[fic] Subway Woes {遊☆戯☆王: mild Bakura/Ryou; PG}
Happy birthday Ryou!
That's right, second update in two days! e_e
Genre: General/Humour
Rating: PG
Pairings: mild Yami no Bakura/Bakura Ryou
Story Type: One-shot
Summary: It was just another typical Sunday.
Disclaimer: If I owned Yuugiou, there would be more Tendershipping moments.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings/Notes: OOC-ish!Bakura, I couldn’t resist. I originally wanted to write this as a Yami/Yuugi piece, but I wrote and read WAY too many Puzzleshipping fics so I decided to give myself a break and explore another relationship’s dynamics. Granted, not working, because Bakura’s not completely IC, but. ;D
Inspired by my experience on the subway, though some of the details are exaggerated/different. Also, I’m placing Domino as a small part of Tokyo - so that I can use the Tokyo transit lines, even if my memory’s fuzzy from last year. xD
-----
Bakura Ryou hummed as he locked the door behind him. This Sunday, like any other ordinary Sunday, he’d go to the mall that was thirty minutes away from his home - by subway - and stock up on whatever the nearby stores and supermarkets couldn’t provide. He pocketed his keys, checked again that there was enough money in his wallet for the trip, and went down the apartment hallway. The familiar weight of his messenger bag rested against his right thigh as he waited for the elevator to take him down fourteen floors, and sure enough, the quiet ding came after a few seconds.
He enjoyed the way the sun beamed on his face, the way the wind ruffled his long, white hair, and the song that just started on his iPod was perfect for the day’s weather condition.
The Domino subway station was no more than a ten-minute walk. Once inside he immediately made his way towards the ticket vending machines, hoping the line-up would be short. Using the wait-time, he double-checked his route and its required fare - yep, 190 yen.
When it was his turn, he quickly pushed the buttons for single person and Harajuku, inserted his bill and coins, grabbed his small, paper ticket, and set off at a quick pace. The train would be here in a minute and he still needed to walk to the other side of the station! Sure, the interval between each train’s arrivals was short, but he wanted to actually find a seat this time. It was surprising how many youngsters parents managed to awake to accompany them to wherever on the only day they didn’t have school.
Ryou smiled as the steady chug-chug of train wheels approached the station. Platform fourteen, JR-Yamanote Line towards Shinjuku, 10:02AM.
Right on time.
To his immense relief, there were still a few available seats other than the ones that were ‘reserved’ for the elderly and disabled. Waiting until a couple walked out, he then slipped past the ones who stood by the sliding door, slightly annoyed that they blocked almost half the space and prevented hurried exit and entrances, and sat parallel with the train, in the middle of the three-seat, cushioned metal bench.
“Next station, Tabata.”
Removing his bag so it laid flat on his lap with the shoulder strap bunched, he then took out his book and settled comfortably to get some reading for his English class done. After all, he could get through a fair number of pages until his stop.
-----
The spirit of the Ring blinked at the jostling, eyes of brown-burgundy under semi-closed eyelids as he assessed the movements and tried to connect them with what little memory and routine he gained (and bothered to remember) from his host.
Ah. It must be a Sunday.
Yami no Bakura got up from his laying position, a hand supporting his upper body’s weight, the other hand propped on top of a bent knee. His host must be on his way to get more things, and by the reverberations in the Millennium Item...
He grinned.
His host was already on the train.
And that meant there were other people.
His grin grew a little wider with the malicious intent of making an appearance.
-----
“Next station, Sugamo.”
Ryou was so absorbed in his book and his music that he didn’t notice the faint glow of the Millennium Ring under his shirt, the light tug that usually meant one of the souls in his body had separated, or the scrutinizing gaze of his darker half, who, at his best, could only remain invisible to everyone else except his ‘other self’. Smiling at a particularly humorous part in the book, he turned the page and continued reading, eyes following the letters so quickly that Yami no Bakura thought his eyes might pop out. Which he wouldn’t particularly care, but then again, he preferred to actually see when he took over the body, thank you very much.
So Yami no Bakura settled to stand in the middle of the aisle, not bothering to lean against the pole. He watched his host, waiting until his consciousness slipped, even just a little bit, then he could control the body, and - Yami no Bakura grinned some more.
But his smirk died on his lips when the sliding doors opened and a flood of people went out and came in. He grimaced as passengers passed right through him as if he was just part of the air they breathed, and he would have gladly banished their souls to the Shadow Realm, except he remembered he was transparent to them. Damn, where did all this logic come from?
And the whole time, Ryou just sat there, reading and listening to his iPod, oblivious to what went on around him, including his yami’s silent fuming.
“Next station, Ootsuka.”
Yami no Bakura glared out the window, seeing the people sitting behind him but never his own reflection, and the trees and buildings beyond the train tracks. This was boring! Why was his host so diligently doing his homework when he could be sleeping, when he could let him do everything?
Some snide voice spoke up about his destructive nature, and he immediately squashed the thought. These voices - that did not belong to him, he argued - were getting really annoying.
Tired of standing and staring at his host doing his mundane task, Yami no Bakura lifted his feet off the ground and sat cross-legged in mid-air. He looked around and noted that people didn’t know how to live properly. The younger ones played with their rectangular things that had little figures hanging from a corner and sparkly things stuck on the rectangular things’ surfaces; the older ones were either reading a book, like his host (does this make his host a thirty-something year old man?, Yami no Bakura idly wondered), or nodding off; and the really old ones (although they were nowhere near his grand age of 3,017) were sitting in a clump together, with canes and wild white hair (again, nowhere near his fabulous hairstyle), complaining about the hospitals.
He barely acknowledged the doors opening at the station until he felt someone move through him for the thirty-first time.
Twitching, he floated up a little more. And nearly screamed, as an extremely tall man got in and his head went through some of his more private areas.
Ryou’s eyes never left the page he was on.
“Next station, Ikebukuro.”
Why wasn’t his host getting off yet? By Ra, how many more stops were there?
Yami no Bakura frowned. Honestly, couldn’t this thing go any faster? And why wasn’t his host falling asleep, like the two adults who sat on either side of him? Surely sleep must be contagious to a certain degree, like yawns?
He really wanted to do something that could cause physical damage - oh, he didn’t just think that, no...
He was going to go crazy with boredom at this rate! The voices were definitely not helping...
The doors slid open. The man on his host’s left side snapped open his eyes and jumped out of his seat, getting out of the compartment along with the majority of the train car’s occupants. Yami no Bakura watched in fascinated horror as the impatient passengers on the platform formed an impressive crowd, waiting for their turn to board. He quickly went up a few more centimetres to avoid any more ‘run-ins’.
“Next station, Mejiro.”
Having ran out of things to stare at now, his attention riveted back to his host, who, to his disappointment, was still very much engrossed in his book. Yami no Bakura was a bit put out by this turn of events. They surely must be halfway on this little ‘trip’ of his host, and he still hadn’t been able to do anything yet!
His gaze left his host’s tamed snow-white hair and wandered down his pale face, where bangs partly covered warm, doe-like chocolate eyes (that were still, to Yami no Bakura’s chagrin, glued to letters and didn’t seem to be going to lift any time soon even under his unofficial examination); further down his bottom lip was tucked in, his top front teeth biting down softly. His host’s head was bobbing unconscientiously to the beat of his music, and slender hands moved as he flipped to the next page.
The woman on his host’s right side was still dozing, jerking awake each time the train slowed, and would fall back to her light stupor after the next station’s name was announced. Another boring subject.
But the spot where the man had just vacated was occupied by another of about the same age, and Yami no Bakura narrowed his eyes, not liking the man instantly.
‘Burly’, as Yami no Bakura dubbed him, was suitably named. This man was broad, and his clothes hid none of the blubber that was present on his arms, waist, and thighs. His sandals also didn’t help in concealing his stubby toes. In fact, he was so fat that even Ryou had to shift around in his seat (sparing just the smallest of irritated glances), to try and find his comfort zone again but failing. The woman beside him jolted and glared at the source of her rude awakening; she lost her annoyance, however, when she saw the uneasy posture of the teen.
Ryou smiled at her gratefully for a brief moment when she shifted to make more room for him, then returned to the paragraph he was on before he was interrupted.
Yami no Bakura scowled and crossed his arms. He hadn’t even bothered to gripe to himself at the next few stops when his personal space was invaded - he was still glowering at the fact that the man was brushing his arm against his host’s.
“Next station, Shinjuku.”
What was that man doing?! How dared he continue to rub against his host’s arm! Damn, his host might look and sound feminine and needed to grow a backbone (just not to me, he added), but he was by no means a girl. Yami no Bakura knew; his host was well-equipped as a male (this comes from the times when I was in control of the body, not from personal observation, he reasoned loudly with himself inside his head).
Burly was starting to look more and more like a pervert-pedophile in Yami no Bakura’s opinion.
And no one could touch his host like that.
...maybe except himself, but that would never happen anyway.
...
The point was, there was no way he would let a complete stranger do this to his host. Most definitely not under his watch. He needed his host to remain pure, and this man was not going to taint this innocence.
So Yami no Bakura continued to burn holes into Burly’s skull.
“Next station, Yoyogi.”
Yami no Bakura felt a trickle of satisfaction when Burly looked up from where he’d been looking at for the past eight and a half minutes (which was alternating between his host’s book, chest, book, chest; it ticked him off to see those beady little black eyes do that).
The man stared in front of him, confusion colouring his face. He got the distinct impression that he was being scrutinized under an unforgiving glare, but everyone else in the compartment was doing their own thing, paying no attention to what was going on around them. So what was that unsettling feeling that he was being monitored...?
He decided to try and ignore it, even if the feeling was still quite intense.
Yami no Bakura smirked.
“Next station, Harajuku.”
Ryou paused in his reading, finally responding to the automated voice from the speaker. He placed the book back in his bag, satisfied that he was a chapter ahead of the assigned readings, zipped and buckled his bag’s cover. Standing, he slung his messenger bag over his shoulder, once again letting its weight lean against his right thigh, and stood close to the door, waiting for the train to pull up to the station.
Yami no Bakura continued to keep an eye on the man, who had his sight set on his host’s back(side). He snarled, silently daring him to do anything and he’d make sure Burly would die a slow and painful death.
The train slowed. It wasn’t until his host was safely out of that man’s sight did Yami no Bakura huff and uncross his arms.
You’ve been staring again, Yami, Ryou mused to himself, careful to hide his mirth from his darker half, who was still hovering at a distance behind him. I’m not completely ignorant about what happens around me even if I seem to be absolutely concentrated on doing something else. You’re not as bad as you let on...maybe one day you’ll come around. He risked a glance behind him; indeed, Yami no Bakura was there, transparent and glaring at a newspaper stand.
Ryou shook his head and snickered.
- Owari -
Authoress Notes: Ehehe, my weak attempt at humour.
Bakura: (gapes) You turned me into...into...like that possessive Pharaoh! (glares) I do NOT act like that!
Yami: (crosses arms) And that is a bad thing how? You should be honoured to have such a divine trait! Although it rather is an insult to my character... (sniffs indignantly)
Bakura: (still gaping) I can’t believe this.
...oh grow up, the both of you.
Also, for plain ol’ random fact: the Seibu Ikebukuro subway line runs in a circle, so there isn’t really an end-station I could put. As well - some stops were skipped. Just felt I should inform you.