Chapter Text
Marik exhaled slowly, pushing the gust of air from his lungs out toward his own reflection in the mirror. He looked amazing, at least, which was a nice counterpoint to the churning garbage that pooled in his heart at the recollection of his last encounter with the thief. And the...others, whoever they were to the white-haired bandit now.
He adjusted his black tie and and blazer, admiring the purple shirt between that really brought out his eyes, according to the attractive man in the Neiman Marcus that had sold it to him, and tucked a strand or two of blonde hair that didn’t fit into the neat ponytail back behind his ears. The action caused the dangling charms at his lobes, his only gold today, to chime pleasantly.
Kaiba didn’t seem any more thrilled to be at this party than he was, which was fantastic, because any lack of happiness on the part of the CEO filled Marik’s joybar on the opposite end, ever since he’d perpetrated the Millennium Item robbery that had thrown his sister’s carefully-crafted plans askew.
Not that he’d begrudge a man for seeing an opening for an advantage and taking it; it was as obvious a strategy in Duel Monsters as it was in business, and while the game in question was Ryou’s intricately creative conception of a tabletop RPG, it still stood to reason that Kaiba especially would know that the game wasn’t over just because one’s opponent’s lifepoints hit zero.
Regardless, he had to get Kaiba to give up the Rod to him before the pharaoh did. The king had gone on about permission and his duties, but when it came down to it the man was a virtuous do-gooder like his vessel and would carry on with whatever he thought the ‘right thing’ was eventually with Marik’s participation or not.
The maimed skin under the lines of Osiris on his back pulsed with angry pain and he cursed, wishing Rishid was here to reach it - he actually was here, at the fundraiser, only a text message away, but he couldn’t rely on his brother forever just because he was too weak to withstand the pain of every deliberately-poorly-healed cut.
He couldn’t tolerate them...them even thinking...even thinking, even...it was his burden, his
his
HIS...
Pause.
Deep inhale through the nose.
Controlled exhale through the mouth.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Gold heat burned behind his eyelids before he realized they were closed, sparking his synapses for an instant, just as dark shadows covered it like the thick smoke of a grease fire.
He shamefully felt his hands tremble as he flipped the faucet back on, collecting water as cold as he could manage from the bathroom in his hand and then dumping it in the sink, pressing the now-cool skin to the jugular on his neck. He certainly wasn’t going to splash his perfectly made-up face with water from a tap.
It wasn’t just that it hurt, physically and otherwise, to think about. It was that sometimes, when he let his guard down, just before the hypnic jerk jolted him from the sleep he so desperately needed, he thought he could hear the familiar voice in his head. And it was angry. Desperate. Betrayed.
And how the fuck was that supposed to make sense to him? The only reason he hadn’t ceased to exist at the behest of his... other personality, who he’d never determined a proper identifier for, was because Marik had himself possessed one of the pharaoh’s vessel’s friends.
He had thought about residing there permanently, of course, given that his preference for men would be more generally accepted in Anzu’s lithe, curvaceous dancer’s body, but couldn’t long entertain the concept of giving up his dick.
Bakura’s sacrifice on the backend of that particular drama was not something he’d easily forget - it’s what had brought him out of Egypt and onto one of KaibaCorp’s helicopters several weeks early.
It was also what had lost Ryou the Ring.
Bakura was gone after Battle City concluded - so he’d thought. When the thief’s host had come to him, as he and Rishid were preparing the yacht for its return trip, Marik had been callously dismissive. He hadn’t considered, at the time, the possibility that Ryou had lost two people he had cared about. But fuck him - Marik had lost them too, and the other man hadn’t even thought to acknowledge that. Their shared grief could have even been the start of a tentative friendship, but instead had dissipated into nothing because when it really came down to it, despite being literally ravished by his body, he didn’t know Ryou at all. His spirit had been everpresent since he’d stabbed his own arm in Domino to ingratiate them into Yugi’s stupid friend circle.
Marik had planned to be at the museum, of course, since the pharaoh had informed them of the impending shadow game in the first place, and Ishizu had been busying herself getting all the artifacts they needed onto a boat, now offloaded and making their way through Ryou’s father’s industrious cataloguing employees in the dusty tomb of a basement.
Here though, in the rooftop greenhouse that overlooked the city, encircled by romantic balconies on all sides, was all fresh air and sharply-dressed people surrounded by life. Marik wanted to worm into their minds with the Rod and force them all to dance an embarrassing flashmob.
Domino Museum was a crown jewel of archaeology, world-renowned, so it really wasn’t a surprise when his sister had discovered the pharaoh reincarnated...sorta...here instead of in Egypt. She had brought the tablets to trigger his memories which seemed only semi-partially successful, if he had to guess.
He swiped a bubbly flute of champagne off a passing service tray, looking upward onto the stage as a hush fell over the crowd, the swish of glittery two-thousand-dollar dresses toward his sister above them rounding out the silence.
Ishizu was always so stunning, no less-so tonight, evermore in her traditional Egyptian attire, the sleek black of her hair and serious eyes commanding attention as readily as Seto Kaiba himself. Rishid said she looked like their mother, and it’s not like they had any photographs, so his mother in his mind’s eye looked the same. He caught his brother’s eye across the crowd and titled his glass upward toward him, smiling when the gesture was reciprocated.
Ishizu leaned gently toward the microphone and spoke, her voice a clear bell echoing off the glass above. “A million thanks to all of you for attending tonight’s Benefit for the continuation of Domino Museum’s Ancient Egypt exhibit. Please, I urge you to give generously so that we may faithfully preserve this fascinating slice of history for the generation of tomorrow. To start us off on the right foot, I am honored to present the CEO of Domino’s very own KaibaCorp, Seto Kaiba.”
The crowd applauded uproariously while Marik pursed his lips; the man sure did have a fanbase despite his prickly personality. Praise be to the gods though for Seto Kaiba’s suit tailor, who managed to showcase that despite the man’s lankiness, he most definitely did not skip leg day at the gym.
“Thank you Dr. Ishtar,” he boomed. “KaibaCorp is proud to provide a two-million dollar grant to the museum, including a half-million endowment to Domino University’s Department of Archaeology.”
His eyes widened considerably. Holy shit. That was surely a drop in the bucket for Kaiba, but still. Even his sister looked surprised. The crowd whispered animatedly.
He continued, “The renovation and exhibit construction will be lead by the the esteemed Kage Bakura’s prestigious firm, and the expansive first-floor historically-accurate diorama is already under development by his son, Domino U student, and,” Kaiba smirked, “most importantly, KaibaCorp Battle City finalist Ryou Bakura.”
Applause erupted again and reporters began hounding Kaiba and his sister with questions.
Marik grabbed another champagne and pounded it. He had met the elder Bakura only once, for long enough to tell that Ryou had gotten his extraordinary good looks from his mother, and that Kage himself barely remembered that he had a son most of the time. He had spoken of how he missed his wife and newborn daughter desperately when he was away for six months at a time like a god damn military deployment.
He guessed it had turned out that more of Ryou’s diorama was salvageable than originally thought, since Zorc’s impatience had caused the party to skip over a bunch of quest points that had ended up buried in sand undamaged after the maelstrom of magic that had extinguished Its presence from the Puzzle and the Ring.
The sight of him waving bashfully from where the cameras and most of the tabloid press had descended still caused pleasurable tingles to traverse his circulatory system. It was scandalous really, since intellectually he understood that the thief was a separate physical being now, immensely attractive in his own right, and if he kept up that train of thought there wouldn’t be enough cold water in the world to quell what had asserted its interest in his pants.
The thief wasn’t here tonight though, nor were Ryou’s other toys. And they were asking him about Yu-gi and what kind of lover he was and whether or not they dueled before bed.
Marik rolled his eyes. Sickening.
A question for his sister caught his ear, then.
“Dr. Ishtar, will you be entertaining a dueling rematch with Mr. Kaiba?”
She smiled demurely and rested her cheek in her palm. “I’m afraid my dueling days are behind me. I am very much committed to my museum work and education, now.”
Not to mention the fact that my entire deck and every move I made was predestined by a magical artifact given to me by my abusive, cult-leader father! Marik added in his head.
And suddenly there were cameras and phones in his face instead, probably livestreaming and now he was pretty glad he’d checked his traditional kohl in the mirror.
“And what about you, Mr. Ishtar? You nearly took down the King of Games! Are you willing to go head-to-head with his archrival?”
It occurred to him that he had no idea how much of the final battle’s footage Kaiba had edited before it had aired, hours later. Had he boffed a draw? Run out of cards? Simply forfeit?
“Absolutely,” he said, loudly enough for Kaiba to hear from the stage, and the reporters were practically salivating. “When he wants to lose again, I’m available.”
The response his challenge caused was sensational, both from his admirers and Kaiba himself, whose grip on his crystal rocks glass threatened to shatter it all over the stage. The barrage of everyone talking to him at once on his eardrums both amused and aggravated him, though; he hadn’t expected much, if any, media attention in Domino. He was top-ranked in the Middle East, but it was a smaller circuit.
“No more questions!” he commanded, “I am dangerously sober!” He flashed a Namu smile and politely extricated himself from the fray to head for the bar, laughter trailing behind him.
Marik explained to the bartender that he wanted a three-finger neat pour of that one, though pointing when rows upon rows of underlit amber-colored liquor were available was making things difficult. (He couldn’t remember the name of it.) He knew Kaiba was approaching because the crowd that was still buzzing around him started to quiet and scatter.
A pretty woman in stilettos had started shooing them away, handing out cards for Kaiba’s media contact to direct their further questions. Hey, hadn’t she been in the lounge when…?
“Ishtar.”
Marik’s eyes flicked briefly to the subtle bandage wrapped around the other man’s left hand. “Kaiba.”
They stared at each other for a moment, Marik very dramatically batting his eyes, kind of regretting it on second thought because it was blurring his view of Kaiba’s gorgeous blues, as icy as his dragon’s.
“This one sir?” the bartender interrupted. Marik inspected the bottle.
“No, the one with the pig on the label.”
“Ah, very good. Just a moment.” He retrieved the proper bottle and filled a proper glass with a properly large pour.
Marik took a hearty sip and swallowed, clearing his throat before speaking again, just to fill the silence. “If you want to duel me now, you can forget it, I don’t carry around my deck like a fucking nerd.”
That woman working for the CEO must be a magician herself, because they nearly had privacy now despite the open space. Their bubble was now so secure it may as well be a separate room; three Ghouls were still in eyeshot at least, he noted, musing that he should probably hand out some raises.
“Dueling a worthy opponent is always a tempting proposition, but I’m afraid that’s not why I am compelled to waste precious minutes of my evening listening to you whine,” Kaiba replied, catching the bartender’s attention and lifting a finger. He nodded and started crafting something fancy with bitters and shit.
Marik liked the way the words ‘tempting’ and ‘proposition’ fit between Kaiba’s perfect lips. He thought about telling him so, but had originally initiated the flirting to make the man mildly uncomfortable. He never expected the jerk to spring the trap of reciprocity. Maybe Marik was the one being messed with! Kaiba was exclusively dating very suitable, very beautiful women, of course. Not that he’d looked up every single article he could find on the subject after their encounter in Ryou’s apartment.
Bakura had always insisted that Kaiba was super into that other Battle City guy, the obnoxious blonde that clung to Yugi, but even if it was true Marik thought it was a one-off. He took another golden gulp of his drink.
“Always ruining your very accurate compliments with plebeian snark, Kaiba.” He crossed one toe of his derby-brown Ferragamos over his other foot and tapped it on the tile.
He seemed to ignore the taunt, but he definitely checked out the shoes.
“The pharaoh tells me you had quite the reaction to his proposal.” Deliciously devoid of positive or negative endorsement. Deliciously Kaiba. That was his negotiating voice - neutral at first, betraying nothing about his personal opinion on the subject.
“And what did the noble pharaoh tell you I told them?”
“He said you were...impolite.”
“Ha, he really puts the ‘Atem’ in understatement.”
“They were concerned that you made a scene.”
“Oh come on! Bakura was laughing hysterically.”
“If the thief thinks something is funny, it is likely immoral or illegal.”
“Or both.”
“Inclusive ‘or’ is implied, Ishtar. If I hadn’t meant that I would have said xor.”
“Ex? What about your ex? Does this mean you’re single again?”
“It’s a logic gate, A xor B means A or B but not both.”
“Is this some computer-y thing I’m too cool to understand?”
“Cool is not the word that came to mind.”
“My turn to ignore your insult. I take it the fact you haven’t given them the Rod back means that you intend to use it as some kind of leverage...”
“How astute.”
“...and that in this one article about you and your two little girlfriends, the headline should really say ‘Billionaire Playboy Seto Kaiba Rumored to Be Dating Movie Maven Calisto Green ‘xor’ Heiress slash Duel Monsters Champion Vivian Wong’?”
Kaiba wrinkled his brow. It was kind of hot. “That’s…”
“Now back to the Rod, the pharaoh fulfilling his duties is not a fucking bargaining chip, it is just what he has to do. You will be giving it to my sister, and you’ll convince the triumvirate and their puppetmaster to return the Ring and the Puzzle, too.”
“You…?”
“Took the duffel with the other dormant Millennium Items in it and passed it to a Ghoul who impersonated one of your entourage? Yeaaahh...you didn’t think the shadow game victors were in any state of mind to really register that, huh? Don’t judge me, you took something too.”
“You are desperately difficult to follow.”
“No, I’m not. You just have to keep your eyes on my ass as I walk away and eventually you’ll end up in my bed.” He leaned in towards the other man’s face, elbow braced on the bar and bedroom eyes in full effect. “Keep following me, Kaiba, and I promise that not one of those women will ever cross your mind again.”
The brunette didn’t lean closer, nor did he move away. “Is that so,” he said, without the intonation of a question, passive, neutral again, goddammit that was infuriating. Marik wanted to wipe that smug, self-satisfied grin right off his angular, perfectly symmetrical face. With his fist. Or his lips.
Punch first, then kiss. Bonus for the taste of blood. Fuck...that shit was starting to sound like his other self.
Some commotion outside of their sphere of protection alerted Kaiba and he did pull back then, eyes flitting between the screen of his phone he’d just whipped out from his pocket and the nearby bodyguard. “Listen, Ishtar. I’m not a fan of the pharaoh’s charity work because his manic opponent nearly took down my airship. But, he also nearly took down the pharaoh in a duel.”
“With my deck. And all this conversation has told me is that you’re not even picking a side.”
“I’m playing both sides, so that I come out on top.”
“Say those last five words again, with a little more comma?”
Kaiba scowled. Why was that hot too? “I should get back out to finish these insufferable networking formalities. I want your sister to have at least five million before I’m done here.”
“Aw, not enjoying the party?” he pouted, wiping a faux tear from the corner of his eye.
“This isn’t exactly my idea of a party.”
As if this man had ever legitimately enjoyed a social gathering. Still, Marik was curious. “What is, then?”
“An evening of relative solitude with a pool table and a few stiff Manhattans. And a duel.”
Of course, a duel. Marik could abide by the beverage choice though, which he noted was probably the up-not-over version of the cocktail meticulously constructed by the mixologist, martini glass now delicately nestled in Kaiba’s long fingers. Marik had the sudden urge to see how far he could deepthroat one or two. He extended and raised his glass.
“What, no toast?” Kaiba said slyly.
Marik chuckled. “Fine. To money.”
Kaiba connected the glasses, a musical chime of crystal instead of the stilted clink of glass, and took a tidy sip before plunging his fingers to the bottom of the cone and retrieving the lone dark Luxardo cherry soaked in booze. “Have you ever tried one of these? They’re expensive,” Kaiba said holding it out towards his face, and did that motherfucker just read his mind with the Rod about that finger sucking thing? Where the hell would he put it given that perfectly-tailored suit?
Two can play that and Marik knew how to call a bluff. He leaned forward and pulled the cherry into his mouth with his tongue, then wrapped his lips around Kaiba’s fingers to suck off the excess alcohol while staring him down. The tip trailed the pads of his fingers as he finally lingered at the end of the lewd gesture and bit down into the fruit, a rich burst of flavor enriching his palate.
Kaiba didn’t react at all, and he didn’t break eye contact.
“Mm, I can see why. Too bad this one didn’t have a stem for me to show off my tongue-tying skills.”
“I’m certain you leave plenty of other men tongue-tied. I am not one of them.”
The bodyguard was chatting quietly, but energetically, with one of Marik’s own that had been lurking more closely than the others. For every one visible he knew both he and Kaiba would have three hidden.
As he’d manifested the thought though, Kaiba had strode away, nodding at the woman (who followed obediently) and heading toward the distant pocket of press that was still, mercifully, focused on Marik’s beautiful sister and not his still-flushed face from the overt flirting.
He left a crisp hundred on the granite, hoping the barkeep would slip it into his pocket instead of into the donation jar.
The buzz from the whiskey and glass...es...of champagne should have been relaxing, but the surprisingly stimulating conversation with the pharaoh’s former High Priest had him on a razor’s edge for the remainder of the evening. Marik had eventually found himself assisting Rishid and Ishizu to break down tables with some of the cleaning staff, along with other standard end-of-party tasks, while Kaiba had disappeared with a few donors to, presumably, milk them for a few more tens of thousands while they were still intoxicated.
When Ishizu had finally banished him with a smile and, “Please return home, Brother, you have been more than enough help tonight,” he had obliged gratefully and headed toward the centrally-located elevator.
Ishizu always referred to ‘home’ as wherever her brothers were. His heart swelled at the thought.
He sighed, releasing some of the tension in his back, until it returned with a vengeance when he heard a polite, “Hold the door, please!” in a familiar British accent. He mashed the ‘Door Close’ button feverishly but the gods weren’t on his side tonight, and the white-haired man slipped inside elegantly.
Marik said nothing as the doors shut and the elevator began to move; they were ten stories up or so, and Ryou pressed the Basement button adjacent to the Lobby.
“Hello Marik,” the puppetmaster said, and Marik finally met his eyes, still struck by how immaculately beautiful he was even in the dim light of the elevator. The bright red duster he was wearing contrasted delightfully with the flaxen braid draped fashionably over his right shoulder, and made him look way too much like the thief for Marik’s already-horny disposition after his interaction with Kaiba. Then again, this was the thief as he had known him, Biblically and otherwise, and that wasn’t helping.
So, he remained silent, arms folded and leaning against the corner of the tiny metal box, as far from the offending party as he could stand.
“Ah, the silent treatment,” the tease murmured, hand still hovering over the elevator buttons.
Somewhere between the fifth and sixth floors, Ryou’s fist shot out like a viper into the red plastic of the emergency stop, and the compartment lurched to a halt, causing Marik to stumble slightly, though he tried to make the stabilization look purposeful.
He sighed markedly and shot a dirty look across the now-unmoving compartment. “Fucking why? I have nothing to say to you,” Marik said to the other man through gritted teeth.
“I’d like you to reconsider...”
“Reconsider talking to you? I already wish I’d taken the stairs,” he replied, becoming more irritated by the second.
“You know precisely what I’m going to ask you.”
He wanted to play? Fine. Marik was perfectly capable of that. He stepped forward to broach the personal bubble and pressed his height advantage, leaning over the other man with a palm pressed flat against the wall next to his head, and Ryou’s eyes widened in surprise. Good.
A swell of arousal overtook him as he leaned closer, until he could smell the chardonnay on his breath, imagining Bakura grinning up at him and reaching around to grab his ass. His hand that wasn’t bracing the wall lifted slowly from his side to wrap around Ryou’s pretty white neck, bared oh-so-temptingly and mottled with poorly-concealed bruises.
He gasped a startled, “What…” before the pressure cut off his air supply.
Marik let out a dark laugh. “Just testing a theory.” He gripped harder, definitely enough to hurt, and pressed their bodies together until he could feel the swell of the other man’s cock against his thigh. Ryou looked convincingly terrified, but he knew better. It wasn’t until Marik tugged on the braid that he felt a rumbling moan in his throat through the small opening that hadn’t yet been fully constricted. “I fucking knew it. For all the righteous pandering to the pharaoh’s sensibilities, your real motivations are so simple.” He dipped his lips to the patch of skin beneath Ryou’s ear and allowed him a gasp of breath.
His pale hands raised from his sides, to push him away? No, of course not. They clawed at his back and pulled him closer, so Marik deployed teeth to his neck instead, adding his own marks to the constellation and grinding their pelvises together to a very satisfying groan of pleasure.
It made sense, of course; their bodies wouldn’t have worked properly the first time around if there wasn’t some innate physical attraction there. When he finally captured Ryou’s mouth with his own he still foolishly expected the taste of the thief to answer. The tongue that fought with his, though, even moved differently, and he wondered how it would feel running up the length of his cock, enough to consider forcing the man to his knees to find out.
He wrapped his hand around Ryou’s erection between them through his trousers, pulling gently upward, and he said, “Oh god,” so beautifully Marik wasn’t even disappointed that he had broken the kiss.
“You have three desirable men at your beck and call and you still want more. If you miss my cock that much you don’t have to go to the Shadow Realm for another taste of it.” He punctuated the statement with another well-timed squeeze and Ryou was panting, now.
“It’s not like that,” he breathed in reply, and now he was pushing him away. “Is it so hard to believe that I don’t want another being to suffer?”
Marik’s back ached where Ryou had touched it, but he released the other man reluctantly and stepped back, pants still agonizingly tight. “He is Suffering, Ryou, the concept itself. Mine. So steeped in trauma that I split it from myself. Are you so desperate for any sliver of affection that you would risk death again to bring that thing back into the world? Is he your backup plan for when the pharaoh realizes how fucked up you are and runs off with the other two? I would say there’s always family, but all you have left is your father and he doesn’t even care about you.” As far as party geography was concerned, Ryou was practically in a different hemisphere from his father the entire evening, and he never saw them even speak to one another.
There were tears in his eyes now. “I need some distance…”
“You trapped us in a fucking elevator!” He slammed his fist against the wall. “How much distance do you think there is between us and them? I can still feel his desire for you and you’re still trembling in anticipation for me giving it to you.” He knew this man’s ass like the back of his hand, the divet between his shoulder and neck under his lips, the contours of his abs, the slight curve of his arousal twitching as he drove into him from behind, fist wrapped tightly around a section of long hair. He wanted it, he wanted it, just as badly as Ryou did.
“I think you’re wrong,” he said coldly, glancing over the barb about his father entirely.
“Wrong about…”
“Wrong about your other self. He was vulnerable and beautiful, and he made love to me in total darkness. He did what you couldn’t because he wasn’t afraid of something so stupid.”
The emergency lights flickered and his heart leapt.
How the fuck did Ryou turn this on him?! He was as callous and manipulative as his spirit, except all serious about it, no humor at all. Bakura would have told him to go fuck himself and meant it literally.
He decided to change the subject to Ryou’s light-threatening magic. “You’re still wearing the Ring.” Marik had felt it through his shirt when they were pressed up against each other. Not so inactive after all under his control, was it?
“Admirable deflection,” he said with a very convincing impression of the thief's smirk. “Without the clutter of the other two, it’s much more sensitive to shadow magic - the Millennium Items were weapons before Atem trapped them, after all.”
Ryou closed the distance between them again; what a mixed fucking message! “Make no mistake, Marik. He will wait for your cooperation, but I will not.”
Would he, now? That's not what Marik had been thinking about the king earlier this evening. “You will still be hard-pressed without the Rod.”
“Who says I won’t have the Rod?”
“Literally Kaiba?”
“Seto is quite the enigma, isn’t he?”
The fuck was that supposed to mean?
At some point the elevator had started moving again, but he was still surprised when the doors crawled open to reveal both his and Kaiba’s people at the bottom chattering into their earpieces at having ‘recovered them’. He and Ryou were still close, enough to be compromising, though Marik with his back to the doors was looking over his shoulder, but luckily no press were among them.
Ryou’s disposition flipped on a dime. “Oh, thank you!” He waved politely at the collected onlookers, following a small apologetic laugh. “If everything is working, I’m still heading to the basement.” He was smiling again, innocent and cheerful. "I hope you have a pleasant evening, Marik. It has been good to see you."
Marik shoved off the wall and turned away. He could feel Ryou’s stare burning into his back as he strode quickly toward the museum exit, resolving to walk ‘home’ to clear his head. Ghouls flanked him protectively but kept their distance.
Nevermind that during his little inner musing in the washroom, Marik had admitted that he cared about the other version of himself. Nevermind that he twisted his shoulder to target the pain again, pervasive, annoying because it made him think of the man that had taken the worst of it for him. It was odd, though. Ever since the shadow game, the likeness of Obelisk had been entirely, blessedly numb.
When he dared to look in the mirror that evening, even through the collected condensation from his shower, it almost looked like it was healing.