Chapter Text
When it came to wagers, Bakura tended to abide by the rule of ‘go big, or go home’. A king among thieves had little use for gambling needlessly, after all. Not unless what he wanted was a nigh-unattainable prize worth putting everything he had on the line for.
A Millennium item, for instance. Or an ironclad guarantee he could watch the Pharaoh rot in nothingness, forever denied the afterlife.
“Yanno, when I said ‘I bet you anything’, I meant more like I’d buy you a Coke or something…”
Or this was good too…
“Stop trying to weasel out of it.” the spirit said, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned himself against the doorframe, watching Marik apply his kohl. “It’s only dinner.”
“It STARTS as dinner.” Marik corrected him. “And then after we’re done, you drag me to the carnival that’s conveniently going on right next door, we end up in the tunnel of love, and by the end of it, you’ve got me bent over the back of our wooden swan boat!”
Bakura blinked in response, quirking a brow. “How...strangely specific of you.”
“You should’ve seen how many reviews that friggin fanfic had.”
“I don’t think I’ve found that one yet. Spot me the link?.” the spirit grinned, receiving a scowl from Marik’s reflection
“Not happening!.” the boy huffed, tracing along his waterline with practiced ease before drawing the first of the two jagged under-eye swoops that were his birth rite. “The last thing I need is you getting any weird ideas from fangirls who have even weirder ones. Like I’d ever let anyone bend ME over a swan.”
“Perish the thought.” Bakura nodded in stern agreement, admirably suppressing the urge to ask him if locations sans swans were acceptable. “If it makes you feel better, this is the wrong time of the year for carnivals...not to mention the fact we’re in the arse-end of Egypt.”
“You really think the world of fan fiction gives a crap??” Marik demanded to know, whirling sharply to face Bakura brandishing the kohl stick as a makeshift pointer and forcing him to take a step back to avoid ending up jabbed with it. “One minute we’re in Egypt, and the next, we’re inexplicably at Disneyworld! It makes NO sense because it knows it doesn’t have to!”
“I’m not going to bugger you in the Tunnel of Love, all right??” Bakura snapped, growing tired of Marik’s dawdling. “It’s not like we’ve never been out to eat together, for bloody’s sake.”
The kohl stick continued to point accusingly before it slowly began to lower and Marik turned to deposit it back in its pot. “Whatever.” he grumbled, sounding like a child who had realized he’d run out of argument.
“Don’t know what you’re so bloody defensive over.” Bakura went on, his attention shifting away from Marik to spare his own reflection a cursory examination. His hair was wild, his shirt was wrinkled, and the pouches under his eyes spoke of a guy who would happily gut someone just for asking what time it was. Perfect. “When it’s all said and done, you’ll just deny it was a date anyway and we’ll both carry on like nothing happened.”
“Let’s go.” Marik huffed, blustering out of the bathroom past him. “This is the LAST time I wager in a Game of Thrones deadpool with you.”
“You’re the one who bet me ANYTHING that Will would make it to the season finale.” Bakura retorted, an air of smugness in his voice as he trailed after his cohort to the stairs leading up and out of the hideout.
When the waitress had seated them in the very back of the mostly-vacant restaurant, Bakura had dared to fancy his odds of this going well.
With no immediate distractions and no prying eyes for Marik to feel the need to defend his utmost straightness to, it meant they might be able to actually talk and, in his mind’s eye, it was even a conversation of substance - one in which he was able to get his cohort to admit that it wasn’t so bad, the two of them being out like this. The mood would lighten as Marik relaxed, and they would, perhaps, decide the night didn’t need to end there. They could go for a walk, or to see a movie. Yes...a late movie, with the entire back row to themselves. And then the lights would turn down, and perhaps Marik WOULD end this night bent over a swan boat...with Bakura playing the role of said boat.
It could have gone that way, but instead Bakura was glaring, unimpressed, as he watched Marik systematically stack and spread menus across his side of the table, disappearing behind a makeshift wall of them. A discontent silence reigned between them, broken only by the shuffle of plastic flaps against the tabletop.
“Have you figured out what you’re ordering yet?” the blonde inquired at last.
“....yes. I thought I might try the--”
“Good. I need that.” Marik interrupted, reaching across the table to pluck the menu from the spirit’s fingers. Bakura’s hands remained poised a moment more, as if refusing to believe that had just happened, before they curled slowly into white-knuckled fists of growing frustration as Marik used the final menu to situate a roof of sorts on his makeshift fortress before hunkering fully down behind it, completely hidden from view.
“Really?”
“What?” The pile of menus shifted slightly so that Marik could peer out of them.
“You can’t even give it a rest long enough to honor a bloody bet?”
“You never said anyone had to SEE us together.” Marik argued, ducking back down again behind his wall of entrees and appetizers. “Ooh, they have lychee ice cream! Fancy.”
Bakura waited...for what, he wasn’t quite sure. For Marik to realize he was being ridiculous, perhaps. Maybe for the waitress to return and tear down Fort Wanker so that she could take their order. Or maybe...he was wondering why he’d even bothered. For some reason, he’d thought that this might be different from any of the other times he’d tried to snuff out the tense air that lingered between them and get some thiefshipping going proper...that maybe, knowing this entire “date” was merely the result of losing a bet, might have made it easier for Marik to stomach as it offered him a ready excuse to anyone who asked.
But no. Marik had clearly dedicated himself to being stroppy about the whole thing, and Bakura was beginning to think there may be better ways to waste his evening other than dragging Marik along after him, kicking and screaming the whole while. Throwing his napkin atop his empty plate, the spirit rose from his seat.
“Where are you going?” Marik asked.
“Out.”
“We’re already out. It was your idea, remember?”
In response, Bakura brought both palms down hard on the tabletop in utter frustration, making the silverware jump and the great wall of menus topple over in a pathetic shuffle, leaving the duo staring one another down.
“Right. Well now you can say it was YOUR idea. Because as far as I’m concerned, I may as well have never been here.”
“But--”
“ Goodnight , Marik”
He turned sharply on his heel and stalked away from the seating area toward the exit, fuming all the while. He had no particular destination in mind…as long as it was ‘away’, that would be just fine. Though, given that Marik had the keys to the bike, and the buses didn’t tend to drop off Somewhere In Egypt, his options were a bit limited, he thought, as he shouldered open the door and was buffeted by a wall of arid desert weather. If he kept walking deeper into town, he could disappear into the back alleys and let his knives take out his foul mood on anyone he happened to find in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or, he could probably make it back to the hideout after nightfall, close himself up in his room, and vent his frustrations another way. He supposed it didn’t matter….either option would involve waking up later covered in bodily fluid and feeling grimly sated.
He was halfway across the parking lot when the glass-paned door he’d just exited through banged open.
“HEY!” Marik’s voice squawked after him. Bakura didn’t even break stride, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Bakura! Hey! Hey Bakuraaaa! I know you can hear me!” he prattled. The voice was accompanied of the scuff of Marik’s boots on the asphalt as he jogged to catch up. “How dare you try to stick me with the bill! I am WAY too pretty to buy my own dinner!”
Bakura gritted his teeth, quickening his step a bit.
“I mean, geezus, what are you even doing? First you want to go on this date now you’re trying to ditch me. What’s your problem, anyway?”
Before he could stop himself, Bakura had rounded on the boy. “You.” he growled in a voice that could curdle milk. “ You’re my bloody problem, Marik.”
“Me? What’d I do?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised, which only served to make Bakura angrier.
“The same thing you’ve done for years! Nothing !” the spirit erupted, throwing up his hands. “I follow around behind you, cleaning up your messes, fighting your battles, making your bloody breakfast , all the while thinking maybe - MAYBE - it will be worth my time one of these days! That you’ll finally pull your head out of your arse and think about MY feelings once in awhile!”
“You said you didn’t have any of those!”
“And I wish it had been true! Is it really so much to ask that you drop the act for one evening??”
“There is no act! I am completely--”
“--full of it!” Bakura finished for him. “And why? For what reason? Because it would make you less evil somehow to say you like dicks? It isn’t as if you’re subtle about it with the way you leave your bloody yaoi all over your room!”
“Research, Bakura!” Marik hastily corrected him, his face flushing with outrage as he tried desperately to save face in front of the couple exiting the restaurant that had just caught the tail-end of Bakura’s outburst and was eying them oddly as they passed by. “I’m always on the lookout for potential Steves. Have you SEEN the guys in those comics? Some of them are straight-up diabolical with the way they manipulate entire plots to revolve around getting in their pants!”
“You know what? Fine. Yes. That’s exactly what you’re doing. Locking yourself up in your room every night with a bottle of hand lotion and a handful of ice cubes to search for minions in badly-drawn pornographic comics where everyone has hands larger than their bloody head. And you know WHY you’re doing that? Because you are the WORST villain this series has ever had to suffer!”
“It’s not like you’re so great either!” Marik retorted. “At least I’M out getting things done instead of sitting around on my butt for four seasons being a grouchy British jerk!”
“Your butt…” Bakura gritted out. “...isn’t even that great.”
There was an immediate, stunned silence on both their parts. A line had been crossed, and they both knew it. They were now standing at an awkward crossroads where Bakura could backpeddle and apologize, thereby salvaging their friendship, or….
“In fact,” he went on instead, the mad bull of his temper charging around the china shop of Marik’s ego. “It’s not even in my top ten. Kaiba has a better butt than you.”
“You…..I---” Marik was reeling as he took a step back from Bakura, looking as if he’d just been flayed open...Bakura, after all, knew exactly what that looked like. All at once he turned, shambling in the direction of the bike. “I’ve got to go. Like right now. Yeah. I’m going.”
“Piss off, then.” Bakura snapped at his partner’s retreating back, standing his ground rigidly as he watched Marik mount his motorcycle and hastily rev it before peeling out past him in a scuffling of tires. The wind he left in his wake caught Bakura’s overshirt and made it flap as he turned his head to watch Marik attempt to outrace his wounded pride down the dusty side-road that had brought them here.
Idiot.
As Marik veered around a sharp corner, fish-tailing as he took it much too quickly, Bakura began to walk in the opposite direction, feeling none the better about any of it. It wasn’t the first time they’d locked horns, but it WAS the first time it had gotten quite this personal.
“Buggery…” the spirit cursed, kicking at a small rock and sending it bouncing along the blacktop.
The small click of its impact with the nearby curb, however, was drowned out entirely by a much larger thud and screaming of tires, followed by an ominous silence. Bakura paused, listening, and waiting to hear the distant roar of Marik’s bike driving off into the distance as he reached the main road.
Instead he heard the distant slamming of a car door and the urgent chatter of two voices, of which he could only make out pieces.
“--just drove right out in front of me! I didn’t have time--”
“--call somebody?”
“I’m trying!”
It wasn’t just a sinking feeling in his stomach, but in his entire body, leaving him with the sensation of every step taking him an eternity, despite the fact anyone watching would agree that he’d bounded across the parking lot with impressive speed toward the sound of the commotion.
Let him be wrong. By the various, assorted gods, yes. Please. Let him be wrong. Let Marik be at the roadside rubbernecking the accident like the unhelpful twit that he was. Let him turn up his nose at Bakura when he saw him coming and drive off in a snit. Yes, even that...he would happily take that. Just as long as he wasn’t--
Bakura skidded around the blind turn, slipping on the dust almost as gracelessly on foot as Marik had managed on the bike and brought himself to a halt. The first thing he noticed was that his cohort’s bike was jammed most of the way beneath a car that had been going the other direction. His wild, desperate gaze, then, fell on the two men about ten yards behind the collision standing over something.
Or someone .
“MARIK!” he yelled, bolting past the two vehicles and nearly tripping himself over one of the miniature day-glo fuzzy dice Marik had hung from his mirror that had been jarred loose from the impact and now laid in the road. Another few yards and he’d flung both men aside and scrambled the last bit of distance to the blonde’s crumpled body. To him, the usually-vibrant youth looked much too still. “Marik, wake up!” His hands spidered uselessly on the air over the boy, wanting to shake life back into him, slap him, do SOMETHING, even as an inner voice warned that he shouldn’t be moved.
There was no telling how badly he was--
Marik suddenly bolted upright, blinking owlishly as he tried to bring the world around him back into focus.
“Marik…” Dismay had shoved itself forefront in the swarm of emotions battering against the cage of Bakura's being. “Are you all right?”
The boy’s head turned in Bakura’s direction as Marik stared at him a moment.
“Kaiba doesn’t even HAVE a butt…!” he said in an unsteady, though nonetheless offended, voice before slumping back to the pavement in a heap as he’d been a moment ago. Bakura hesitated, wondering if he’d merely imagined it, before rifling out his phone to call for an ambulance.
If his partner's backstory was any indication, he reasoned, Marik would probably be fine.