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

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.

Bakura was quiet a moment. "...what did you say that you wanted? If I can ask..."

"We both said so. A while back, some people from Death City were sent into the future. The twit told me that, in that timeline, we were... partners with benefits."

The euphemism sounded stupid to him, but what was he supposed to say? 'Involved'? That was worse. 'Lovers'? Hell no.

"That future was ten years from now, but. We both admitted we wouldn't mind it, and then we decided it didn't count, because of the truth drugs." That was Mello's problem now: ignoring those two days had made perfect sense when he suggested it, hadn't it? But the more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed to disregard things because they were too true.

Bakura was starting to feel like he was uncovering a pyramid, each layer of soil that was lifted showing even more and more of what was impossible to measure from where he stood.

...or maybe like trying to figure out a plot to an RPG where no one wants to tell you flat out that the person you thought you were there to save is actually the person you were sent to fight. Either way, it was pretty confusing!

"What didn't count? Saying that you wouldn't mind that sort of thing? Did something change so that you would mind...?"

"None of the two days when we couldn't lie count."

It sounded worse when he tried to explain it to someone else, and Mello was reasonably sure Bakura would ask the obvious next question: if what you said was true, why not?

"It would've been all right if we'd got there at our own pace, but this was too much, too fast."

"So maybe... if you went back and talked about it at your own pace... maybe the things that happened too fast could be seen as a first run? Knowing how things went doing it that way... if you go back and try again, still being honest, since you both already know what was said was true, but saying it in a way that isn't too much... maybe that would help?" The slowness of Bakura's suggestion made it far too clear that he was well out of his depth with this sort of thing. While experienced in the practice of pretending things just didn't happen when he couldn't deal with them, he'd never been in the sort of situation being talked about.

It might have been a good way to handle this mess, if it weren't for the twit's damn pride. Mello had guessed by now that Near had taken the easy out he'd offered, and had been kicking himself for suggesting it. But he couldn't take it back without looking weak. No, he was stuck.

"We're not like other people. He especially isn't. Getting close to someone is a liability. It makes you vulnerable. Even if you're partners. He was forced to admit he didn't hate the idea, but it would never work in practice."

Bakura shook his head slightly. "It doesn't matter what sort of person you are, being close to someone..." he hesitated a moment before shaking his head again and pressing on. "Especially in this place, you need other people to be strong. When you have someone you care about, that you're close to-- you can create miracles and do things that should be impossible because of that other person. Having someone supporting you, having someone you want to support... it's the strongest feeling in the world. You can do anything if you have that...."

"Miracles," Mello repeated, flatly.

His expression didn't betray it (he'd learnt to school it to blankness, long ago), but he was struck by you can do anything if you have that more than he liked. He'd thought something not very different, the one time he and Near had managed to let all the barriers between them fall.

And Mello had promised not to let either of them raise those barriers again, but he'd been made a liar, as Near seemed to have a talent for doing. That door was closed; he'd closed it himself, even if Near was the one who'd put the padlock on it.

"There's no such thing as miracles, and it's moronic to need anyone. The only person you can ever count on is yourself."

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