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“I don’t like this,” Malik says.
He says it to his older sister, Ishizu, because if he said it to their father then he would most likely only get a strike across the face for his troubles.
Ishizu is unsympathetic. “We all have to do things we don’t like,” she says matter-of-factly.
Ishizu is at her desk, as always, surrounded by very thick and very boring books, scratching away with quill to parchment. Ishizu is twelve and it seems as though she does nothing but study. This does lend credence to her point, though, and Malik decides that it’s not worth pressing the issue.
“I don’t like this,” Malik says.
Rishid is much more sympathetic. His older brother holds Malik on his lap and lets Malik cry and storm for awhile, and then when Malik has finished his tantrum they leave the castle and poke around looking for flowers and frogs and such in the fields. Malik would much rather go and steal some of those little cakes from the kitchen, but Rishid is fifteen and very responsible and it takes rather a lot of convincing for Malik to get Rishid involved in hijinks of any sort. He can talk Rishid into anything, of course, but it takes time and effort and Malik is too tired and despondent for that at present.
“I don’t like this,” Malik says, exactly a week later.
The boy standing across from him is around his age, eight or so, and his six-year-old brother peers curiously at them from a few feet away, where he’s standing next to their father. The brothers look very alike despite the age difference: soft white tresses hanging down their back in messy waves, pale skin, rather delicate features, and large brown eyes the precise colour of chocolate. Both are dressed in all their royal finery, as is Malik. Malik hates being dressed in his royal finery. It’s itchy, and doesn’t lend itself well to climbing or sneaking into the kitchen to nick pies.
“You think I do?” the other boy fires back immediately, narrowing those chocolate-brown eyes. “I don’t want to be sold off to you like a cattle to the slaughterhouse.”
“Bakura,” his father says sternly. “Marriage is not slaughter.”
“Isn’t it?” Bakura mutters, just barely loud enough for Malik to catch it.
Malik does not want to be married to the prince of a neighbouring kingdom for political reasons, either, and he had been the first one to voice his dislike; but Bakura’s words sting a little. “What are you wearing?” Malik snipes. “You look stupid.”
Bakura’s outfit is a pretty standard one for a princeling on a diplomatic outing; tunic, hose and boots, all richly embroidered and embellished. It’s mostly wrought in light blue, and looks just as itchy as Malik’s outfit. Bakura doesn’t answer the jab, instead making a point of silently looking Malik up and down with his face curled into a sneer. Malik feels rattled by this. Despite the dreadful occasion, he’d put some effort into choosing his outfit, his favourite lilac-coloured doublet and his nicest leather boots. Malik liked to be well-dressed. It makes him feel better about facing the disaster that was his life. Bakura doesn’t seem at all impressed by his efforts.
“Can we go, Father?” Bakura asks dismissively.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if the boys like each other, because Malik’s father needs Bakura’s father’s army, and Bakura’s father needs Malik’s father’s land. It’s a very mutually profitable arrangement, if you aren’t the one being forced to marry a rude little hellion.
The next time Malik and Bakura meet they are ten, and they end up fighting so badly that Malik ends up with a black eye and Bakura comes away from the encounter with the impression of Malik’s teeth in his forearm.
Their fathers are undeterred, and the marriage contract remains intact.
“He’s not so bad,” Rishid says, trying to comfort Malik.
“He’s awful,” Ishizu says, not looking up from her book. “Does make you two perfect for one another, though.”
The time Malik and Bakura meet after that, they are thirteen and Malik has to go to Bakura’s family’s castle. It’s horrible. Dank and gloomy, with all sorts of rather macabre art on the walls and creepy sculptures what seems like every five feet. Have these people never heard of a window? Malik thinks irritably, as Rishid herds him down the hallway. Rishid is twenty now and very grown-up, so Malik’s father has decided he can finally give up the loathsome responsibility of being involved in the day-to-day lives of his children and just outsource all that to Rishid. Malik’s glad for it, in truth.
Malik and Bakura are told to go and take a stroll. Bakura is supposed to be giving Malik a tour of the castle grounds. Instead he marches along silently like a man destined for the gallows, with Malik trailing reluctantly a few feet behind. Bakura’s eleven-year-old brother is tagging along, too, although he seems oblivious to the awkwardness of the situation.
The little brother’s name is Ryou. Bakura treats him with all the dismissiveness of an older brother trying to outgrow the childish things he’d indulged in only a year or two ago. Ryou takes no notice and continues to follow his brother around like a little duckling.
“Your castle is horrid,” Malik says, just to make conversation.
“So’s your mother,” Bakura snaps back immediately. Malik rolls his eyes. It’s the sort of stupid comeback popular among stableboys, and Malik already has the perfect response to it.
“I don’t have a mother,” Malik deadpans.
Usually this gets the insulter flustered and stammering out apologies. Bakura does no such thing. He does slow his pace, though, until he’s walking side-by-side with Malik instead of a few paces ahead.
“Neither do we,” Bakura says eventually. His tone is very matter-of-fact. Ryou also lets no hint of his feelings on the matter show on his face.
Bakura and Malik look at each other again, for a long moment. Sizing each other up.
The fourth time Bakura and Malik meet after that, they are seventeen and it’s their wedding. They are both garbed in the traditional bright-red wedding robes. Malik is highly displeased about it. Neither he nor Bakura look good in red, and he’d hoped that even if this marriage was an absolute sham, the aesthetics of the whole celebration might be nice enough to cheer him up a little. No such luck. When Malik had made his case for wearing non-traditional colours, his father had simply told Malik to get out of his office or he’d have Malik whipped.
Ishizu had been unsympathetic. “Why does it matter what colour you wear?” Ishizu tended to dress in plain and dowdy clothes, like her fellow academics at the university, so Malik didn’t even know why he’d bothered trying to explain it to her.
Rishid was sympathetic, and even though he’d never put together a fashionable outfit in his life, he let Malik cry in his lap like Malik was eight again, and then took him down to the kitchen to nick a few of the wedding feast desserts.
It’s decided after the wedding that Bakura is to come live in the Ishtar castle, although their fathers to have a tense and prolonged disagreement about it, primarily because neither are interested in being saddled with more children to care for. Bakura’s father wins. Malik is immeasurably relieved that even if he has to be married, he won’t have to leave Ishizu and Rishid and go live in that macabre, ominous pile of stones that Bakura’s family calls a castle.
He tells Bakura as much when Bakura arrives with all his luggage - that Bakura is lucky to escape that horrible place and come to live in a real castle. Bakura punches him in the face.
For the next two years Bakura and Malik studiously avoid each other. The Ishtar castle is big enough that they can mostly stay on opposite ends of it, and neither sleep in their designated marital bedchamber; Malik secretly has a second bed moved into Rishid’s room, and Bakura for his part mostly sleeps in very strange and disturbing places like the attic, any dark corner he can find, and occasionally in the rafters.
“Just make an effort with him,” Ishizu says one day. Malik is curled up on the floor beside her on the plush carpet floor in her study while she works, half-napping in a warm sunbeam. It’s his favourite spot to relax, even though Ishizu is an annoying older sister who nags and can scarcely let an afternoon pass without lecturing him about something-or-other.
“Him?” Malik says absently, trying to tune her out and focus on the nice warm feeling of the sunbeam on his back. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Malik,” Ishizu scolds. “You’re nineteen. You’re a married man and you can’t get away with being petulant anymore. If you give Bakura a chance, it could be easier to bear.”
What Ishizu means but isn’t saying is, if you and Bakura get over yourselves and learn to tolerate each other, you could be important political allies in the future.
“Father’s an adult and he’s petulant,” Malik mutters.
“So you want to be like Father?” Ishizu says.
“I’m not like Father,” Malik snaps back, feeling very hurt by the comment. He sits up, debating whether or not to leave.
Ishizu studies him for a long moment. “Come here,” she says. Malik moves closer to her and puts his head in her lap, and Ishizu scratches his scalp in the way that he likes. “I didn’t say you were like Father. I’m saying I think you can be better.”
Ishizu may be rather brusque with her words, but the soft motions of her hands tell Malik that he is still the baby of the family and she loves him, even if she thinks he’s being petulant.
“All right,” Malik mutters, defeated. “I guess I’ll talk to him.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Ishizu says, smiling down at him. Ishizu doesn’t smile very often, so it feels extra special when she does.
Malik secretly follows Bakura around the castle for a few weeks, trying to figure out his strategy. Bakura is so weird. He spends a lot of time lurking in the shadows, eavesdropping, and occasionally setting small fires on the training grounds to amuse himself. Malik thinks he may be secretly plotting to kill them all. In that case, getting on his good side is probably not the worst idea.
Getting on Bakura’s good side is no simple matter, though. Rishid had certainly tried. Even at twenty-six, with both Malik and Ishizu fully grown, Rishid takes his responsibilities as an older brother seriously. He also tends to imprint on anything vaguely younger-sibling-shaped out of an excess of protective instinct. So Rishid had tried his best to befriend the sinister creature that was Bakura, only to be rebuffed with the verbal equivalent of a cat hissing and swiping out with its claws. If even someone like Rishid hadn’t managed to make any headway in two years, Malik has no idea how he's supposed to do it.
Malik sort of enjoys following Bakura around, though. Malik likes being sneaky, and he likes trying to figure out what makes people tick, and Bakura is one hell of a puzzling clock.
Until one day, when Malik loses track of Bakura in the course of his stalking, and then moments later finds himself pressed up against the wall with a knife at his throat.
“Why. Are. You. Following. Me.”
Bakura’s face is contorted into a snarl. Malik isn’t particularly fazed. He’s not scared of knives, and he’s not scared of Bakura.
“Because you’re my darling husband and I crave your presence,” Malik quips lazily. He’s not really paying attention to what’s coming out of his mouth, just letting it run on snark mode. Instead he’s taking a rare opportunity to look at Bakura up close. Bakura has interesting features - still as pretty as he’d been when they were kids, with gently sloping cheekbones and a delicate nose, across which a few tiny freckles are sprinkled. Malik had never noticed those before. He’d always been drawn to look at those large brown eyes, first.
“Answer me,” Bakura growls, “or I’ll slit your god damned throat.” He presses the knife further into the flesh at Malik’s throat. Any harder and he’ll break the skin. Malik still isn’t worried. Even Bakura wouldn’t be insane enough to kill him in his family’s own castle. Probably.
“I’m studying you,” Malik replies, honestly this time.
That answer seems to rattle Bakura. His grimace falls, just a little, and his eyes widen ever-so-fractionally. “What?”
Malik doesn’t answer, continuing on in his study of Bakura’s face. Bakura seems profoundly unnerved by Malik’s open, probing gaze.
“You’re kind of pretty, you know,” Malik says after a moment. It’s true. Even when he’s snarling, Bakura has the sort of feral beauty of a wildcat. Terrifying and thrilling and graceful, all at the same time.
“I’ll kill you!” Bakura shouts, but he drops the knife with a clatter and storms away, leaving Malik with only a very small nick in the flesh of his throat.
(“What’s that from?” Rishid asks immediately, the next time he and Malik see each other. Nothing escapes his brother’s notice.
“Marriage,” Malik replies flippantly.)
Malik continues to follow Bakura around, and Bakura continues to not kill him. It feels sort of like an uneasy truce. After another few weeks of this, Malik decides it’s time to try another approach.
“You know,” he says, crouching down next to Bakura at the training grounds, “it’s much easier to start fires with something like this.”
Malik procures a length of thick, wax-coated cotton rope from his pocket. Bakura watches warily as Malik piles small twigs around the base of the training dummy, and then puts the cotton rope on top of it all, striking sparks at it with his flint and steel.
Sure enough, the cotton rope bursts into a flame hot enough to start catching the small sticks below, and soon the entire training dummy is delightfully ablaze.
“I could do that too if I had a fancy flint and steel,” Bakura snaps. He seems to be embarrased to have been caught at his previous method, which involved sticks and an ungodly amount of sustained friction.
Malik shrugs. “I can get you one, if you want.”
The two young men watch the fire for quite some time, until a group of the knights can be heard approaching just around the corner and they’re forced to flee. They cram themselves into the same hiding-place - one of the small storage closets where weapon polish and whetstones are kept. “Get out,” Bakura hisses. “This is my hiding-place.”
“If one of us is discovered, we both are,” Malik whispers back indignantly. “Are you stupid?”
They stay like that, uncomfortably squished together, for quite some time. The knights are predictably in a dither about the whole thing, milling about and asking annoying useless questions like For god’s sake who keeps starting these fires and should we maybe switch to a less flammable material for the training dummies.
Malik can’t help but notice how bony Bakura is, all elbows and knees sticking out every which-way. Malik has always been on the slightly softer side himself. He wonders if that’s because he’s more well-fed than Bakura. What does Bakura even eat? Malik doesn’t think he’s ever seen him do it. Maybe he drinks blood, like a vampire.
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” Bakura mutters.
“How do you know I’m thinking anything?”
“I can just tell, and I know it’s something weird.”
Malik ponders that, and then dismisses it. Bakura accusing anyone of weirdness is so fantastically hypocritical that it’s not even worth getting worked up over. “Hey, do you want to go and steal some food from the kitchens?”
“What do you need to steal food for?” Bakura retorts.
“The thrill.”
A moment of silence, in which Malik is acutely aware of the bony, lanky body pressed up against his.
“Fine,” Bakura says.
It turns out Bakura is an excellent food-thieving partner. Rishid tries his best, bless him, but subterfuge and stealth do not come easily to Malik’s sweet-natured older brother. Bakura, on the other hand, sneaks around like he was raised as a back-alley assassin, rather than as a prince. Malik gleefully follows Bakura’s lead as Bakura takes an unnecessarily convoluted route to the kitchens. Bakura glances over his shoulder frequently, as if they’re being followed and he constantly needs to throw pursuers off their trail, and he slinks so gracefully through shadowed corners that Malik can’t help trying to imitate his lithe movements.
Usually, Malik can only make off with a few pies or cookies. Bakura manages to nick an entire ham, some baked potatoes, and mulled wine to boot. Malik still grabs a few desserts for good measure.
Bakura insists that they eat their spoils on the rooftop, to prevent being discovered. Malik thinks this is actually more suspicious. No one will question them wandering around munching on snacks, but anyone who sees them on the roof munching snacks will likely have some questions. Malik and Bakura argue about it for a few minutes, and then Bakura pulls his knife again and Malik gives in, mostly because the potatoes are getting cold and he’s too hungry to keep fighting.
“You eat like a wild animal.”
Bakura ignores Malik, ripping into the ham with his teeth like he’s a lion who’s just killed a gazelle. Malik sits next to him, daintily nibbling on a baked potato.
After a while, Bakura has demolished the ham nearly by himself and slows down a little, chewing pensively on the potato skins that Malik doesn’t want to eat.
“Why are you doing all this?” Bakura says finally.
“Doing all what?”
“Following me around all the time, helping me set fires, that kind of thing.”
“I like setting fires.”
“I know,” Bakura says, irritated, “but I’ve seen you set plenty by yourself, and there was no need for you to help me with it.”
Malik chews that sentence over in his head. “So you’ve been following me too.”
“Obviously,” Bakura says condescendingly. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to assassinate you.”
“I’m not very heavily guarded,” Malik says, now very curious. “Father doesn’t care about me much. You could’ve done it by now.”
Bakura doesn’t answer him for a few moments. Then he takes another vicious bite of his ham. “My father doesn’t care about me, either.”
Malik had sort of known that all along. Bakura’s father treats both of his sons rather like a farmer would treat his tools; he’ll take care of them enough so that they’re in working shape, but he’d never dream of coddling either and would think nothing of letting them sleep out in the cold.
“Now, answer me,” Bakura demands. “Why are you doing all this?”
Malik decides on honesty. “Ishizu told me to.”
“Ishizu told you to stalk me and set a fire on the training grounds and team up with me to steal food from the kitchens?”
Well, not exactly, but Ishizu knows Malik well enough to know that his methods for solving problems are rarely orthodox. “More or less.”
Bakura swallows another bite of his ham and crams a potato into his mouth practically whole. He really is disgusting. Malik’s eyes are trained on his thin lips, which are flecked with crumbs of food. Disgusting.
“I think Ishizu and my brother would get along,” Bakura comments derisively.
It’s the first thing Bakura has ever said to Malik that isn’t openly hostile. Malik feels a little taken aback. Perhaps Bakura is hoping Malik will be offended by the comparison, but there’s nothing wrong with Ryou, really. He’s just a little odd. So is Ishizu.
“They would,” Malik agrees. “They’re both insufferable nerds.”
Bakura snorts at that. It’s very nearly a laugh.
“Ryou’s off to the mage academy this fall,” Bakura says after a minute. It’s impossible to parse his tone. He could be annoyed about it, or totally indifferent.
“No kidding?” Malik replies. “I’ve never heard of a seventeen-year-old being accepted to study there before.”
“Yeah, well,” Bakura grunts. “Ryou’s always been the shining star of our stupid family. That’s why I’m the one who got married off. Father knew I wouldn’t amount to anything otherwise.”
That hits deep in a tender part of Malik’s chest. Rishid at twenty-six has long since earned his knighthood, and Ishizu at twenty-two is already a respected academic at the College. Malik, on the other hand, is still lazing around all day finding trifling things to amuse himself with. It’s all started to feel a bit empty, lately.
“I know you’re the same,” Bakura says, as if he can read Malik’s mind and wants to drive the point home even more mercilessly, like a stake in Malik’s heart. “We’re both useless, you know. Just pawns in some large game that we’ll never actually get to play at.”
Bakura doesn’t look angry for once, though. His large brown eyes aren’t narrowed nearly into slits, as usual, and the soft shape of his lips show no hint of a sneer.
You look sad, Malik thinks, but he knows better than to say it.
He leans forward and kisses Bakura instead. Bakura tastes like ham and smells like smoke and dirt.
Bakura doesn’t react for ten seconds, and then all at once, he flips Malik onto his back with freakish strength, pinning Malik against the rooftop by his wrists. A forgotten pastry rolls off the roof in the commotion. Too bad, Malik had been looking forward to eating that one.
“I’ll kill you,” Bakura growls.
Both boys are breathing heavily. Bakura’s face is only inches from Malik’s, and his knee is pressed between Malik’s legs.
“No you won’t,” Malik says. “Anyways, you kissed me back.”
“I did not!”
“Did too.”
Then Bakura pulls his knife again and Malik has to scramble off the rooftop and back in through the window, because it looks like Bakura’s actually serious about using it this time.
In the weeks after that, Bakura tries even harder to avoid Malik, but when Malik inevitably finds him Bakura doesn’t put up much of a fight. They set some more fires, find out where Malik’s father keeps his stash of hideously expensive wine, and pull slightly malicious pranks on the butlers. A particularly good one is when Bakura scores the underside of their food trays with his knife, just enough so that when the platter is loaded with food it will promptly split into two and send the food tumbling everywhere.
Sometimes Bakura lets Malik kiss him, and sometimes when Malik tries Bakura punches him. Occasionally Bakura will appear out of absolutely nowhere and pin Malik violently up against the wall, kissing him like he’s trying to steal the very breath from his lungs, and then turn a very bright shade of red and disappear back into the shadows.
(“What’s that from?” Rishid asks one day, pointing at a bite mark on Malik’s neck.
“Marriage,” Malik replies.)
(“You two seem to be getting along these days,” Ishizu says approvingly, after the two of them get back from a satisfying afternoon of mayhem. “I do wish you wouldn’t cause so much property damage, though.”
“Property damage? I would never,” Malik replies.)
The kissing gets more and more frequent, and soon they’re doing more, too, and between all that and the satisfaction of having a literal partner in crime, Malik starts to feel like his days are a bit less empty. He tells Bakura so one day, when they’re lazing around in bed.
“Don’t be gross,” Bakura mutters. He absently traces the scars on Malik’s back with his fingertip. He’s never asked about Malik’s scars. In turn, Malik has never asked about Bakura’s.
“I’m allowed to be gross,” Malik counters. “You’re my husband.”
“Only on paper.”
Malik considers that. They’re legally married, they kiss and do other things, and Malik quite enjoys being around Bakura. What more to marriage could there be? Malik rolls over, pinning Bakura, and presses an unusually gentle kiss to the finely-sculpted tip of his nose.
“Stop being gross,” Bakura protests again, but he could escape Malik if he wanted to and he doesn’t. He just lies there and lets Malik press feather-light kisses to his forehead, the tops of his cheekbones, his eyelids.
“I like this,” Malik says.
“Like what?”
“I like you.”
“I hate you,” Bakura replies. It seems as if he were going for venomous, but it comes out kind of garbled and soft, instead.
Malik sighs contentedly and lays his head on Bakura’s chest. “Are you still going to assassinate me?”
Bakura is still tracing his fingers over the raised, scarred flesh on Malik’s back. His touch is so gentle that for a heartbeat, Malik almost doesn’t mind that he has scars at all.
“No,” Bakura mutters reluctantly.
“That’s good. I don’t want to assassinate you, either,” Malik says affectionately, nuzzling into Bakura’s neck.
A long, peaceful moment passes. Sunbeams filter in through the windows, heating the bedroom pleasantly. Malik sometimes feels like he was born to be in the sun, soaking it in at every opportunity. Bakura prefers to be in the shade. When they’re lying in bed like this they can both get their way - the bedcurtains are drawn just closed enough to cast Bakura’s face in shadow, but still open enough to let a single sunbeam filter through and warm Malik’s lower back.
Malik thinks he’s maybe found a new favourite spot.
“Instead of assassinating each other,” Bakura says slowly, breaking the soft, full silence, “we should kill our fathers instead.”
Malik props himself up on his elbows and his face breaks into a gleeful grin. “Really? You mean it?”
“Sure,” Bakura says with a half-shrug. “You’re smart enough and I’m sneaky enough. We could pull it off. No one would ever know who did it, then we can burn down both these stupid castles and take Ryou and Rishid and Ishizu and build our own. It’d probably just take a little poison.” Bakura pauses. “Or maybe smothering them with pillows would be more effective. It doesn’t really leave a trace, you know.”
It sounds like a pretty solid plan, but in Malik’s opinion, there is one minor flaw.
“Once they’re dead,” Malik says, “there’s no reason we’d have to stay married.”
He feels a little twinge in his chest as the words come out.
“Of course there is, you idiot,” Bakura scoffs. “It’s called mutually-assured destruction. We’d have to stay together forever to make sure neither one of us can blackmail the other.”
Malik thinks it over for a few seconds. “Sounds good to me,” he says, grinning even wider.
“All right,” Bakura replies. “It’s a deal, then.”
They seal it with a kiss, and Malik thinks that maybe marriage is slaughter in a way, and that maybe he doesn’t mind at all in the end.