Work Text:
“When was the last time you even threw anything away?” Malik was shoulders-deep in Ryou’s side of the closet, digging through layers of old clothes.
“This isn’t fair. You came from Egypt with one suitcase and I’ve lived here since high school, of course your half of the closet looks better.” Ryou flopped into the pile of shirts that Malik had flung across the bed.
“My side of the closet looks better because I already Kon-Mari’d it. Come on, help me with this. You’ll be glad you did.”
Ryou rolled his eyes and wished they’d never bought that book. When they found it in the bookstore, they’d both laughed until they were wheezing. “The Life-Changing Magic,” Ryou read off the cover, “okay, okay, with you so far, but then, ... of Tidying Up?”
Malik doubled over with the same gallows humor. “You could have saved everyone so much trouble if you had known to just toss the Ring out with the trash because it didn’t spark joy.” Malik took the book out of Ryou’s hands and flipped through the pages. “‘If you’re mad at your family, your room may be the cause.’ ‘Tidying is a dialogue with one’s self.’ Ryou, this is triggering me.”
They bought the book mainly so that they could continue laughing at it without getting dirty looks from the bookstore employees. Then Ryou noticed it a few weeks later on Malik’s bedside table with a bookmark two-thirds of the way through. “It’s actually kind of interesting,” Malik admitted. “I think some of it might be worth trying.”
Which was why Ryou was now surrounded by all the clothes he owned as Malik presented each of his shirts to him and demanded to know whether they sparked joy. “This sucks,” Ryou complained, sagging backwards into the clothes pile and pulling out his phone.
Malik whipped a shirt at him. “Focus! You promised we would do clothes this weekend.”
“Did I really have a choice?” Ryou grumbled.
“Not really.” Malik smiled sweetly. “But you did promise.”
“Ugh.”
Malik dug around some more and tugged out a shirt that Ryou hadn’t seen in five years, at least. “What the hell, Ryou, please tell me you never wore this.”
“I liked that shirt,” Ryou said primly. It was a teal plaid shirt with purple trim that he remembered wearing on the weekends occasionally in late high school. He didn’t actually care one way or the other about that particular shirt, but pushing Malik’s buttons was the only joy he was getting out of this process.
“It’s hideous.” Malik held it out at arm’s length to study it.
“Says the guy who ran around in purple belly shirts.”
“Look, I had only worn linen robes before that, and I got over that phase pretty quick. What’s your excuse? Did the Spirit dress you in this?”
Ryou shook his head. “Nope, he was long gone when I got that.”
Malik groaned. “Okay, keep or discard?”
“Keep.”
Malik tossed the offending shirt in a ball at Ryou’s feet. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
Ryou put his phone down so that Malik would see he had his full attention. “I just don’t get why you think this is so important.”
“I’m trying to help you.” Malik crawled onto the bed next to Ryou and folded his legs, resting his chin on one knee. “Don’t you think it would be better for you to clear out some of this clutter? It’s liberating.”
Ryou had never seen his things as clutter , and the idea of having his apartment stripped down to only the essentials made him feel exposed, not liberated. It wasn’t like he was untidy, or that there wasn’t enough room for Malik’s possessions. “I like my space like this,” he said, noting how Malik deflated despite trying to hide it. “Do you feel like you need more room? We could go to IKEA and get some more furniture for–”
Malik interrupted him with a shake of his head. “That’s not what this is about.”
Ryou already knew that, but wasn’t sure what else to offer. He leaned forward and kissed the tip of Malik’s nose to signal a compromise. “Let’s spend another half hour on this and then go get dinner. I’m starving.”
Malik surveyed the heap of clothing. “Why don’t we just put the rest of this stuff away? You obviously don’t want to do this.”
“...All right.” Ryou stood up to help rehang shirts on hangers, even though he wasn’t the one who’d pulled them all down in the first place. “Sorry.”
“What do you want for dinner?” Malik asked, changing the subject.
“We could go to that udon place around the corner.”
“Was going to suggest the same thing.”
A devious thought tickled Ryou’s brain. He wriggled out of his t-shirt and shook out the plaid shirt Malik had thrown at him.
“Oh, no,” Malik said, watching him.
“What? I’m not going out in that t-shirt, I’ve been wearing it since yesterday.”
“And this is your only other option?”
“I’m only supposed to keep the clothes I want to wear, right? So I better wear this, if I’m going to keep it.” Ryou finished buttoning the shirt and tugged at the cuffs. It didn’t fit quite right, but as he recalled, it had never really fit quite right.
Malik failed to hold back a giggle. “I don’t want to be seen in public with you.”
“Rude. You just said you wanted to go with me to the udon place.” Ryou reached out and hooked a finger through Malik’s belt loop. “I’ll let you take it off of me when we get back.”
“What if I 'accidentally' rip it in half and it ends up in the trash?”
“Didn’t think this shirt got you that excited.”
“You’re such a little shit,” Malik said fondly.
Malik gave it a few weeks before cajoling Ryou into trying again with the tidying and purging. “I think we should do the spare room,” Malik said. Ryou’s expression clouded, and Malik added, “We don’t even have to get rid of anything, if you don’t want to. Let’s just look at it, okay?”
The “spare room” was really just storage space, ranks of flat-pack shelves holding everything from boxes of Ryou’s father’s old papers, to toys Ryou had outgrown years before he moved to this place, to dried-up paints and glues. When he was still living alone, he’d occasionally go in there and putter around, rearrange some models or flip through a GM handbook, but mostly everything stayed still and quiet under a fine film of dust. At some point after Malik moved in, Ryou had shut the door of the spare room, and hadn’t found a reason to open it again.
But it was dreary and raining outside and Malik was trying really hard to convince Ryou that this would make them both happier, so Ryou shrugged and went along with it.
He felt like an archaeologist prowling through the undisturbed tomb of some boy who’d died long ago and was laid to rest surrounded by the most precious objects of his daily life. There was a lot of stuff in there that he knew he’d never want or use again, but even what should have been simple—tossing dried-up pens in the trash, setting aside yellowed manga weeklies for the recycling—made him feel a little queasy. He hadn’t left all these things untouched simply because he’d outgrown them; there was a split right through his adolescence, and most of these old objects came from the far side, from before the years that had been stolen from him. Throwing them away felt like acknowledging all the time he’d lost.
Ryou filled half a garbage bag with things that Malik coaxed him to part with, then sighed and looked around. “What do you think I should do with these?” he asked, reaching to pull down a small wooden box. He lifted the lid, and he and Malik both stared down at a collection of Monster World figurines, each squeezed into a fabric-lined niche like corpses in coffins.
“Are these what he…” Malik asked, reaching out but keeping his fingers hovering several inches away.
Ryou nodded. “For his penalty games.” He shut the lid carefully. “I think I’d probably feel better if I didn’t have these around anymore.”
“Perfectly understandable.”
“So, what does Marie Kondo say is the proper way to get rid of cursed objects that were once used to seal stolen souls?”
Malik smiled wryly. “She’d probably just say you need to thank them for their service and let them move on. I’m sure she’d be unphased by occult paraphernalia.”
“So just… trash them?” Ryou hesitated.
Malik took the box from his hands and set it on the floor, near the garbage bag. “We can figure that out later. What about those ones?”
Ryou looked where he was pointing, and his expression brightened. “Those, I want to keep.” He stood on his toes to pull down an acrylic case that contained another set of Monster World figurines. Gently, he set the diorama on the floor between them and used his sleeve to wipe it clean of dust. “That was my White Wizard,” he told Malik, pointing to the figurine that he remembered lovingly crafting and leveling up.
“Didn’t you almost die playing that game?” Malik asked dubiously.
“I’m pretty sure I did die.”
“And you’re sure you want to keep a reminder of that?”
Ryou laughed. “Of course. They’re like a trophy,” he told Malik, carefully buffing a smudge from the corner of the acrylic. Malik looked chagrined, so Ryou added lightly, “I think Marie Kondo would say it’s okay for me to keep this.”
“Well, she does say that if you must, you can have a shrine with all your weird keepsakes that you just can’t part with.”
“For my shrine, then.” Ryou put the diorama carefully back on the shelf. “Okay, since I guess we’re working on old game stuff now…” He hauled down a plastic bin and pried off the lid to reveal hundreds of Duel Monsters cards.
“Oh crap,” Malik said, with a weak laugh.
Ryou rifled through the cards with one finger. “Probably easiest to just sell this all as a lot at the game store.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Malik was pulling out cards one at a time, studying them before slipping them back into their rows. “You must have some valuable stuff in here. Might be worth going through them first.”
“Well, you’re welcome to.”
Malik looked at him. “Sorry. I’m pushing you again.”
“It’s not really that,” Ryou said. “I don’t have great memories associated with these cards, obviously, but I also was just never as into this game as everybody else.” He laughed a little. “Maybe if I’d ever gotten to play my own matches.”
“Eh. It’s overrated,” Malik said, with a fatalistic smirk. He plucked out a stack of cards, sheathed in a cardboard sleeve, that he and Ryou both had been pretending not to stare at this whole time. “Was this his Battle City deck?”
“Um, that was my deck, thank you very much. I spent a lot of time building that one.”
“No shit?” Malik chuckled. “I should have realized he’d never have expended the effort himself.” Malik fanned through the cards gently. He had a distant look and a faint, rueful smile, like he was looking at pictures of old friends. Ryou felt himself frowning a little as he watched Malik’s face, and consciously smoothed his own expression.
“For not being that into the game, Ryou, this was a pretty great deck.”
“I know,” Ryou acknowledged. “I’m still kind of pissed that I never got to use it myself. He got to break it in, and then after Battle City, I didn’t think anyone would be too happy to see it if I just pulled it out for lunchtime duels.”
“We could play,” Malik offered. “I’m sure I could build myself a halfway decent deck out of what you’ve got here.”
“If you want, but my Occult Deck will kick your ass.”
Malik smiled, but it disappeared before it reached his eyes. He pushed himself to his feet, leaving Ryou blinking up at him from the floor. “I’m going to take a break. My back hurts from sitting like this.”
Ryou stayed in the spare room for a while. He had developed a finely calibrated sense of how long Malik needed to be alone before he wanted Ryou to come look for him; today Ryou was careful to account for the fact that Malik had taken the Occult Deck with him when he left. He gave it twenty minutes, then went to find him.
Malik was on their tiny balcony, sitting sideways in one of the folding chairs with his feet propped on the other. His hands were restlessly shuffling the deck, slowly and endlessly, as he stared out over the neighborhood rooflines.
“Are you okay?” Ryou asked.
Malik nodded, and shifted his legs out of the way so Ryou could sit beside him. “This was a stupid idea, all of it. You were right, Ryou.”
“I never said it was a stupid idea.”
Malik shrugged, watching his own hands work through the cards. “You should have. And called me out on being manipulative, while you were at it. If anyone should understand that you don’t get to bury your past, it’s me.”
Ryou circled Malik’s wrist with his fingers, trying to stop the incessant shuffling. “Not bury it,” Ryou said. “But we don't have to carry it forever.”
Malik’s hands finally stilled, and he gazed down at the cards.
Ryou nodded at the deck. “You hanging onto that for your own shrine of weird keepsakes?”
Malik huffed a short laugh. “What we really should do is just—“ he teased, making a gesture of tossing the cards over the railing.
“Go for it,” Ryou said.
Malik’s mouth quirked, but he slapped the deck into Ryou’s open palm instead of making good on his threat.
Ryou thumbed through the cards. It was a good deck.
Then he stood up and flung the cards as hard as he could, letting them sail in a glorious arc from his outstretched arm.
“Ryou!” Malik yelped, leaping to his feet.
“You just said to!” Ryou’s laugh was only a little hysterical as he watched the cards buck and twist as the breeze caught them, scattering them into gutters and puddles.
“Ryou,” Malik said again. After a moment, he began laughing with him. His arms looped around Ryou’s waist and tugged him back against his chest. “You maniac.”
“I come by it honestly.” Ryou turned in Malik’s arms to face him. “You know, I think I finally get what she means by ‘spark joy.’”