Sometimes he could completely forget what day it was if someone didn’t remind him. Holidays didn’t mean all that much to him; most of his life, he’d never celebrated a single one beyond what was expected of him. So coming home from school and seeing a black circle so large it covered the day before, after, above, and below it marked around the 14th was something of a surprise – and was a little disconcerting.

What was only slightly less disconcerting was yelling his own name around the apartment to get attention. “Bakura!”

An ominous silence filled the apartment for several long heartbeats till a silver-haired head peered around a corner. Eyes nearly the same shade as the hair projected way too much innocence to be healthy for anyone involved. In fact, he was having to bite down the automatic reaction of demanding to know what the other had done. “What?” Too innocent, indeed.

‘Deep breaths,’ he reminded himself. ‘There’s no way he’s hiding a body in here. Even Atem’s too big for him to hide in here.’

“What’s up with the calendar?” he made himself ask as calmly as he could.

“The idiot Pharaoh came by.” A grin was forming as the thief sidled part of the way around the corner, still partially hidden by the wall. “He was all despairing because the blond pup just told him about this Valentine’s Day thing – and he didn’t have a thing to gift the midget Pharaoh.”

For a moment, he felt the cold hand of terror run up his spine. ‘Maybe a corpse in the cupboard would have been better. Oh, the psychological damage he can wreak with that much room to play.’ “So what did you tell him? Am I going to have to take Yuugi-kun or Atem-kun to the shrink again?”

“Of course not. I doubt he’ll take my advice, but I’m not putting him in the hospital again.” He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Listening to him whine about that the other times was enough for me, thanks.” A curious expression covered the Thief King’s face. “You didn’t tell me there were sweets being distributed today.”

Two more deep breaths, then he could ask, “What did you do?”

“Went shopping.”

At least now he could breathe a sigh of relief. With Bakura, ‘shopping’ was synonymous with ‘stealing’, but at least his other possessed the skills to never get caught. And it certainly freed up a lot more of their limited funds for more fun things.

“Yadonushi?” He tilted his head in confusion at the strange but cheerful entreaty in his other’s voice. “Come here.”

Hestitantly, he crossed the room to move closer to his other. With an almost giddy smile, the thief pulled him into the bedroom they shared. Almost every surface was bedecked with some sort of pilfered treat. Knowing Bakura as he did, he was almost willing to bet dishes duty for a month that he’d taken all of them before they could be delivered, so that the original owners would have to go buy more and he could therefore hit them again. His other called it ‘repeat shopping’, and he was an expert at it. He didn’t see anything – at least not at first glance – that seemed to come from his favorite targets: Atem-kun, Yuugi-kun, or Honda-kun.

“Did you clean out half of Domino?” he had to ask. “This has to be your best haul to date.”

“I cleaned off as many of the idiots as I could.” He picked up a box with that same impish grin growing a bit more. “Are these those ‘chocolate cherry’ things you like, yadonushi?”

…Apparently, he’d completely misinterpreted the situation, he mused to himself as Bakura set a piece of his favorite chocolate into his mouth. Here he’d been thinking he’d somehow managed to end up with the one other half without a sentimental bone in his body. Perhaps he’d been mistaken. He had never known holidays could be so much fun.

Somehow I was thinking I had long ago put this story on DM.net[endsection]