Chapter Text
The first time Bakura comes home with bruised and bloodied knuckles, Ryou pays him no mind, simply glancing at the splotches of red dotting the carpet in the wake of his darker half’s footsteps and resolving to take care of it in the morning. He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t want to, and it’s not like Bakura would offer up any answers, anyway; he barely spares Ryou a glance as he stalks across the living room and disappears into his room, slamming the door shut behind him.
Ryou sighs, returning his attention to his book. It’s a pointless endeavor at that point, though, distracted as he is by the tense atmosphere that always seems to permeate the air whenever he and Bakura are within ten feet of each other.
It’s no surprise, of course, considering their history and all that’s happened in the intervening months since Bakura’s final confrontation with the Pharaoh.
It can’t be easy, Ryou supposes, to be faced with life as a mortal after millennia as a disembodied spirit. He still hasn’t grown used to the thought himself, the idea that Bakura is no longer just the malevolent presence inside his mind but a person in every sense of the word, with flesh and blood and bone instead of Shadow Magic and sheer murderous will.
No, that’s all in the past. The Millennium Items are nothing but relics of a bygone era now, no longer bastions of dark and terrible power, relegated to nothing more than expensive paperweights on display at the Domino Museum. Ryou has seen them all of once since they were returned and had found it more than a little strange to look upon the Ring as an outsider, stranger still not to feel its familiar weight against his chest, the sharp points of its spikes cold against his skin.
He’s not the only one, it seems. Sometimes he catches Bakura reaching for his chest as if something were missing, the gesture seemingly unconscious on his part.
Not that Ryou makes it a habit, watching Bakura. His sense of self-preservation prevents much of that; the less interaction he has with his former “tenant,” the better. Their relationship, if you could call it that, has morphed from one of necessity (on Bakura’s part) to one of mutual indifference. Ryou still wears his mantle of landlord, though in a more literal sense now, and other than the occasional run-in in the kitchen or late at night when Bakura returns from… wherever he disappears to, they tend to avoid crossing each other’s paths.
Why he’d offered Bakura his home after the dust had settled on that penultimate Penalty Game, Ryou still doesn’t quite know. Force of habit, maybe? After all, he’d grown accustomed to the Spirit’s presence after years of sharing his mind and body with the other, forced as that connection had been. Perhaps it was a desire to keep Bakura close so that Ryou could keep an eye on him? There was no doubt that he felt… responsible, for his darker half. Like it was up to him to keep a close eye on the volatile former Spirit and put a stop to any new schemes, though how he would manage to reign Bakura in if he did cause trouble remained to be seen.
It might have been pity that had swayed him, in the end. His relief at regaining sole custody of his own body had been marred by the shock of seeing Bakura with a vessel of his own, but he had been rattled more by the look on Bakura’s face – still so similar to his own, but sharper, more angular – and the utter helplessness etched across it as Bakura had stared at his hands, touched careful fingertips to his face, and called out to the Ring to no avail. Ryou had never seen the like before that moment, had never thought the Spirit of the Ring was even capable of such a look, such an abject show of vulnerability. But then again, Bakura had been vulnerable, in a way that he’d never been with the Ring in his possession.
Despite his sudden mortality, however, Bakura was not harmless. Yuugi and the others knew that just as well as Ryou did, and had made a point to remind him that they were always on hand should Ryou need them. Jounouchi had been sure to mention this fact within earshot of Bakura, and the scowl that had darkened his other half’s face at the implicit threat there had set Ryou’s nerves on edge, unconsciously bracing himself for a confrontation between the two. He doubted that Bakura’s new status as a mere mortal would prevent any bloodshed from taking place.
There’s been no mention of Bakura seeking Yuugi or any of the others out for any nefarious purposes, however, and the only blood the former Spirit seems to be shedding is his own, if his torn and swollen knuckles are anything to go by. Ryou feels a pang of sympathy for whoever had been on the receiving end of that fist, but again resolves to stick to his and Bakura’s unofficial policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ It’s easier that way.
.
.
.
Or so Ryou thinks, until a few nights later when it happens again.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table, his homework fanned out around him, when the front door opens and shuts with a bang. He barely flinches, used to the commotion that heralds his darker half’s return at this point, but he does glance up at the sound of Bakura’s footfalls on the kitchen tiles.
For a moment they stare at each other, the silence broken only by the ticking of the wall clock and the muffled cry of a cat somewhere outside. Ryou prepares himself for some snide remark – usually the only sort of acknowledgement Bakura deigns to give him, these days – but instead all Bakura does is scoff and make a beeline for the refrigerator. Ryou watches him surreptitiously, taking note of a nasty looking tear in his coat and a new array of torn skin and blood along the ridge of his knuckles, and suppresses the urge to ask what happened. Bakura’s other hand is mottled and red, remnants of whatever he’d gotten himself into the other night, and on a whole he looks… disheveled. Bruised.
Ryou jerks his eyes back to his textbook as Bakura closes the fridge door, picking a paragraph at random and forcing his eyes to scan the page until the former Spirit’s footsteps disappear into the living room. The click of Bakura’s door shutting sends Ryou slumping back into his seat, staring in exhausted confusion at the ceiling.
He shouldn’t care what Bakura gets up to late at night. Shouldn’t care if he comes home bruised and bloody. Shouldn’t even care if, one night, he doesn’t come home at all.
Right?
Right. Ryou shakes his head, focusing on the half-finished assignment he needs to complete and forcing all thoughts of his wayward darker half to the farthest corner of his mind.
It works, until he thinks about the blood he’d scrubbed from the carpet a few nights ago and the ugly, mottled bruises across Bakura’s knuckles.
Damn it. His chair scrapes against the tile as he rises to his feet, shooting his homework an apologetic glance before heading for the bathroom.
It takes ten minutes to gather the supplies he needs; it takes twenty more for him to finally shore up enough courage to knock on Bakura’s door.
A moment of stunned silence meets his first attempt, like Bakura’s too thrown by Ryou’s audacity to even respond. He recovers well enough after the second knock, and Ryou suppresses the urge to step back as the door jerks open within seconds of his knuckles rapping against the wood.
“What?” Bakura snaps, irascible as always. Strangely enough, the familiarity of his darker half’s volatile mood puts Ryou at ease.
He raises his bounty – a roll of bandages and antiseptic ointment – and gestures towards Bakura’s bruised knuckles. “I thought you might need – “
Bakura’s eyes flash, crimson melting into hot, cloudy red. “I need nothing from you, Landlord.”
Bakura’s usual moniker for him, though no less true now that it’s in a more literal sense, fails to make Ryou react as it once might have. Bakura can’t control him now, for all that he still acts like he can.
“You need to clean them,” Ryou says calmly, holding out the bandages.
Bakura looks torn between knocking the supplies from Ryou’s hands and slamming the door in his face, his own visage twisted like the very thought of him in need of medical care is offensive.
He sneers. “Why, does the sight of blood disturb your delicate sensibilities, Landlord?”
Ryou’s brow furrows. After everything he’s seen, everything he’s watched Bakura do, does his darker half honestly expect a little blood to upset him?
But then he sees the almost expectant look on Bakura’s face. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Bakura is itching for a fight, doing his utmost to goad Ryou into one, but Ryou doesn’t intend to give him the satisfaction.
“I’ll leave them here,” he says calmly, placing them on the floor by Bakura’s door. “Use them if you like.”
He turns away without waiting for a response. He’s not surprised when, a moment later, the door slams shut with enough force to rattle the walls. He’s even less surprised when he glances over his shoulder and sees the bandages sitting untouched right where he left them.
.
.
.
That should have been the end of it. Ryou had tried to extend an olive branch and his kindness had been rebuffed. There was no point in risking Bakura’s ire further by sticking his nose where it clearly doesn’t belong.
But the collection of bruises along Bakura’s knuckles only continues to grow, spots of blood flecking the floor in his wake and his clothing rumpled, sometimes even torn –
– and it’s driving Ryou crazy.
He doesn’t know what Bakura’s doing, if he’s out there courting death every night or if fighting is the only thing he knows how to do anymore and with Yami gone, there’s no one but the unfortunate denizens of Domino City to take his anger out on.
Either way, the former Spirit can’t keep this up. Sooner or later he’s going to get into a fight he can’t win, and Ryou… well, he doesn’t want that.
He should probably stop and think about that at some point – why it even matters to him, why Bakura seems to matters to him.
Later, he thinks, adding a pack of gauze to the bounty already gathered on the table. Somewhere in the apartment, a clock strikes six p.m. Much later.
He doesn’t have to wait long for Bakura to show up, at least. Less time for Ryou’s thoughts to wander towards topics he’d rather shy away from. Less time for his resolve to waver, too, though he almost gives up on the whole thing when Bakura storms into the apartment, a thunderous expression on his face and a fresh, bleeding cut along his cheek.
“What happened?” Ryou asks, alarmed enough by the sight to forget to be cautious about his approach. In all the nights that Bakura has come home fresh from a fight, he’s never been injured. Not like this.
Bakura’s sharp eyes cut to his. “It’s none of your concern, Landlord,” he spits, reaching up to swipe the back of his hand across the gash, smearing red across his pale skin. He glances at the pile of first aid supplies Ryou had gathered and sneers. “What’s this?”
Ryou steels his nerves, reaching for a packet of gauze. “It’s for you. For your injuries.”
“My injuries,” Bakura mocks, the glint of his canines and the blood smeared across his cheek lending a feral, hunted quality to his face. “What concern are they of yours?”
Ryou almost snaps that they’re no concern at all, actually, until he realizes he’d only be contradicting himself.
“I’m tired of cleaning up blood from the floor,” he says instead, because it’s the truth. “So either you let me bandage those wounds or – “
“Or what?” Bakura cuts in, crimson eyes flashing a warning.
Ryou ignores it. “Or you can cook for yourself from now on.”
It’s an ultimatum that Ryou knows will work. The only time he’s ever seen Bakura truly happy – not including when he’s sending his enemies to the Shadow Realm or closing in on a Millennium Item – is when he has good food in his belly, and through necessity in the form of an absent father and the growing impracticalities of living off nothing but take-out, Ryou has learned how to be an excellent cook.
A growl rumbles in Bakura’s throat, but it seems even he knows when to accept defeat. He stalks over to the couch and tosses himself onto it, shooting Ryou a look absolutely dripping with vitriol.
“Well?” he snaps impatiently. “Get on with it.”
Ryou rolls his eyes but follows his darker half’s lead without comment. He knows when to pick his battles.
They’re silent as Ryou gets to work, and though Bakura huffs as Ryou reaches for his hand, he allows the treatment without a word. His hand is a mess, mottled bruises arching over his knuckles in various shades of purple and green, some in the process of scabbing over and some startlingly fresh.
Ryou blows out a breath at the sight of them, grabbing for a bottle of antiseptic ointment to slather the damage before he can even begin to bandage it all up. Bakura doesn’t react to the ointment’s chill, though his teeth sink into the meat of his lower lip once Ryou smooths the cream over the worst of his bruises. Ryou lightens his touch as much as he’s able, thinking the reaction must be a response to pain, but Bakura shoots him a look and growls, “I have no need for coddling, host.”
“I’m not coddling you,” Ryou protests, some part of him wondering why he’d even tried to make this process as painless as possible if this was all the thanks he was going to get. “I’m just trying to help.”
Bakura opens his mouth – no doubt to snap that he doesn’t need Ryou’s help – but a glance down at his bruised knuckles and Ryou’s fingers covered in ointment is all it takes to quench the words. There’s no denying the obvious, especially when it’s right in front of your face.
Who else does Bakura have, to do this? Who else would bother?
There’s a touch of solemnity to the atmosphere as Ryou reaches for a strip of gauze and carefully begins to wrap Bakura’s knuckles. Ryou tries to break the silence multiple times, but no words come when he opens his mouth and in the end he decides it’s best to just let things be. It’s enough that Bakura is letting him help in the first place, ultimatum or no, and besides, what can he truly say that Bakura wouldn’t find issue with? It’s better to let his darker half take the lead here, to let him speak when he feels the need, and not before.
It doesn’t take long, surprisingly.
“Denying your tenant food,” Bakura mutters, though there isn’t much heat in his voice. His eyes flick up to meet Ryou’s, and if Ryou didn’t know better, he would swear there was a hint of respect, however begrudgingly given, in Bakura’s eyes. “Cruel of you.”
“I learned from the best,” Ryou returns sunnily. Bakura snorts – in amusement or derision, Ryou isn’t sure – and turns away.
“So it wasn’t all for nothing,” he says, and his other hand reaches for his chest, curling emptily in the front of his shirt.
Ryou swallows, feeling a little empty himself at the gesture. He doesn’t miss the Ring, not exactly. He certainly doesn’t want it back. But it had been a part of him for so long, an extension of his being from the moment his father had slipped it over his neck, and to be parted with it, to grow accustomed to the lack of it, hasn’t been easy.
“I don’t know if I’m the right person to answer that,” he says finally, and Bakura blinks at him, scoffs, and allows the hand twisted in his shirt to fall away.
“It must be a relief to you,” he muses, his voice neutral. Stating a fact, rather than seeking a fight, for once. “To be rid of the Ring.”
Ryou shrugs, securing the gauze with tape and moving onto Bakura’s cheek. “It’s… different. Strange, to be without it. Strange not to feel you in my head anymore.”
Bakura laughs, though it’s more of a half-hearted grunt. “Strange,” he repeats, as though testing the word on his tongue. He doesn’t say anything else.
Ryou gingerly dabs at the blood along Bakura’s cheek, the cut still oozing sluggishly. It’s a clean cut, at the very least – and a quick one, by the looks of it. Probably from a knife.
What are you getting yourself into? It’s a question he doubts Bakura will answer, and there’s a part of Ryou that would rather not know. He feels like he’s toeing the edge of something perilous already, and it should be enough that he’s gotten this far without Bakura tearing his head off. Figuratively and literally.
It’s a relief regardless that the wound doesn’t appear to be more than a surface scratch. A few drops of ointment and a bandage are all it needs.
It’s strange – that word again – to be close to Bakura, like this. To be sharing the same space without trying to escape the other’s presence, or ignoring that the other even exists. It’s so easy to confuse them from a distance, but this close, it’s clear that the resemblance between them begins and ends with their hair color and the pallor of their skin. Bakura is so much sharper, not just in the angles of his face but in the shape of his eyes and the sharp dip of his throat. It’s in his aura, too, sharp and prickly as a static cloud, too dangerous to approach for all but the most foolhardy.
Does that make me brave? Ryou wonders. Or just a fool? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t feel brave. In this moment, silently cleaning and dressing Bakura’s wounds, with the memory of Bakura reaching for his chest and closing his hand around nothing but empty space fresh in his memory, Ryou feels… sad. Sympathetic. Strangely content, in a way that he barely understands. Glad to finally be doing something after so many nights of willful ignorance. Glad to finally be allowed to.
“There,” he says once he’s finished, resisting the urge to pat Bakura’s hand like his mother used to do after she’d tended to his childhood aches and pains. “All done.”
Bakura doesn’t offer his thanks, doesn’t actually say a word, but that’s fine. Ryou wasn’t expecting him to.
He gathers the first aid and the detritus left behind by the materials he’d used, and heads for the bathroom to store it in the medicine cabinet.
He’s at the door when he hears it.
“The Ring is silent,” Bakura mutters, and when Ryou glances back at him, his crimson eyes are fixed blankly on the floor. “I call and I call, and it doesn’t answer. There is nothing.”
Ryou pauses at the doorway. He doesn’t know what Bakura wants him to say, what he could possibly be hoping for, or even what he needs. He doesn’t know how to make any of it – the aftermath of the Penalty Game, the fate of the Millennium Items, or Bakura’s sudden return to mortality – any better. The only thing he knows is the one thing he’s sure Bakura won’t do.
“You should take better care of yourself.”
Bakura catches his gaze, and for the second time in Ryou’s memory, his eyes are empty pools of quiet desolation. “For who?” he asks. “For the Ring, empty husk that it is? For my hatred of the Pharaoh, whose spirit lies at peace within his tomb while I continue to live?” Clasped over his knees, Bakura’s bandaged fingers work themselves into fists. “For my people, whose ashes were scattered to the winds millennia ago?”
Ryou studies Bakura silently. It’s the first time his darker half has mentioned his family, even in vague terms, and still the pain of that loss feels fresh, raw. It hits close to home, and for a moment Ryou is reminded, strikingly, of himself, of the little boy mourning his mother and sister alone while his father buried himself in work to escape the grief of losing them.
So he gives Bakura the only answer he can.
“For yourself,” he says, and then he leaves, wondering why he cares so much.
He doesn’t have an answer for that one.