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Malik doesn't remember when it started happening, but the chill crawling up his spine is beginning to feel like home.
Not home in a literal sense, seeing as he never really had one. He wouldn't dare count the tombs as anything short of his own personal purgatory, and the years spent lurking from place to place following felt like absolution, but not something he could ever return to. In the end, he figured he'd always be something transient, wafting from place to place like one of those ghosts he knows too well. Temporal, but not aimless. Not when he still has something to do.
Not when he wants the Pharaoh's head.
That's why he's waiting in another dingy alley again, and he's not quite sure what, exactly, he's looking for out of this suicidal allegiance, but he knows it's a net gain regardless. He has never cared about the Items, and the spirit of the Ring couldn't care less about Malik's revenge. Both are married to the convenience of it all more than the concept of companionship, much less with each other.
At least, that's what Malik tells himself, and it works well enough to distract him from his nagging heartbeat that swells to the base of his throat the moment Bakura steps into his line of sight. It's of no matter, though, not when he had shed that weak part of himself in days long past. Now, he's motivated by vengeance, and all of it is just another means to an end. Including Bakura.
"You waited. Surprising."
Malik's head swings to the left, and his heart follows when his eyes flit over brick and concrete to find he has a visitor.
Nothing about Bakura is kind or gentle, but Malik finds himself all right with that, because shyness had never suited him anyways. He flares the whites of his eyes, and Malik can't help but notice the ring of crimson around his pupils matches the blood crested against his bandages. If not for his carcinogenic gaze, his face on Ryou's delicate body would have looked as harmless and vulnerable as a hare. Malik aborts his laughter.
"What's more surprising is that you managed to make it out of that hospital without being caught," he finally replies, but Malik's words only serve to annoy Bakura, who responds with a curious flash of teeth.
"Then I suppose what's most surprising is that I've managed six of these already." A flick of his borrowed wrist, and Bakura puts six locator cards on display as if they're spoils of war. There's a gleam to the crimson of his irises, and Malik can't help but be reminded of vermin. But Malik knows he's not as much of a predator as he wishes to be, and he hasn't given Bakura enough reason to run. Not yet.
What he does do is curve his lips into a frown, and if he's impressed he certainly won't show it. Instead, Malik opens his mouth to ridicule him, but stops some sort of confession from coming out in its place. He can feel that chill again, tingling up the curve of his spine—he only ever feels this way around Bakura, and all he wants is to kill that feeling before it does the same to him. Home. What a terribly human concept. Vermin.
"You look like you're about to fall to your knees. I can't have you dying before we accomplish our plans."
Bakura cocks his brow, running a single nail across the blood on his arm that had dried to a bothersome sort of half-crust against the string of gauze. Proof of his capabilities. If anything, Malik should be the one to fear Bakura, but he couldn't bring himself to muster that.
"If you want me on my knees, you'll have to ask nicer than that." The nail against his dressing digs deeper, no longer trailing along the remnants of pain, but instead digging against the stitches lying beneath until a new shade of red flowers along his fingertips. Bakura winces, but the smile remains, too wide to be justified.
Conversely, Malik's heart skips another beat, and his eyes narrow so as to ignore the heat against his cheeks. "What are you implying, spirit?"
"I'm implying you're underestimating me." With all the grace of a well-trained thief, Bakura snaps his hand and retrieves the knife that had nested itself in his pocket, and it makes Malik think of home again, even if unwittingly. Bakura looks just as alluring as the blade in his hand, but hardly as dangerous, even when he brings it up to press against Malik's larynx.
"And just what in the Gods' name do you think you're doing?" Malik snarls, feeling Bakura's breaths heaving against his lips—in, then out, and when his throat bobs against the blade he can feel the pressure of its edge. Still, he doesn't pull away, because he's not scared yet. Not even of those crazed rabbit eyes.
Now Bakura is the one growling. "I'm not doing any of this for you, you know. Working with you gets me what I want. Otherwise, I'd probably kill you too."
"So do you press your knife to the throats of everyone you work with, then?" Malik's statement is a challenge, if nothing else. He knows Bakura won't apply pressure, or at the very least, in a sick way, he trusts him not to—but trust was always another of those fickle things to him, after all.
"You're assuming I work with other people."
They've reached their usual stalemate, enough for Malik to stare at Bakura's half-parted lips and think about how vulnerable he feels. The breath he takes is another release of nervous energy, and Bakura is so very tantalizing, enough for Malik to realize that in a sick, sad way, home is wherever Bakura is.
His train of thought is torn to ribbons when Bakura leans in and closes the distance between them, forcing their lips together—the kiss plants the seed of something monstrous in both of them, and it's rough, messy, and just as many times ill-advised. Bakura smells like ash, dried blood, and rot, and the convulsion of a realization hits him that he wants this. The blade against Malik's neck feels just as piercing as it did moments ago, and he waits for a retaliation that never comes. The only thing he receives when Bakura pulls away is a snapping smile.
"I'm assuming you don't do that with everyone you work with, either," Malik bites back, but there's nothing vicious to it this time. The fever-warmth of their shared body heat ignites something within him, enough for him to lean in and do it all again; after all, he'd never learned how to help himself.
"Just you," Bakura heaves like Malik had sucked the air from his lungs. "Unless you have objections."
Malik considers his options carefully, but doesn't care to probe him with questions he already knows the answer to.
"Whatever gets me what I want," he finally replies, and what he wants is this.