls of the porch didn't hold any heat. A shudder scrambled through Ryou's shoulders and torso.

Then he saw it - a small patch of yellow in the middle of the lawn, where he knew there weren't any flowers. Frowning slightly, Ryou got to his feet, telling himself it was probably just a tennis ball, and put his mug down as he stepped forward for a closer look.

It was a bird. A baby bird. With an injured wing, no less.

Ryou groaned, hating the creature for being helpless and vulnerable and hating the fact that he knew he'd go and rescue it. For a moment he watched it, pretending to debate the point, but there was never really any question. With a litany of grumbles that surprised even him in quantity and inventiveness, he got his raincoat and boots and ventured out into the weather.

The rain appeared to have decided to forego the sporadic bursts and just have one heavy, wind-driven downpour the instant he closed the porch door behind him. It hit Ryou with a shock that made him stop in his tracks, and an expression of dismay crossed his face.

But then, through nature's hissy fit, he heard a small, pathetic chirping.

He decided he detested that bird, and might have to squash it.

With this aim in the forefront of his mind, Ryou splashed his way across the backyard, pulling his coat tighter around him, and scooped the cursed creature into the palm of his hand. It pecked him (pecked him!), and he almost threw it right through the tree.

…Except that said tree appeared to have a nest in it that looked exactly the right size for said bird.

He cupped both hands around the bundle of wet feathers in an attempt to stop it getting any more soaked than it already was, and stood on tiptoes to deposit it into the circular bundle of sticks. It looked at him mournfully as he withdrew his hands, the very picture of pitiful misery. Grimly, loathing it more with every second, Ryou reached for another branch to shelter it with.

At that moment he was attacked by a raging beast of destruction about the size of his fist.

"Aack!" Ryou jumped backwards, shielding his face with his hands. "What the - Hey! Get off me!" In astonishment he realised that the demon dive-bombing him was, in fact, the chick's father. The mother was sitting on the nest, scolding him with pint-sized ferocity.

When the male bird went for his eyes, Ryou underwent several degrees of fury at once, and stomped furiously back to the house. The ingrates! How dare they! Attacking him after he'd put his health at risk rescuing their stupid little kid because it was too stupid to stay in its own stupid nest! Why, he had half a mind to - to…

Bakura was standing in the porch, arms folded. Ryou couldn't see his expression through the rain-mottled glass, but he wasn't smiling.

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