soul_logs | [Open] Taking over the High Scores

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[Open] Taking over the High Scores

Characters: Bakura Ryou & anyone else near, in, or around the arcade
Location: The arcade
Rating: ...N for nerdy?
Time: Feb 17th, afternoon & evening
Description: Uncomfortably familiar weird stuff is starting happen around Bakura in addition to the drama across the hall, so he's avoiding dealing with it by sinking far too many quarters into machines at the arcade.

It had started when he noted that something he had left in the fridge to have for the next day had been missing. He didn't pay it much mind and had just assumed that he had absentmindedly eaten it the night before. But it seemed like it kept happening... And things he was sure he had put away properly were winding up in other places entirely.

Like they had back in Tokyo.

But he wasn't losing any time this time. Sure, he still would lose track of time when he was playing his games, but realizing that it was suddenly 2am and he had finished the game was different than realizing that it was 5pm and he couldn't remember where he'd spent the last 2 hours. Or why he was in a different part of town than he'd started.

Rather than think on it, after finding the drawers in his dresser looking almost as if someone had been searching through them, he'd headed out to the arcade. What better way to avoid a problem than to play games, right?

Of course, the fact that he was still there, packing away high score after high score on his favorite games after the sun was starting to set when there a possibly serial killer lurking out there, was it's own problem, but when had he ever given things like that any consideration?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hm, speak for yourself."

So much had changed over the last few days, and Mello placed the blame for all of it squarely on the truth chocolates. The shaky progress he and Near had made, the way it had been shattered, the fragile rebuilding of a truce: all of it. They'd never been able to co-exist peacefully, and Mello had no illusions about that changing soon. He was impatient enough by nature to be glad their being forced to talk had pushed them farther down they path they'd already been on, but his pride still stung over all he'd had to admit.

"I've been doing damage control ever since."

Bakura glanced over briefly, fingers still moving. "Really? Got into a situation that bad?"

Anything that would make being chased by acid spewing ants and being mind controlled to attack your friends seem preferable... it had to be something catastrophic!

Mello had been not talking about it in a talking-about-it sort of way, and now that Bakura had brought it up himself, the subject was fair game.

"I know partners are supposed to trust each other and be honest, and all that feel-good crap, but the twit and I got a metric shit-ton of truth dropped on us, and we're not used to it."

Bakura nodded slightly. "Too much and too bluntly?" he sympathized. There were different levels of being honest and Bakura was very much a fan of selective omission...

Ha! Final form of the boss battle! He paused to flex his fingers as the monologue briefly played, before shifting combo sets and resuming his assault.

"That sums it up well."

Mello fell silent, knowing enough to recognize an important virtual battle when he saw one. He doubted Bakura would be as pissed as Matt if he were interrupted, but old habits died hard.

When he thought Bakura's victory was assured, he went on, with a show of reluctance to mollify his pride. "I cheated on my partner. Not that we're dating, or any shit like that, but. He acted like I cheated, and it all happened while everyone involved couldn't lie."

As far as Bakura was concerned, people took priority over his games. Games would always be there, but people had this nasty habit of vanishing...

He blinked, looking over as he carefully flexed his right hand to get out the remaining tension as the closing animation played. "You mean like working with someone else sort of cheating...?" he asked, a touch clueless. Though with the dating comment... Not that he knew anything about romance outside of manga (and even he knew that sort of thing didn't apply to reality!)

"No, cheating as in kissing someone else. He acts like he's got some fucking right to be possessive of me, when it's not like that between us."

That wasn't a lie, Mello silently insisted. Yes, he'd kissed Near twice now, but neither time counted, no matter what he'd said before. Tipsiness had been to blame the first time, and those damn truth drugs the second. (I kissed you because I couldn't stand not to, his mind oh-so-helpfully replayed his own words, and he wanted to wince, but didn't, at how fucking ridiculous they sounded.)

Bakura blinked, almost distractedly adding yet another "BRK" to the high scores list before turning his full attention to the suddenly serious conversation, a touch thrown by it. "How is it between you, then, if it's not like that?"

...if this was even the place to ask something like that. Though at least there wasn't really anyone else around, so he guessed it was private enough....

Damn, the high scores list was almost all this kid.

"We're partners. And no matter what those drugs made us say, that's all we ought to be."

It was so much safer that way.

And that same BRK littered every high score screen of almost every game in the arcade, giving a hint to just how much time he spent lost in his games.

He nodded slightly. "But being partners... is one of those things that means different things to different people, right? Especially here."

"Hmph, he doesn't want me for himself, he just doesn't want anyone else to have me."

Which was also not a lie. Not exactly. The twit was always shirty as hell about Rochefort, and nothing had even happened there.

"You're sure?" Bakura blinked, thinking of how Anzu would get every time Yuugi ogled another girl, even long before they two seemed to acknowledge that they liked each other. "Maybe... he just doesn't know what he feels yet? Or hasn't admitted it yet, even to himself?"

Mello wasn't sure, and it was irritating. He didn't think it was conceit talking when he thought that if Near wanted anyone, it would be him.

"He doesn't think he's allowed to feel anything."

In some fucked-up division of responsibilities, it was Mello's job to feel for the both of them, he thought, almost amused.

"That makes it harder..." Even in this place where that sort of thing was more accepted, Bakura could very fully understand that. Or what he assumed was being implied, considering the topic. "But... if he's acting on it...."

It had been Mello who'd acted on it, but he couldn't say so without having to give an explanation of why it hadn't counted either time, which made perfect sense to him, but wouldn't to someone who didn't understand the situation.

"This is stupid. I don't know why I'm even talking about it."

"Sometimes it helps," Bakura pointed out with a bit of a smile. "When there's something that bothers you... just being able to talk to someone can make it less so, I think. Especially when it's with people that aren't from home." Goodness knows he'd talked to Leo and Ryuzaki about things he never would have thought to talk about to his friends back home... They were each safe in their own ways; Leo because he was a good friend, and Ryuzaki because he was so strange.

Mello was still so unused to talking about his life that he was sure people wondered why he acted as if having grown up in an orphanage were a big secret. But if he tried to discuss this with Matt or Gemini, they'd roll their eyes as if he wasn't the seeing the obvious answer, and if he tried to talk to L about it, it would end up awkward again. Maybe an outside perspective wasn't a terrible idea. Bakura was smarter than he seemed, even if he was so eager to please that he came off as part overgrown puppy.

"I spent most of my life back home competing with him, and hating him. The only reason we're partners in the first place is that I resonate the best with him of anyone I've tried it with. We..." We understand each other too well to truly hate each other, and we don't know how to be friends, he might have said, but that was fucking cheesy.

"Do you know the troll idea of kismeses?"

Bakura blinked at the word. "I don't think I've heard it before, no..."

"It's a romantic relationship for trolls, but it's based on hate. The kind where you can't hate someone from afar, you have to hate them from right up close. It's like that with us."

It was, anyway. Now it was something not even Mello could put a name to.

"Or it's the closest human analogue, whatever. The point is, 'opposites attract' is more than a saying."

"Like a rivalry with something more complex mixed in," Bakura nodded, thinking a moment about Kaiba's obsession with Yuugi.... and then suddenly about Ryuzaki's own obsession with Light.

...

"A sort of like a 'no one else but me can defeat you,' sort of thing?" he continued.

"Exactly. The kismesis concept, as I understand it, indicates a bond that goes beyond saying someone's a rival." An element of fate, almost, which Mello didn't believe in, but he'd both said and thought that his partner couldn't be anyone but Near, and he hadn't changed his mind. Things felt wrong lately, but that was just proof that partners was all they ought to be.

"But we're in this fucked-up place in between two ways of dealing with each other. We can't go back, thanks to the truth drugs, but we can't go forward, either."

Bakura nodded thoughtfully. "That is a pretty bad spot to be in..." It made him really wish he had some sort of helpful advice to offer, but what did he know about this sort of thing? He wasn't even sure what Yuugi would say in this sort of situation...

He hesitated a moment. "Did you want to move forward? If there wasn't any worry about what would happen, I mean. Since there are a lot of things that people see Partners as, maybe..." he faltered, looking about as clueless as he felt.

Yuugi would be so much better at this.

"Of course not," Mello said, immediately and instinctively.

He wasn't lying. It had been a rational decision, and it was the right way to proceed. (Never mind that Mello had backed himself into a corner by being the one to suggest they ignore the truths they'd revealed, only to have Near agree in a way that made further discussion impossible.)

"You have to trust your partner, or you're fucked. But if you're not used to trusting people, it's entirely too easy to let it go too far."

"And you don't trust yourself to be able to keep it from getting that far?" Bakura guessed.

Mello thought for a moment. It wasn't exactly that, it was...

"I don't see much point in saying you want something, however you admit it, or have to admit it, and then doing nothing."

That was the problem with saying those two days didn't count. No matter what he and Near had been, or what Mello had wished they were, the truth was out, and pretending it wasn't was pointless.

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